Jo Bryant-The York Festival: There’s Barely A Person In Town Who Hasn’t Had an Extras Role.

The York Festival is back for it’s 8th year later this month so Clairsy & Lisa got festival organizer Jo Bryant on the phone for a chat about what we can expect to see and whether we're likely to see any movie stars wandering around town at the festival this year.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The York Festival is on this month, September twenty to
twenty nine. You can get tickets through York Festival dot
com dot au. Joe Bryant is the coordinator of this
York stravaganza and she's with us now. Good morning, Joe, Jo, Welcome,
Good morning guys yorky Wood as we're calling now, Joe.
Considering you are the hot spot of all sorts of stuff, we.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Are, we are. There's barely a person in town who
haven't had an extra role.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Cool. There must just be such a fun atmosphere to
be in the midst of all that. I mean, Brian
Brown in town.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yes, well absolutely sorry, go on.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
I was going to say, this is the eighth year
of the Festival and and your cultural event celebrating York's
cultural history, heritage and wonderful arts community.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, yes, absolutely so. We call ourselves the Multi Arts
Festival and that allows us to pull in all sorts
of for an acts, to really showcase a diverse range
of disciplines and offer something for everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Really, when you say something for everyone, so it's not
just done and as a huge jazz component here, but
what else what can people get their teeth into with
this one look, we've got.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
A variety of performances, so we've got a small play
happening in one venue. We've got workshops like paint and
sip and collage boarding and sculptured play workshops. We've got
Flir Alder, who's a stunning dancer who's performing for us,

(01:38):
but she's also running some workshops on contemporary and creative
dance techniques, and drawing workshops where instead of life drawing,
it's live drawing, so you're drawing live dancer capturing those shapes.
We have got, as you say, a very strong jazz component,

(01:58):
but we've also got a broader range of musics as well,
so we have some beautiful pieces at the Holy Trinity
Church with our Silver Sounds Guitar Quartet, and we've got
Melody Paul as well, who's an Australian singer songwriter and
she is launching her latest single in advance of her

(02:21):
international tour.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
It's great that jazz is part of this because a
lot of us do remember the Old York Jazz Festival
of Days of Yore. It was such an amazing weekend
and it's a beautiful thing about York with a festival
like this is. It's not just the events that you
can attend, it's the buildings that they're in.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yep, yeah, yeah, so we have we're the first inland
town in WA and we have maintained a fully heritage
main terrace and a lot of properties around town. So
we're utilizing the Old West Australian Bank for one of
the venues. We've got the Imperial Homestead Hub. We've got

(03:05):
a new live music venue called the Rookery that's in
the back of the ancient shoemaker's shop. So there's lots
of lots of activities taking place in really interesting buildings
as well as, of course our town hall, which is stunning.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Absolutely, I'm pretty sure I saw that during the film
and during the watching the twelve last week I did bad.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
They renamed it as the Courthouse.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
You're running what September twenty to twenty nine, So there's
plenty of chances for people to come up. The many
people come and stays are much accommodation for them. I
pop in for one day quite often.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Look, you can do either. York is a tourist town,
so we do have plenty of beautiful accommodation. Although I
think we're filling up very rapidly. Yeah, yeah, but you know,
we're just we're ninety minutes from the center of Perth.
We're an hour from Midland. It's a beautiful drive, a
nice drive. It's a lovely drive and I think people

(04:04):
are often surprised. They think it sounds further away and
then when they get here they're like, oh, it only
took me seventeen minutes.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
It's not Candenden.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's pretty easy, quite drivable.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, and what are our chances of running into a
celebrity filming about town during that week? Joe, Are we
on a down sort of time at the moment because
Runt's about to open that of course film there. I
believe Brian Brown had been in town filming.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, Sam Neil was in town. So yeah, it's been
very busy. Obviously we can't say we all.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Go oh really, the whole town's that is why they
like filming.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
That's a collective one. What happens in York days.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
In Europe, Yeah, absolutely absolutely, it is so the name drop.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's the eight year at the festival, so much to do,
so much to see. It's September twenty to twenty nine.
Can get tickets through York Festival, dot com, dot you Joe,
thanks for chatting to us.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Thanks so much,