Sydney Festival show cancelled, program changed following Bondi attack

A performance by physical theatre company Legs on the Wall, due to take place at Bondi Pavilion later this month, has been cancelled following the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach that left 15 people dead.

The decision was made by Waverley Council, Legs on the Wall and festival organisers.

Festival organisers have also modified parts of the program, in particular Live on Hickson Road, an outdoor performance that will replicate the filming of an action movie. Effects, including gunshots and emergency services sirens, will be toned down or removed in the piece from Argentinian collective El Pampero Cine.

“Our priority is unequivocally the wellbeing of our community and ensuring that Bondi Pavilion remains a dedicated place of support and sanctuary for those who need it most, and we look forward to presenting this work next year,” said festival director Kris Nelson.

Called Waverider, the Legs on the Wall performance is a family-friendly homage to surf culture and beach life.

“It’s fun, it’s frivolous, it’s literally bouncy with a massive, bouncy, inflatable wave,” said Nelson. “We just felt there’s another moment for us to tell that story at Bondi Pavilion, and we can do it next year. Members of our team feel an incredible amount of solidarity with the Jewish community across Sydney.”

The El Pampero Cine team approached Nelson after the Bondi tragedy to work out how to continue their performance in a sensitive way.

“They came to us proactively to say ‘I think we should change some of the sound effects’,” he said. “[They said] ‘we want to work with the dancers to create a bit of a different effect so we can still do this piece without causing undue alarm’.”

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, some commentators questioned whether a performance by British actor and activist Khalid Abdalla, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, should go ahead.

Nowhere is described as “an act of anti-biography that asks how we got here and how we find agency amidst the mazes of history”.

Nelson, defending his decision to proceed with Nowhere, which opens at the Roslyn Packer Theatre on January 13, said he had spoken to Abdalla immediately after the Bondi attacks.

“He was extremely compassionate and regretful and shocked as we all were,” he said. “For me, he’s extraordinary. He’s an artist who works with incredible empathy and is a very thoughtful and open-hearted kind of storyteller. He’s not inflammatory and his work in my view is not antisemitic.”

Nelson said he hoped this year’s festival could help Sydney, even in a small way, to begin to heal.

“I know that the festival can’t be a panacea or an antidote to everything that’s happened and everything that everyone’s going to be feeling,” he said. “But I really hope that by gathering, by being in the lobbies and the foyers together, by dancing at a show or hearing the spoken word … that there’s some kind of coming together and that the festival offers a kind of place of solace, a place of community.”

• This story has been updated to reflect the fact the decision to cancel was taken by Waverley Council, Sydney Festival and Legs on the Wall.