WHEN THE MELBOURNE Festival, arguably the most high-profile arts festival in Australia and the Pacific Rim, kicks off on October 17, pundits are in for a big event that goes out of its way to be small and even eccentric. The 17-day culture glut will not feature the pomp and pageantry usually associated with large festivals. There are no mighty orchestras or grand operas. Theatre and dance are richly innovative, but not drawn from the world's A-list. And to top it all off, the visual arts component is small and decidedly esoteric. At her Flinders Street office, a literal stone's throw from Melbourne's spectacular new city arts complex, Federation Square, artistic director Robyn Archer puts things into perspective. 'What we're seeing everywhere today is dramas being played out in small spaces, at a time of enormous anxiety,' she says. 'The prospect of going to war [with Iraq] and possibly losing husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, is a huge concern for many of us.' With about 60 performing and visual arts offerings, including 18 world or Australian premieres (with Asia contributing several of them), the festival is certainly not small in scope but will nonetheless be intimate on matters close to the heart. That said, the line-up this season is definitely off the beaten track. Blazing passions will be the order of the night when the 2002 Melbourne Festival opens at the city's State Theatre with Fire, Fire Burning Bright. Presented by an all-indigenous cast, this extraordinary work, which blends traditional song and dance, historical footage, tableaux and masks, weaves the true harrowing story of the massacre of two Aboriginal tribes from the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the early 1900s. Fire should pack a powerful punch because it sets the tone of the festival at the start: a look at ethnic violence at a time when tolerance is desperately needed. Keeping to the theme of small and intimate is Italy's performing arts company Interior Sites Project's 12-hour trilogy (Room Of Evidence, The Secret Room and The Water Room) in which audiences limited to just seven people for each performance will be driven to a house in a secret location, probe the memories of an intriguing woman over dinner and sleep there overnight, before being driven back to the pick-up point the following morning. Devised by director Renato Cuocolo and performer Roberta Bosetti, it has already attracted a huge response. 'We had to choose audience members by ballot, because hundreds applied,' says Archer. 'Those who can't physically take part can follow the action on the Internet. We're expecting a deluge.' Also redefining intimacy will be surreal Spanish comedy Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre El Nivel De Jack (1,500 Metres Above The Level Of Jack), featuring two mothers and two sons in Buenos Aires who risk drowning as they fight for space in a bathtub; Canada's Recent Experiences, in which patrons are invited to join the performers at a dinner table on stage to eavesdrop, not eat; and Berlin director Uwe Mengel's Lifeline, whose four characters, including a self-confessed murderer, will give audiences a chance to interrogate them about a young woman lying in a pool of blood. Likely to match them for impact will be the strong home-grown Australian productions, most notably Force Majeure's Same, Same But Different by award-winning dancer-director Kate Champion; music-theatre production Testimony: The Legend Of Charlie Parker, featuring a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa; and Love In The Age of Therapy, a major new work by Melbourne-based playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and composer/musician Paul Grabowsky. 'Paul and I have just toured together in Zurich, Berlin and the UK. He's probably Australia's single most successful and prolific composer,' says Archer. In her current role, Archer is acutely aware you are only as good as your last festival. That Melbourne has entrusted her with three, instead of the usual two-year term, underscores her reputation as Australia's foremost and most daringly innovative artistic director. She proved that most recently in Tasmania, where she led the inaugural Ten Days On The Island festival, featuring talents from islands across the globe. With a budget of just A$7 million (HK$29.8 million) for the 2002 Melbourne Festival, Archer's international connections have been particularly important and she has spent adventurously. There is still a good dose of familiar names such as the Hebel-Theatre Berlin's Total Masala Slammer, which sees Goethe collide with Bollywood soap opera in an erotic, subversively funny romp told through text, dance and film; Genesi by Italy's Societas Raffaello Sanzio, which reinterprets the Bible in a three-hour epic; and the exquisite Tinka's New Dress, by Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett. There are also several solo stars, among them Britain's Simon Callow in The Mystery Of Charles Dickens and Bea Arthur (of the US television sitcom Golden Girls) performing her Broadway hit And Then There's Bea. But a decidedly new focus this year is the Asian contingent. There is already much interest in Singapore's Ivan Heng, whose six cross-dressing performances as the high society matriarch in Stella Kon's Emily Of Emerald Hill have seen a rush on tickets. 'The point is, Asia is full of virtuosic talents who can be absolutely appreciated on their own terms anywhere in the world,' Archer says. 'They're also evolving artistically in ways that are really admirable, such as in Singapore, which has now graduated to the superb Esplanade Theatres on the Bay [arts complex].' She adds: 'Shanghai and Beijing are also developing fast, marvellous to see them throwing out all sorts of challenges and of course, Hong Kong is well-established.' Rounding out the Asian representation are award-winning Vietnamese playwright Duong Le Quy, who has created a searing new work called Motherland in collaboration with Melbourne's Chamber Made; Singapore's toy piano marvel Margaret Leng Tan; Hong Kong's Chinese Music Virtuosi; and The Song Company's Six Hermits, a fascinating vocal and instrumental work devised by artistic director Roland Peelman and Hong Kong composer Chan Hong-yan, which will be performed in St Paul's Cathedral, a Melbourne landmark. The magnificent Gothic building is among a host of festival venues that will celebrate Melbourne's rich architecture, and its status as Australia's leading city in terms of arts venues. Among them is a dramatic new raw steel monolith housing the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, which will serve as the heart of the festival's visual arts programme curated by Juliana Engberg. Like Robyn Archer, Engberg has focused on profound and intimate issues. 'The home as a haven' is the subject of one of the shows which features 14 up-and-coming artists entitled The Heimlich unHeimlich (The Homely And The Unhomely), while a stellar international group including Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Yoko Ono, Yoshihiro Suda and Felix Gonzalez-Torres will explore that most elusive of human emotions in A History Of Happiness. The piece by John Lennon's widow reflects the essence of intimacy and, some would say, narcissism. Her Box Of Smile opens to reveal a mirror on the inside of the lid. It seems that in sending strong messages, size doesn't matter at all. 'In the arts, the big issues are being tackled by depicting smaller, intimate environments in the hope they will yield clues to the larger problems,' Archer says. The Melbourne Festival, Oct 17 to Nov 2. For more information and ticket booking, visit www.melbournefestival.com.au Fire, Fire Burning Bright will open the 2002 Melbourne Festival, while productions such as Mil Quinientos Metros Sobre El Nivel De Jack (above right) and Total Masala Slammer (right) guarantee a diverse programme