This Saturday, Adelaide's Feast Festival kicks off its 18th year with the annual pride march and opening night party. These are our picks for the best shows to catch in the two weeks of art programming that will follow.

The Feast Festival may only just be coming of age in this 18th year of its existence, but it’s been working its way towards maturity for several years. The queer cultural festival we see today has a far bigger footprint than the burgeoning event of years gone by, with the contemporary version taking over swathes of the city and even expanding into the regions.

Take CityMag’s advice and get along to some of the events below, or risk a dull fortnight ahead.

Ray Chen (pictured above)
Tuesday 20 November, Adelaide Town Hall

While you were grappling with the times tables in primary school, Ray Chen was playing violin with professional orchestras. The Taiwanese-born, Brisbane-raised musician received his first invitation to play with the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra at the tender age of eight. Now 25, he’s recognised as one of the leading lights of the violin world.

For Feast Festival, Chen will be accompanied by pianist Timothy Young to play a program that takes in music as diverse as Mozart, Prokofiev and Sarasate.

Hannah Gadsby
Friday 28 and Saturday 29 November, The Grainger Studio

It’s very hard to explain why some people are funny and why some aren’t, so we won’t bother trying and will instead assure you that Hannah Gadsby is very funny.

The show she is bringing to Feast goes well beyond your average stand-up comedy routine as well. Called The Exhibitionist, it manages to mash together Hannah’s background as a trained art historian with her slightly off-kilter obsession around the lack of decent photos of her as a baby. Structured around a slideshow showing various works of art that Hannah examines, the show has attracted excellent reviews and is bound to be tinged by Hannah’s trademark self-deprecation.

Fight Club: Masculinities, Violence and Fantasy
Saturday November 29, The Mercury Cinema 

Fight Club producer Ross Grayson Bell joins academic Dr William Peterson, Dr Julia Erhart and AFL player Henry Slattery for a discussion moderated by Dr Vicki Crowley on the ideas of masculinity, sexual fantasy and violence as entertainment.

Drawing on David Fincher’s Fight Club – a film often held up as a bastion of male heterosexuality but infused with the meanings ironically inserted by the team of gay men working behind the scenes – the conversation promises to be an absorbing look at the modern myths and misinformation about what it takes to be a man.

Horse McDonald
Sunday 16 November, Fowlers

The Scottish singer-songwriter Horse has a voice that is just too meaningful to ignore. A veteran of worldwide tours, she has hit the road previously with the likes of Tina Turner and Burt Bacharach, but she comes to Feast with little more than a guitar and a swag of songs that will stir all but those who have hearts of stone.

Her one-night only show will undoubtedly draw on material from her last album – 2013’s Home which was heralded by critics as one of her best yet.