The Karrawirra Parri/Torrens River runs through the heart of Adelaide and, for the opening week of the Adelaide festival, it’s lit up like Christmas — even the nearby Adelaide Oval is bathed in the rainbow colours of pride.
Inside the Dunstan Playhouse, Watershed is also built around the water. Behind a simple white stage a tranquil scene is projected, the footage filmed at a spot just a few hundred metres up the river. A lone figure (Mason Kelly) descends from the rafters in slow motion; suspended from a cable with an unbuttoned shirt draped dramatically over his frame, he’s posed like an idol in a renaissance artwork — Saint Sebastian, perhaps, or Christ in Michelangelo’s Pietà.
