Ihave been asked to talk today about my work as a theatre designer over a period of nearly 50 years (which is somewhat confronting in itself!). Over that time I’ve been privileged to work with hundreds or probably even thousands of talented theatre artists with some of whom I’ve had long term creative partnerships. While thinking about how to structure this talk, it was suggested by a colleague that a good way might be to talk about some of those people who’ve influenced me along the way ...
When I was around about 10 years old, my parents took me to meet Axel up at his ‘Puppet House’ in Olinda—Axel and his wife Janet had emigrated to Australia in the early fifties and had lived in Olinda since the late fifties where they set up a business designing and making puppets. Some of you who may remember Ossie Ostrich—Axel was the designer—perhaps his most high profile creation!
The ‘Puppet House’ was a moving (literally) display of all his puppets in a diorama which wrapped around the whole space. For a ten year old it was a magical place and it ignited in me a passion for puppets—(and the world they inhabited) starting with glove puppets and graduating to marionettes with scenery that eventually became so complex that in the end there was no room for the puppets. It was at that stage that I realised that set design might be where I was headed ...
My thanks to Axel? For opening a door into the world of the imagination.
Fast forward to 1973—and Wal Cherry.
Wal had arrived at Flinders University in South Australia in 1967 and set about creating The Drama Centre—with a truly international faculty of theatre artists teaching into an acting, a technical theatre and a film making programme. The programs consisted of rigorous theoretical curricula that formed the foundation for the practical training that ran alongside it.
I had finished school in 1972 (the same year that a labour government under Gough Whitlam had been elected breaking 23 years of conservative governments in Australia) and in 1973, at the age of 17, I left home in Melbourne to study—and found myself in a place where my peers and our teachers talked theatre all the time ...
Since those four years that I studied at Flinders, the technical studies have long been superseded. We trained in the use of technical equipment that has long been relegated to performing arts museums. Technical studies have a very short use by date. In contrast, the theoretical knowledge introduced to us in those classes continues to underpin much of the work I do as a designer.
My thanks to Wal and all the incredible staff in the Drama department at that time? For revealing the fundamental connection between theory and practice, between the conceptual and the technical.
On completion of my degree at Flinders, I was casting around looking for a job. Towards the end of 1976 I started writing letters to companies—introducing myself and offering to show anyone who might care to look, my meagre portfolio which comprised of photos of student shows I’d been involved with along with a very thin CV! One of the companies I wrote to was the SATC (South Australian Theatre Company—often confused with that other great SA institution called the SATC, the South Australian Trotting Club).
In 1977, the company was changing artistic directors from the founding director—George Ogilvie to the newly appointed English director—Colin George who had recently run the Sheffield Playhouse. Having written to the company, I followed up a few days later with a phone call to Colin’s secretary to confirm that he’d received my letter and then a few days later asking if he’d read the letter and then a few days later asking if he wanted to see me—I think I wore them down! Having pestered them into a meeting, a couple of days later Colin offered me a job—a one year contract as trainee designer on the princely weekly wage of $70 a week—paid in cash in an envelope once a week.
In 1977 the SATC was the most generously funded company in Australia, and as the resident company in The Playhouse it was housed in purpose built facilities in the Adelade Festival Centre—facilities that were the envy of every other state company. There were rehearsal rooms, a wonderful costume workroom, a millinery department, an art finishing department, a set and props workshop adjacent to the Playhouse, a resident photographer with studio, even a library with a fulltime librarian and of course a spacious design office—all of this under one roof. My first job was to work as an assistant to the Head of Design—for the first year this was Colin’s long time collaborator from Sheffield, Rodney Ford, and when Rod returned to England it was Hugh Colman—both of them provided me with such brilliant role models for a young designer. I’d landed in the perfect place to start my career!
Colin was a superb Artistic Director—he knew everyone by name, and on every opening night he personally wrote a card to everyone involved. He forged a unique company of actors – contracted actors who formed an acting company made up of some of the most experienced and loved actors—people like Ruth Cracknell, Patricia Kennedy, Denis Olsen, Brian James—who worked alongside young graduates from NIDA who had been offered their first jobs—Judy Davis, Mel Gibson, Colin Friels and Phillip Quast all started their careers there. Colin believed in making an investment in the future.
In 1977, Colin had programmed a double bill of the two plays by Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus as the Company’s contribution to the 1978 Adelaide Festival. He had commissioned the English designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch to design the costumes and masks—Tanya had started her career at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in the 30s and by the 70s was regarded as a major figure in 20th century stage design. She’d been a long-time collaborator with Tyrone Guthrie, having worked with him as the founding designer of the Canadian Stratford Festival, the designer of stages in the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
Colin had planned to ask Rodney Ford to design the sets for the production, but Rod had had to return to England prematurely and so at the last minute—he turned to me—a designer with 2 professional credits to his name! And I was to be paired with a legendary designer ...
Colin and I spent some time together thinking through an approach to the set—Tanya’s costumes and masks were very sculptural, and the set needed to provide a frame for them allowing them to literally take centre stage. Before he had left, Rod had started the process by designing two large sculptures—a horse for the entrance of Theseus and a statue of Apollo and I took those as my starting point for the materiality of the set, which eventually became a simple structure of columns able to be moved between the two plays
Needless to say, I had some anxieties before I began to work with Tanya—how would she respond to finding herself working with such a junior designer? Even before met in person she reached out to try to ally those fears ... Colin had gone back to the UK to spend some time with her before she took the long trip out to Australia for the production period. He’d taken with him a small model I’d made of what we were proposing, and she wrote to me saying how excited she was to have seen my set and how much she looked forward to our collaboration ...
The first time we met, we sat down to show each other where we were at—me to show her my model and she to show me her costume designs -Tanya put me completely at ease. The differences between us dissolved away—and we simply became two people, puzzling over, dreaming about and making something together.
I have never forgotten the experience, and it vividly illustrated how in the best collaborations everything drops away—age, gender, background and you become collaborators working together trying to find a common visual language in response to a text.
Later in 1978 I was commissioned to design the set and costumes for the beautiful Tennessee Williams play—The Glass Menagerie. It was to be directed by the playwright Ron Blair who was associate director at the company at that time. It was Ron’s first time directing, and only the fourth play I’d ever designed professionally—in some ways it was the blind leading the blind! Ron and I came up with a simple little box set—the living room in a run down apartment in St Louis with a kitchen seen through an arch upstage.
I can still remember vividly the day the set was bumped into the theatre—the workshop had constructed the set on the stage, Nigel Levings had focused the lights and we were about to begin the painstaking process of plotting lights. At that point Colin came into the theatre—just to see how we were all getting on ... I had been looking at the set—as designers do somewhat neurotically in tech week—and instinctively thinking there was something not quite right about it, but I didn’t know what it was …
Colin took one look at the set, and said straight away—that set is too far down stage ... and the moment he said it I knew he was right!
But what to do? I felt sick with worry. Colin was brilliant! He called the workshop manager over who then asked all the workshop staff to come into the theatre.
They arranged themselves around the set and after a call of one two three, they all heaved on the set and it crept upstage! After moving it up about a metre, Colin called a halt and we agreed that it was in a much better place. It was such a lesson in the spatial relationship between a set and a theatre—a lesson that I can still recall and use. Colin was also a very compassionate teacher—very aware of the fragility of a young designer and able to make the experience one of learning rather than humiliation. And as I was one of the resident designers in this company that cared about developing young theatre makers, there was another show waiting ...
My thanks to Colin?—for his investment in me—that he believed in me.
By 1979, I had been with the company for 2 years and had been promoted from trainee designer to the junior designer in the design department—I’d designed the grand total of nine shows by that time, when I was introduced to the newly appointed associate director—Nick Enright
Nick like Colin was not only a gifted theatre practitioner—actor, director, playwright—but he was also one of the most brilliant teachers
Our first project together was American Buffalo—a play by the American playwright David Mamet. Nick came into the design office for our first meeting and I really had no idea how to start—where do you start a conversation with a collaborator? The first thing he said was—let’s get out of here. We headed up to a coffee shop in Rundle Street where we sat down for our first talk about the play. I felt very grown up! We were away, and he’d introduced me to the idea that a design should grow out of a conversation and not simply be some imposed vision a designer might have.
The play is set in a run-down junk store in Chicago with three protagonists—all small time grifters. And we created for the set a room where junk—the detritus of materialism—surrounded the actors—a little nest in the dark for the actors to be enveloped in. And this time the set was perfectly placed in the theatre.
We had the luxury of having the set in the rehearsal room from day one—something less likely these days—and for one of our rehearsals we ran the play in darkness with only a small desk light on the table in the centre. It gave the actors a sense of the atmosphere of the room—something that they would take into the theatre with them. It was an example of the way Nick would find a way through rehearsals of getting at a more authentic feel for the play.
This is a production photo showing Teddy Hodgeman (in the chair) with a very young Colin Friels standing (and wearing a jacket that I lent the show that I’d found in an op-shop a couple of years earlier).
Why Nick? Nick introduced me to the idea of process—that every designer develops a particular process—which is unique to them. It’s a synthesis of techniques picked up along the way—ways of doing things that you pick up from others and that you recognize suit you. It’s an ongoing process that continues ...
I left Adelaide in 1981 and moved with my wife Joan to Sydney where I took up a one year residency with Nimrod Theatre Company (the original company to reside in the theatre in Surry Hills now called Belvoir). After 5 years of freelance work based in Sydney—Theatre work as well as a foray into film and TV— I moved back to Melbourne in 1986 to take up a position as resident designer at MTC. MTC was one of the last companies to have a design department with resident designers. These days there are no such positions—everyone is freelance.
When I started there, John Sumner was in his last year as Artistic Director of the company and Roger Hodgman had been announced as his successor. Simon Phillips was associate director (he would go on to take on the role as AD after Roger in 2000). The design department had four designers on salary—Tony Tripp—Head of Design, Judith Cobb, Sean Gurton and me. I was there for five years and in that time designed over thirty productions—contemporary plays and classics including Shakespeare, in theatres ranging from the Playhouse, The Russell Street Theatre, The Athenaeum and The Fairfax.
As a freelance designer—you work from one project to the next—hoping the phone will ring ... As a resident there’s a plan—you know what you’re doing at least one year at a time—and you are often paired up with directors for the first time—with some of those pairings going on to become long term collaborators—one of those people was Roger Hodgman.
Roger and I worked on many shows during my time at the MTC—starting with a production of As You Like It and Hedda Gabler in 1988 and then Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Heidi Chronicles in 1990. Later that year he asked me to design sets and costumes for the contemporary play set in mid nineteenth century Russia and based on the Turgenev novel Fathers and Sons—the play was Nothing Sacred by the contemporary Canadian playwright George Walker. It’s a play about the generation gap—the old Russian world represented by the father giving way to the new Russian world of the son.
Roger asked me to design a ‘clever box of tricks’ a set that would contain all the elements needed for the play. In the end I designed a simple, large, rough sawn wooden box that had painted on it a fading Russian landscape in the style of a Lubok—a Lubok is an inexpensive print, often of Russian folk tales or religious stories, often used as decoration in houses and inns and very popular from the 17th to the 19th century. I’d found a book full of these luboks which had immediately suggested itself as a way into the design. The image in this slide is of one of the central images that I used as a reference—the kind of rural landscape that the play might take place in – the depiction of a traditional Russian world fading away.
Roger is brilliant at responding to what you put in front of him—you make an offer, and he will always offer back the most intelligent and considered response which begins the dialogue that leads towards a common response to the play/opera/musical. The moment I put this image I front of him, we were away!
Over thirty years and since those plays at the MTC, Roger and I have gone on to work together on plays, musicals and opera—most recently Parsifal for Victorian Opera in 2019—Another box!
We started the conversation about this opera by knowing what we didn’t want to do—for both pragmatic and conceptual reasons. We didn’t want to try to depict literally the world described in the libretto—‘A landscape in the style of the northern mountains of Gothic Spain’, ‘A forest shady and solemn, but not gloomy’, ‘The mighty Hall of the Castle of the Grail’. For a start we couldn’t afford it, and then even if we could, in the age of film and digital effects perhaps it might no longer be appropriate anyway. We wanted to find a simple structure that could house the whole opera—with a large cast of principals and a very large chorus—of nearly 80 singers!
In the end we made a plywood box which split through the middle by a great fissure. The box was filled with black leaves for the first act—the forest floor, which for the transformation into the great hall the leaves were simply swept into the central break in the floor. The set was complemented by a similarly simple approach to the costumes designed by long term collaborator Christina Smith—where she created a clear hierarchy (in this hierarchical world of kings, knights and servants) simply by using a limited palette of black through to white in contemporary clothes.
An added bonus to the set, was its acoustic properties—the angled ply walls, floor and ceiling together created a horn—the singers voices were projected out the audience rather than some of their voice being lost in the fly tower
Why Roger?—because he demonstrates how valuable and productive a long- term creative partnership can be. Roger is interested in developing long term relationships with his collaborators—for many years his most successful collaboration was with the late Tony Tripp—resident designer at the MTC for over twenty years.
But winding back to the early 90s and I hadn’t at that stage designed an opera ... Designing for opera had been an aspiration for some time with me—designing a world that has as its starting point, music as opposed to text was something I wanted to try. And of course there’s the scale that an opera brings—the casts are so much bigger. There can be 40 people singing their hearts out on stage—and that’s a small opera! The theatres are generally bigger, and the resources at your disposal are greater.
In 1992 I had moved with my wife Joan and our young family to Western Australia to take up the position of Head of Design at WAAPA
Around the same time, Lindy Hume had moved to the west to take the reins of West Australian Opera and rang one day to offered me my first opera—The Magic Flute—what an opera to begin with! I couldn’t say yes fast enough!
About halfway through the rehearsal period she invited me in to the rehearsal room to watch a run of the first Act—my first ever opera rehearsal ... I took a seat next to her and right next to the piano with the conductor Warwick Stengards seated at his score. The overture began and then Tamino began to sing ... such power in the room singing such unbelievably beautiful music—I was completely overwhelmed.
We set the opera in a ruined theatre—when the audience came into the theatre. They initially thought they were looking at simply an empty stage—what a challenge for an audience used to the opulence of a conventional opera experience! The theatre was quite dark with the dock door in the back wall slightly ajar allowing us to see through into the alley beyond. At the start of the opera, in silence a figure in street clothes runs in from the alley, chased by two men in black hoodies with flash lights—the figure climbs up the gantry in the back wall to get away from the two men and falls—lying unconscious on the stage and at that point the overture begins ...
What looked like the back wall of the Maj splits apart and reveals a grove of golden palm trees and the strange dream of The Magic Flute has begun ...
That was in 1994 and over the following thirty years Lindy and I have collaborated on eight operas some of which have gone on to have multiple lives—Die Fledermaus stayed in the OA repertoire for 25 years before being sold to Montreal and a production we have done of Rigoletto started life as a production for NZ Opera before having a life at Opera Q and then more recently Seattle.
Rigoletto—Lindy got in touch to ask if I was interested in working with her on a new production of Rigoletto for NZ Opera ... she then went on to say that she’d had an idea ... she wondered how the opera would stand up if it was placed in a contemporary setting—still in Italy, but the Italy of Berlusconi and bunga bunga parties taking the place of the Italy of the Duke of Mantua in the 16th century.
The idea for the design was to have the duke’s palace represented by a black marble room with gilded doors in each wall that when not being used as the scene was able to fly up about 3 metres, to hang ominously above the action on stage— never fully leaving our sight ...
While the palace was hanging in the air, a black glossy revolve delivered the other set pieces from behind—the opulent furniture in the palace set itself, Rigoletto’s aging flat, the bus stop where he first encounters the murderer Sparafucile and the seedy dockside bar where the opera finally plays out ...
Why Lindy? Lindy opened the door to that world—opera—for me ...
By 1994, I was still teaching at WAAPA, when my friend and colleague the costume designer Anna French, contacted me to say that George Ogilvie would be calling to ask me to design The Battlers. I knew of George since his days at the SATC and through Anna and had long wanted to work with him I had had a mixed experience up until then with the film world, having designed a small feature film in the mid eighties (which I loved) which had led to a long TV series for SBS (which I did not love). I’d scurried back to the theatre thinking that film just wasn’t for me!
George is a person who has been a central figure in so many people’s careers, from starting as an actor in Canberra, moving to the UK and Europe to train, act and teach and returning to Australia in the 60s first to MTC as an Associate Director and then SATC as the first Artistic Director. After SATC, George pursued a successful freelance career directing in theatre opera and ballet as well as a highly successful career as a film and television director. And like Nick Enright, George was also a brilliant teacher.
Well George convinced me— and I spent the winter and spring of 1994 (with Joan and the kids—and the dog) in Adelaide designing this miniseries for the seven network.
The Battlers is a screen adaption of the Kylie Tennant novel of the same name. It’s a novel set in the great depression about the thousands of people thrown into extreme poverty left with no choice but to go on the road, living from country town to country town looking for work. Snowy (Gary Sweet) and his dog Bluey are central characters in the story. George was the perfect director for this—coming from a country town childhood.
Why George? George was an enabler—he had a way of talking to you that instilled a confidence that was empowering—that literally enabled you to do something you didn’t know you could do!
By the end of 1996, we had left Perth, and returned to live in Melbourne—Joan to take up a position as head of drama at a girls school near where we lived, and me to resume a freelance career as a designer.
In 1998 I was introduced to the young Brisbane based director Wesley Enoch. Wesley had been brought in as a replacement director for a play called Stolen—written by the Victorian first nations playwright Jane Harrison. It was a co- production between Playbox (which became The Malthouse) and Ilbijerri and had been programmed for a four week season in the Beckett Theatre at the Malthouse.
Bringing Them Home report—had come out the year before—Australian Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families—also known as the Stolen Generation.
Stolen was a response to this report and Jane had written a play that spanned periods ranging from the early 30s right up the present day and in a style that leaps backwards and forwards—and not in chronological order.
Wesley and I had never worked together before—so our first meeting was one where we were essentially getting to know each other. I can remember that Wesley sent ahead of the meeting a one page set of notes—his initial thoughts and responses to the play—in dot point form. Sometimes the notes were very specific and referred to elements in the text that would need to be addressed in our design—such as the institutional beds that are required. Other notes were much more conceptual and were more expressive of his emotional response to the play—for example his note about the set having the feel of an institution and all that that implied in terms of materiality. I found this very useful and it kick started the conversation straight away.
We arrived at a box (this seems to be a recurring theme in my work!) that had only one way into it. It was also a box that had only one side missing—the side that allowed an audience to see itno it. The walls of the box were painted like a hospital—with a darker gloss enamel finish up to chest height and a matt pale creamy colour above that. The floor was painted to replicate a tiled vinyl floor. It felt like a worn institution and inside were five beds and a filing cabinet. The only other props were the things inside the suitcases the actors brought into the space with them that you can see in this image.
That initial season of four weeks was followed by seasons around Australia and then internationally. Four weeks turned into four years! And several versions of the original set ...
Wesley is an incredibly inventive director—able to find ways to tell stories that support—and often enhance—the text. He has a brilliant sense of theatre—how to tell a story in a theatrical context. He’s a designer’s dream to work with—he knows what he needs in order to tell the story, but he’s extremely open to finding the way to fulfil that need.
Twenty-six years later and we are still working together. In 2019 he approached me about designing the Geoffrey Atherden play Black Cockatoo. He had programmed it for the Sydney Festival initially thinking he would find a director for it and eventually deciding to direct it himself.
It’s the story of the first Australian cricket team to tour England in the mid 19th century—an all indigenous team that included the legendary Johnny Mullagh—whose name is commemorated every year through the presentation of the Johnny Mullagh medal to the best and fairest player at the boxing day test at the MCG. The play spans two time-frames—the 19th century world of the original story, and the present day with a group of aboriginal activists breaking into the museum that houses the relics from the original story. Johnny’s bat and ball, their cricket caps, old photos of the team and so on ...
We decided to set the play in the store room of the museum—with all the objects neatly accessioned and stacked away on the shelving. The idea was that each of the objects in a sense carried the story inside them and that when released from their boxes enabled the story to come to life….
Most recently we’ve worked on the 2022 revival of his 2000 musical The Sunshine Club (which I also designed)—but this time around working with the first nations designer Jacob Nash as set designer.
Why Wesley? Because he invited me into his world—opened the door to his theatrical ‘country’—it’s difficult to put into words how profound that experience has been for a white boy from Canterbury!
Returning from the west and resuming a freelance career, it wasn’t long before I met Kate Cherry who was working as an associate director at the MTC having returned to Australia from the US where she’d moved when her father Wal Cherry took up the position of Professor of Theatre at Temple University in Philadelphia. Kate had finished her schooling and gone on to study theatre at university there. Our first collaboration was on the premiere of an Alma DeGroen play, The Woman in the Window, and this began a long and fruitful collaboration between us of over 13 productions over nearly 20 years of both plays and operas, the most recent being Tartuffe for Black Swan in Perth in 2016
Kate approaches her work on two fronts—one which is powerfully connected to reason and careful research and then parallel to that an almost visceral response from her heart. In many ways she reflects the same connection between logos and pathos that her father introduced us to back there at Flinders.
In 2000 Kate asked me to design the premiere production of Life After George in the Fairfax for MTC—a beautiful play by Hannie Rayson about a charismatic university lecturer who has just died and whose three wives—two ex and one current—have gathered for his funeral. The play is set in multiple locations and moves from one scene to the next at speed. What we needed was a single set that was capable of transformation. As research for the set, I visited some of the older lecture theatres at Melbourne University—theatres that Hannie had sat in for lectures in her Arts degree—some of which dated back to the nineteenth century and all of which had stained aged wood panelling, worn down timber floors, and aging plaster walls.
The set was a room capable through lighting to transform from exterior to interior—the wall could be lit as a sky or a plaster wall, the floor was real parquet flooring—which was essential with such a simple set in a theatre as close to the audience as the Fairfax. Kate directed the play beautifully—finding an elegant way for the characters in the play to move seamlessly between the past and the present. On the opening night, the play received an entirely spontaneous standing ovation from the audience where, as one they rose from their seats and there was a powerful sense that we had just witnessed the addition of another play into the ranks of Australian classic.
In 2007, Kate asked me to design All My Sons—Arthur Miller’s brilliant play about war and the profiteers who inevitably are the only ones to benefit from it.
Kate’s American education and experience makes her the ideal director for Miller, and once again we tackled this play on two fronts—a dig into the world of postwar America through some thorough research and discussion happening alongside a conversation about families—like other Miller plays a central pre-occupation.
The play takes place in the settled suburban garden of a successful businessman (who made his fortune manufacturing parts for American fighter planes during the second world war). Hanging over the whole play is a secret —spoiler alert—that the father had cut some corners in the manufacture of the parts which had led to some fatal crashes of fighter planes—including one piloted by his son.
We made a backyard that was dominated by a row of poplar trees (mentioned in the text) that loomed over the garden—they were silhouettes painted in black onto a clear plastic film—they had a looming, threatening quality capable of casting their shadows over the garden and even the house—with some brilliant lighting by Jon Buswell.
Why Kate?—because she combines academic rigour along with an intuitive theatrical sense—just like her dad.
Having had a less than satisfying foray into dance in the 70s in Adelaide where I’d been asked to design sets and costumes for a dance piece that had already been choreographed—and where the brief was simply ‘don’t get in the way’, I had thought that maybe dance just wasn’t for me.
In 2000, again on the recommendation of my colleague Anna French, the resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet Stephen Baynes approached me about designing the sets for Requiem—a contemporary dance piece using Faure’s Requiem as the music.
This relationship led to another work with Stephen—Molto Vivace—a one act ballet to the music of Handel and then to a re-imagining of the full-length ballet Raymonda. It also established a relationship with the Australian Ballet which most recently involved designing the sets for a re-imagining of Don Quixote.
Faure’s Requiem was part of a double bill first presented at the Festival Theatre in Adelaide (the other half of the bill was a contemporary take on Carmina Burana directed/choreographed by Lindy Hume). Stephen, Anna and I spent roughly a year developing our approach to the work—with the music as the starting point—a requiem written in seven movements for orchestra, choir, soprano and baritone soloists and organ. It’s a meditation on mortality ...
Here's a quote from Faure that set us thinking:
It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.
For the set, we arrived at a gauze box that reached up into the fly tower 10 metres—out of the audience’s sight. At the start of the ballet the box is flown up out of sight and the choir and dancers are walking silently back and forth in black contemporary clothes, in a black void—side lit. The music begins with a huge chord from the orchestra that is followed by the choir. On that opening chord, the box lowers to the stage, trapping the dancers inside and leaving the choristers outside on the periphery. The gauze was softly painted (beautifully painted by Brendan Pierce at Scenic Studios) in grainy black—fading from white at the bottom to black at the top, through the gauze could be seen the choir surrounding the dancers.
A couple of years after Requiem, Stephen again approached me and Anna to work with him on a one act ballet to the music of Handel—this time with an emphasis on playful. We left the sombere worls of Faure behind us.
The set was a stylized garden and the costumes had an 18th century silhouette. The ballet begins in black and white and then colour takes over through the costumes and the lighting. The set is a visual trick—playing with positive and negative space. The back wall appears to be a white wall with a black silhouette of cutout leaves hanging in front of it turns out to be the opposite—a white wall which has a cutout top to it with a black level behind allowing cupid to ‘appear’ in the shadows of the leaves. The white wall also contained a number of concealed doors allowing dancers to make surprise entrances and exits.
Why Stephen?—because allowed me to see how satisfying designing in dance can be.
This is really a story about how one thing leads to another ...
In 2004 my agent called me asking if I’d be interested in attending a meeting with the English director of the stage musical adaptation of the movie Dirty Dancing which was going to have its world premiere in Sydney before heading off on an extended overseas tour. The director was Mark Wing-Davey (that’s him on the right) who had come out from London to Sydney in pre-production to assemble a design team—set design, costume design and lighting design.
I said yes, but really had no idea even what Dirty Dancing was (much to the disgust of my 10 year old daughter!) and so the night before the meeting watched the film as some sort of preparation. I flew up the next day and by the end of that day they’d offered me the job. I didn’t really see myself as a mainstream musical theatre designer—so it was when Mark said he wanted to approach it as a contemporary opera I felt I might be on firmer ground! Mark’s whole aesthetic was centred around ‘the real’—fake just wouldn’t cut it with him—and I was delighted to be sharing that vision with him.
To cut a long story short, after the initial seasons across Australia and NZ, the producers decided they didn’t really want the musical as a contemporary opera centred around the real! They let go of our production, finding a new creative team with a much more commercial approach. It was a pretty bruising experience all up!
I went back to the world I felt more familiar with—The Sapphires directed by Wesley Enoch and this time back at the MTC. My foray into the commercial world was over ...
What did come out of the experience however was the chance to work with the brilliant actor/director Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Phillip and Mark were very close—and when Phillip told him that the STC were asking him to come out to direct Andrew Upton’s new play Riflemind, Mark suggested that I might be the right designer for him ...
Phillip asked for me— and in 2007 I designed Andrew Upton’s new play Riflemind— about an aging rock band holed up in a converted barn in the English countryside. It was presented at Wharf 1 at STC and after a sellout season there, we mounted a subsequent production in London at Trafalgar Studios.
And then in 2010—he asked me again this time to design the set for the Sam Shepard play True West.
True West—is a play set in a suburban house on the outskirts of LA— It’s a play about two brothers— the ’good’ one and the ‘bad’ one—really two sides of the same person in many ways. Phillip had been in a production of it on Broadway where the two actors playing the brothers alternated each night. Sam Shepard is very specific in his stage directions—describing with meticulous detail the look and feel of the house that the play is set in and implying a naturalistic approach. Some productions have chosen to ignore these details—finding more abstract settings for the play, but when Phillip and I began to work on it, my first question was ‘how do you want to handle the stage directions?’ his answer was immediate—‘why wouldn’t we do what he asks?”
So a detailed naturalistic set was where we landed—much to the consternation of some at the STC who might have been hoping for something metaphoric! As an American actor and director, Phillip wasn’t afraid of naturalism—it was part of his DNA as an actor and director.
So to Mark, he introduced me into his pure aesthetic and then to his friend Phillip who also showed me how naturalism can also be highly poetic in the right hands.
In 2006, Stuart Maunder approached me to design the sets for a new production for OA of The Pirates of Penzance, a production that had great success in the OA repertoire with many revivals, and which is now part of SOSA’s repertoire—and about to be revived once more in Perth as part of their 2025 season.
This led to a series of productions with Stuart—the most recent being La Rondine.
Stuart is an unashamed lover of G&S—he has an incredible collection of G&S memorabilia—and he knows all the roles! John Bolton Wood—the Major General—was suddenly unavailable for a performance of Pirates and Stuart filled in for him at short notice—he was brilliant, loved the experience with the only disappointment being that he fitted the costume!)
At our first meeting, Stuart mentioned Boy’s Own Adventure books, suggesting them as a starting point. We also talked about G&S and how subsequent British comedy has been influenced and inspired by them—The Goons, Monty Python, Little Britain.
The final design is a combination of a variety of sources:
- Terry Gilliams’ collages for Monty Python as well as his work for the Marty Feldman show. (The proscenium arch is taken from an illustration for The Marty Feldman show).
- The work of 18th century illustrator Thomas Bewick.
This was also the first time I’d worked with two of Stuart’s long-term collaborators—Roger Kirk—who designed the costumes, and Trudy Dalgleish who designed the lighting. We’ve gone on as a trio to work for Stuart on a number of shows together—most recently The Cunning Little Vixen—for VO.
Late last year [2023], Stuart asked me if I would consider designing sets and costumes for VO’s production of the rarely performed Puccini opera La Rondine which opened this year at the Palais in St Kilda.
Puccini completed the score for La Rondine in 1916 and it premiered in Monte Carlo in 1917—it was intended that it would premier in Vienna, but WWI prevented this. It’s a work that sits somewhere between opera and operetta, with the musical style of operetta, but no spoken dialogue making it closer in form to an opera.
Its original setting is Paris in the middle of the 19th century, a period which (even if we’d wanted to) we didn’t have the resources to pursue. We did however want to find a glamorous equivalent. We talked about the fifties, we discussed the glamour of the world of the television series Madmen and in the end we settled on setting it in the contemporary world—but with Madmen still providing a guide— in much the same way that that show influenced contemporary fashion.
Several fashion labels have released Madmen inspired collections in recent years.
Why Stuart? He combines an incredible musical knowledge with such a love of the artform and he’s also one of the most genial people I have ever worked for—Stuart runs a production desk which is efficient, creative and a joy to be at—no mean feat!
To finish ... a couple of things ...
It's interesting to reflect on how many of the influencers I have talked about are not only great practitioners, but also outstanding teachers—Wal, Colin, Tanya, Nick, George and Kate—it’s not surprising really, given our process is so much about communication and collaboration—two key elements in any good teaching.
I don’t think you ever stop evolving as a designer— influencers continue to shape your process, and the way you approach and see the world. My most recent influence has been the Tasmanian aboriginal writer Nathan Maynard who’s asked me to work on his next project—alongside his 15 year old son who’s working on the music and his 30 year old sister who’s going to be my associate designer. We spent a week together last month, and as we started to work, everything else fell away as we became engaged with Nathan’s story—just like the time Tanya and I spent together engaged with Sophocles nearly fifty years ago ...
Thank You
