Meet Brett Sheehy: The man behind Adelaide Festival
Brett Sheehy stepped in at late notice to program the 2025 Adelaide Festival in a time of uncertainty. Here’s why he was the man for the job and how this 66-year-old ball of energy went from a shy Catholic school boy in Brisbane to one of the country’s most respected and connected arts identities.
Brett Sheehy’s resumé reads like a list of the country’s most prestigious arts events. During the past three decades, the 66-year-old arts veteran has been artistic director of the Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, Melbourne Festival and the Melbourne Theatre Company.
Starting out with no formal qualifications and no plan, the former Brisbane boy took a half-completed law degree, a love of theatre, boundless energy and a willingness to learn on the job and turned it all into one the most revered and respected careers in the Australian arts industry.
Today, when asked about the key to his success, the likeable arts identity is self-effacing and pragmatic.
“Am I allowed to swear?” he says. “I’ve got a pretty good bullshit antenna which can cut through empty art speak … and I still have a kind of legal brain, I can crystallise things quite well in terms of budgets and things.
“But I have also always seen work through the eyes of an audience automatically, because I’m not an artist. So, I would never look at a show and think: ‘How would I have directed that?’ I would look at a show and think, what needs to be done to make this the most astonishing experience for the audience?
“Coming at my jobs from that angle was very different from others who’d come in as writers or directors and so on … so the kind of preciousness around art, I never bought into. That said, because I’m not an artist, there’s no one I respect more on the planet than artists, people who create. So, that might be why I’ve been so lucky to do the jobs I’ve done.”
After graduating from his Christian Brothers school in Brisbane in the early 1970s, there was family expectation that Brett would go on to become a lawyer. His grandfather was eminent Queensland Supreme Court judge Sir Joe Aloysius Sheehy, who was also Administrator of Queensland at various times. Brett also had uncles and older cousins in the law.
Dutifully, Brett enrolled in a law degree at University of Queensland and, while he didn’t love it, there was one thing that kept the young student turning up – his criminal law lecturer, and one-day-to-become Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce.
“This was in the 1970s and she was an absolute knock out and all of us boys, and the girls, everyone had the biggest crush on her,” Brett says. “We were galvanized by her, and so I paid so much attention. I did well in criminal law, but I failed half my other subjects, then I dropped out three times over eight years.
“I’ve since spoken to Quentin about this, and she is fine with me talking about it, but she would wear stilettos, and she was so glamorous. For a young boy in Brisbane growing up Catholic in the 1970s, I had never seen anyone like that before in real life.”
Brett was the middle child of his conservative Catholic parents, Joan and Joe, with two older sisters, Gayle and Marina, and much younger siblings Petrina and Matthew. Life revolved around school, sports on Saturday and Mass on Sunday.
Young Brett with his father Joe, who he says was a “soft touch”, on a Gold Coast chair lift circa 1963, close to their beach house.
The summer break was spent at the family’s Gold Coast holiday home which Joe, an engineer, built in 1963.
Joan, who is now 93 and lives in the waterfront Gold Coast home, was the disciplinarian of the family. At times, things became overwhelming for the young mother and Brett recalls several occasions when his mother suffered mental health episodes, often requiring hospitalisation.
Brett, who was around five or six years old, and his older sisters would be farmed out to relatives. Brett recalls his parents would come to visit and the trauma of them leaving, and on one particular occasion, he remembers running down the driveway behind his parents’ car, begging them to stay.
“I do remember feeling the saddest I’d ever felt when they were leaving that day,” he says. “And I was so used to these periods of staying at my cousins’ place, and Mum and Dad visiting and saying goodbye, and I knew I had to be brave for Mum, and always had been.
“But that day was just a breaking point. I couldn’t be brave anymore. I remember sobbing so hard as I was running and screaming out, and I can remember that when I saw the brake lights go on and I realised they were stopping for me, I couldn’t believe it and was incredibly happy.
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Brett as a young boy in front of his father’s Vanguard car.
“After that, I had them to myself for about a month which I loved, before they added my sisters back into the family. And I do remember they never left me again. It wasn’t Mum’s fault – I blame Catholicism because just that pressure to generate children was huge. First of all, she was tiny – four foot 11 – and she wasn’t built to have three children under the age of five, and then she went on to have two more. I understand it all now; I adore Mum.”
On the flip side, Brett’s father Joe, who passed away in 2015, was always a “soft touch”, he says.
“Mum would say, ‘wait until your father gets home’. Then Dad would come home, and he hated hurting us, so he’d take me into their bedroom and shut the door and say, ‘You know what you’ve got to do’. Then I’d start wailing, ‘Ow! Stop’, but I was faking it, Dad never laid a hand on me,” Brett says with a laugh.
As a young man growing up in a strict religious household, Brett instinctively supressed his homosexuality. It wasn’t until he relocated to Sydney in the mid-1980s, and many of his friends began dying of AIDS, that the truth inevitably rose to the surface.
“I became a reluctant serial eulogist at so many funerals,” he says. “I visited Mum and Dad the Christmas of ’87 and they made it very clear what the then-Catholic conservative attitude to AIDS was: that it was sent to us by God.
A shot early in his career at Sydney Theatre Company in 1988.
“I was broken when I heard that. I went back to Sydney and wrote to them explaining how my life was now, and I cut all ties; I was resigned to a life without them. A few months later Mum phoned me with a high velocity, ‘I haven’t called for ages, I’ve been so busy, and we got your letter, but you denied it all those years ago. Anyway, it’s good to be in touch, bye’.”
Brett’s life was again touched by mental health issues through his boyfriend, Paul Weber, a doctor working with AIDS patients in Sydney at the height of the epidemic in the 1980s. The relentless death rate of Paul’s young patients deeply affected him and he began to suffer depression.
“They were dying on him, and I mean these were often kids. Paul was in his 30s, but these were 18, 19, 20, 21-year-olds,” Brett says. “They were just dropping, like on a battlefield, and the depression that that caused to Paul was monumental. And then finally it just overcame him.”
Tragically, Paul took his own life in 1989. Reflecting on the tragedy, Brett says one of the few positives he can take from the experience is that it taught him to be a better listener.
“I also wrote to Mum and Dad about Paul’s suicide and Mum wrote back the most beautiful, compassionate letter and Dad called me with, ‘we’re always here for you, son – always,” he says.
“When they met (my current partner) Steve several years later, after a couple of hiccups, they loved him so much and they said at last I was the happiest I’d been since I was a little kid. From that moment on, Steve was their beloved son-in-law, which is how Mum described him in Dad’s funeral notices.”
Brett’s close friendship with actor Jacki Weaver grew through their love of mutual friend, Richard Wherrett.
Against this backdrop of freedom and sexual liberation in Sydney in the 1980s, Brett was attempting to make something of himself. An aspiring poet, he began writing freelance theatre reviews for a magazine called the Sydney City Express.
His reviews were noticed by those who mattered, and before long, the ambitious young arts lover secured a role as an usher at The Wharf Theatre, home of the Sydney Theatre Company.
The company’s artistic director was Richard Wherrett, who recognised Brett’s tenacity, initiative and passion for theatre and soon made Brett his assistant, charged with photocopying and making coffee.
“But I was a full-time employee at the Sydney Theatre Company and I stayed there for a decade,” Brett says. “The learning curve from that moment on was astronomical and incredible. I mean a boy from the Gold Coast learning from people like Richard and Robyn (Nevin) … I had only been in Sydney for two years by then and then it was just, boom!
“Back then you just worked your butt off, and you didn’t care about the money. I was on a starting salary of about $15,000 a year and you would work 60 to 70 hours a week and you didn’t care because you loved it, but you could do that in those days and make a bit of a mark.”
Brett made his mark, working closely with Wherrett who soon became a mentor and close friend. His roles progressed from assistant to artistic associate, then literary manager, thanks to his legal background, overseeing writers’ contracts.
Brett with his partner, Steve Nicholls.
Ambitious and driven, Brett also seized an opportunity to begin working on productions with dramaturgy – interpreting the drama and ensuring it would engage an audience.
“The company generously allowed me to do that, and I think the first play I did dramaturgy on was Hedda Gabler with Judy Davis,” he says.
It was through Wherrett that Brett first met iconic Australian actor Jacki Weaver. The two became close friends, and remain so, bonded particularly by the experience of supporting Wherrett as his health began to fail, diagnosed with AIDS but eventually succumbing to liver failure in 2001.
“I’m very close to Jac thanks to our mutual love for Richard,” Brett says. “She as his partner many years ago and then as his live-in carer for the last months of his life, and me as a friend.
“Richard was such a complicated person who was unquestionably gay, but I still think, can someone be a great love of your life if they’re not the gender that you love? I don’t know the answer to that, but you know his love for her was phenomenal, and vice versa.
“These days, Jac and I text weekly but see each other only every couple of years as she is so busy, in LA especially, starring in about five feature Hollywood films a year. I am so proud of her.”
A family shot of the siblings, from left, Gayle, Petrina, Brett, Marina and Matthew with their mother Joan.
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Brett says some of his other mentors over the years have included arts identity Anthony Steel who, in 1995, was artistic director of the Sydney Festival and asked Brett to join as administrator. When Leo Schofield was appointed artistic director in 1998, he made Brett his deputy director.
He then succeeded Schofield as artistic director from 2002 to 2005, before being appointed artistic director of the Adelaide Festival from 2006 to 2008, then moving to the helm of Melbourne Festival from 2009 to 2012. The role of artistic director and CEO of Melbourne Theatre Company followed from 2013 to 2022.
“It all just lined up,” says Brett, who in 2012 was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, “for distinguished service to the performing and visual arts as a director of national festivals, to international artistic exchange, and through mentoring roles”.
What is more telling, perhaps, than just the awards and his impressive credentials, is the fact that at every organisation he has led, Brett’s tenures have been extended and renewed.
The enduring friendships he has made along the way also reflect the impact this arts leader has had on the industry and those around him.
Brett cites actor Miriam Margolyes as a friend and supporter. The two met when Margolyes starred in I’ll Eat You Last for the Melbourne Theatre Company season in 2014, and he then brought her back in 2019 for The Lady in the Van.
“She is heaven to work with and every bit as irrepressible and warm and wise and funny as her public persona,” Brett says. “She’s been very good to me, and was a terrific salve in moments of insecurity, always propping me up with undeserved praise. We are still in contact from time to time.”
Brett also formed a close bond with English actor Sir Ian McKellen, who he brought out for the 2004 Sydney Festival to star in Dance of Death. He describes the now-85-year-old performer as having an “encyclopaedic brain – along with being Mr Party-Central”.
The artistic director also shares a close bond with actor Sir Ian McKellen who he brought out for the 2004 Sydney Festival.
“He danced at our Festival Club literally every night after his show and was adored by the whole festival team,” Brett says. “I learnt an incredibly valuable lesson from Ian – to aim for the stars in terms of precision and perfection, but to never lose a sense of play and fun.”
The other person who’s had a formative impact on Brett is Talking Heads front man and actor David Byrne. The star did a residency for the 2002 Sydney Festival, and then again for the 2006 Adelaide Festival.
“One of the few true geniuses I’ve known, he is fiercely talented, but so disarmingly earthed, and with a clear, clean spirit, if that makes sense,” Brett says. “He still rides his bicycle around New York City, even to the Met Gala!”
Having stepped away from the festival world in the past couple of years, Brett now runs his own creative consultancy, working with institutions such as NIDA and musical production companies.
He lives with long-term partner Steve Nicholls in their Blue Mountains retreat, about an hour out of Sydney’s CBD. The couple has been together for 30 years, first locking eyes across the dance floor at the 1994 Mardi Gras. However, they were officially introduced a few months later and have been together ever since. Brett says he loves that Steve, a former chef, is “so anchored”.
“Steve could not be less interested in being in a foyer on an opening night and meeting stars if you tried, which appealed to me so much,” he says.
“The last thing I wanted, because I’d been at Sydney Theatre Company for a decade by the time we met, was what I call a ‘foyer rat’, someone who is just impressed by the fame.
“But then, the other side of the coin, he is so at ease, and everyone just fell in love with him. So, all the so-called stars now actually just prefer Steve to me. He’s just such a good person. Also, his bullshit antenna is more fine-tuned than mine.”
So, Brett was “essentially living the dream life up in the mountains” when he received an unexpected call in July this year from Tracey Whiting, Chair of the Adelaide Festival.
Whiting explained that the festival’s then-artistic director Ruth Mackenzie had resigned from the organisation to take up a role with the South Australian government.
Given that Mackenzie had been hired to undertake the stewardship of the 2023 festival (to complete the work set up by previous artistic directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy), as well as to program 2024, 2025 and 2026, the resignation had tongues wagging in the arts world. It was largely viewed as controversial and unexpected. The upshot for the board was that they needed a replacement – fast.
Brett admits he didn’t jump at the opportunity immediately, but after going over the paperwork, he was all in.
“I’ve been a fierce champion and incredibly ambitious for the Adelaide Festival over the years, so it was a fairly easy yes,”
he says.
Brett is close with actor Miriam Margolyes whom he says “is heaven to work with”.
While the 2025 Adelaide Festival program had been partially planned, including the headline act, Finnish opera Innocence, plus a smattering of shows booked by Mackenzie, there was still lots to do.
On arriving in Adelaide in August, Brett called his good mate and WOMAD director Ian Scobie to collaborate on ideas.
“I was given five weeks to bed down a full program,” he says. “That meant sourcing a lot of new work, international and Australian, at very short notice, but with a lot of help from friends already here in Adelaide, with buddies overseas and with the network I still had from festival land, where I was for 17 years, we pulled it together. We now have an incredible program of opera, dance, theatre and music. I am very excited.”
Admitting he is hyperactive and always in “fifth gear”, one of the first things Brett did when he moved to Adelaide was join a gym. He is in good shape and is mindful of leading a healthy lifestyle, particularly after a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2013.
The cancer was found early, but the experience was life-altering and Brett was quoted at the time as saying; “Nothing beats being alive”.
Today, sitting in his rented apartment in the Adelaide CBD, Brett still has boundless energy, as he makes coffee, offers blueberry muffins, takes work calls and chats to SALIFE, all with the gusto you imagine he’s always had.
“There are lots of studies in the Western world trying to identify what causes happiness and fulfilment,” he says. “Unequivocally, now the scientific evidence says what leads to happiness is experiences not things.
“So, doing something, being at something, experiencing something, completely trumps buying something. So, that’s kind of the business I’ve always been in. I just keep doing what I love, and I have never had an end goal. That seems to have worked well so far.”
This article first appeared in the December 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.
