RISING 2026: ‘A Year Without Summer’ and Bold New Commissions Light Up Melbourne Winter

Amanda Palmer called the script “sick and dark and alive and phenomenal.” She was talking about A Year Without Summer, Florentina Holzinger’s musical comedy about the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, the frozen year that followed, and what happens when you try to improve nature all the way to perversion. The show opens RISING 2026 for four nights only.

That four-night run, 28 to 31 May at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, is the Australian exclusive premiere of the work that has already provoked audiences in Europe. It is also the sharpest expression of what artistic director Hannah Fox has built this festival to do: put art that stops conversation in its tracks into the middle of winter and let the city decide how it feels.

“Free art after dark, fresh live music, late-night dining and artist-led conversations, clubs and lounges create even more doorways into the festival’s expansive program of new art, stories, music and dance,” Fox said, announcing the full program.

RISING runs from 27 May to 8 June across the city, a not-for-profit festival now in its sixth edition. It lands with over 100 events, 376 artists, seven world premieres and 11 Australian premieres. The numbers are big but the thinking is bigger: the festival has built itself around indoor theatre, heated outdoor activations and the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale, using Melbourne’s winter darkness as a reason to gather rather than stay home.

Holzinger’s A Year Without Summer draws from the volcanic winter of 1816 and pulls it into the present with medical science, AI, bioengineering and the body as a testing ground for “improving nature to the point of perversion.” Early reactions from overseas described the work as existential and light, beautiful and repulsive, deeply touching and shocking. Palmer, who contributed music to the production, put it plainly on Instagram: the script is sick, dark and alive. The Playhouse run is restricted to ages 16 and over. Tickets sit between $71 and $119. The show runs two hours and 15 minutes and the four-night window means anyone who wants to be in the room needs to act.

Fox calls it “a really fantastic show.” The festival is not backing away from that intensity anywhere in the program. Lil’ Kim plays her first Australian show in 15 years at Festival Hall on 30 May. The Australian Dance Biennale brings the Royal Family Dance Crew to Federation Square for free classes alongside ticketed new works. Cannupa Hanska Luger’s public installation Midéegaadi opens at the square, and the Vinyl Factory Reverb listening room offers a different kind of late-night doorway.

Reddit threads from past editions note mixed reactions to similar boundary-pushing works, and that honesty is useful. Some moments will connect, others will leave people walking out not sure what they saw. That is the festival’s operating assumption. It does not try to smooth over the discomfort. It leans in.

For anyone who wants to be part of the experiment without a ticket, Federation Square becomes the festival’s living room. The public installations and dance classes are free, heated, and designed to pull people into the city during the colder nights. Tram routes 1, 3, 5, 6, 16, 64, 67 and 72 all feed into the square, and Flinders Street Station is a few minutes’ walk away. Driving is a headache best avoided.

While you are there, the NGV and Ian Potter Centre sit right on the square, ACMI is next door and Southbank dining runs the length of the river. The Wominjeka welcome performances on the Hamer Hall façade run alongside the festival, and the Vinyl Factory Reverb room gives a place to sit and listen without needing a ticket.

The 2026 edition expands on previous years with more music premieres and the first Dance Biennale, and it leans into the indoor intensity that a summer festival cannot offer. That four-night run of A Year Without Summer closes on Sunday 31 May. After that, the work vanishes from the season.