Brighton Festival 2025 returns with guest director Anoushka Shankar

Lead Pic: Anoushka Shankar, photo by Laura Lewis

People of a certain age will remember renowned musician and composer Ravi Shankar teaching the ancient musical instrument the sitar to The Beatles’ George Harrison – a sound that changed the group’s musical style.

Now Ravi’s daughter Anoushka Shankar has changed the mood and style of Brighton Festival 2025 and given it a strong and distinctive South Asian sound and feel.

As this year’s guest director, she has helped to create a festival on the theme of New Dawn – suggesting that after the darkness of recent times- including last year’s riots – that there is a new feeling of hope, recovery and optimism which the creative arts can express and promote.

Shankar’s picks include Pakistani-American vocalist Arooj Aftab, and singer/songwriter Nadine Shah. Wembley is a world premiere by author/screenwriter Nikesh Shukla, with Nikesh and Himesh Patel, dealing with the aftermath of the 2024 riots.

Anoushka will also be performing at the festival, including her new album: Chapter Three – We Return To Light.

There are three queer offerings in the programme. There’s a walking tour of St James’s Street and its queer history led by drag stars Alfie Ordinary, Alex Fincher and Billie Gold, and a chance to contribute to local queer history archives, through The Coast Is Queer and Queer Heritage South.

Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line is a talk by Elizabeth Lovatt, and is a timely exploration of how lesbian identity continues to redefine itself, and where it might lead us in the future. Elizabeth talks to writer Lesley Wood about her new book tracing her own journey from coming out to finding her chosen family, while reimagining the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990’s.

Theatre of Dreams is the latest dance work by the stunningly talented Hofesh Shechter Company, who has delighted Brighton audiences previously. It deals with fantasy and the world of the subconscious.

Ayna is a world premiere from British-Turkish choreographer Ceyda Tanc, set in a night club with a live DJ, and an all-female cast weaving Turkish folk traditions and athletic contemporary dance,

Circus is represented by Australia’s Circa with their show Humans 2.0. It asks what does it mean to be human, using acrobatics, contemporary dance and an electronic score.

Peruvian Teatro La Plaza give us a reinvented Hamlet, performed by a community of actors all with Downs Syndrome. Legendary theatre director Emma Rice and her company Wise Children take an Alfred Hitchcock classic in a funny re-working of North By North West.

There are numerous lunchtime concerts, a percussion parade, the Royal Philharmonic performing Sibelius and a song recital by Sarah Connolly. The London Symphony Orchestra, with Leila Josefowicz, present Stravinsky’s violin concerto, and Harry Christophers brings his Sixteen to sing old and new choral works by Hildegard of Bingen, John Taverner and Arvo Part.

You can walk by the seashore and draw your own version of New Dawn to be displayed publicly – and so much more to dive into.

Full details HERE