World-Building in Textile and Light
Image: Wanderings. Photographer: Jen Dainer
Thousands of fabric flowers, gauze curtains and hundreds of metres of LEDs; hand-woven nets and a circular trap door lit from within; a rainbow cubby house with lights shaped like a brain. Kitty Goodall explores three designs that cleverly used textiles and lighting to build immersive, emotional worlds.
Set design often features hard and unyielding surfaces. Creating a design out of lights and textiles supports flexibility, enhancing the magical, ethereal, and beautiful as effectively as it evokes fear, sadness, and horror. Fantastic at building mood and tapping into emotions, textiles and illumination can instantaneously change from light and cosy, to suffocating and blinding, creating an unforgettable sensory experience for the audience.
La Cenerentola (Cinderella) - QPAC Concert Hall
Image: La Cenerentola. Photographer: Jade Ellis
In her design for Opera Queensland, Laura Hansford created a whimsical world with one cohesive look. While this was a semi-staged work, Laura wanted to push the boundaries of what constitutes a ‘set’. Her design featured the subtitle screen 8m above the stage, surrounded by 2,000 fabric flowers, a 10 x 16m backdrop of pink dip dyed gauze with hundreds of metres of LEDs strung behind. Props and costumes adhered to the floral, natural, and lit from within theme, a consistency which contributed to the production having the visual impact of a fully staged work.
Laura attributed the design’s success to close collaboration with costume designers Karen Cochet and Bianca Bulley, and Lighting Designer Christine Felmingham. Their artistic inventiveness took into consideration the Concert Hall’s height, and the hues of the wood, seats, and brass pipe organ.
“I have the absolute privilege at Opera Queensland of being able to create a collaborative environment that allows you to make a whole vision from the costumes to the music to the set through to the lighting,” Laura enthused.
“The kernel of the idea of this show is who is Cinderella? And for me she was the flower that grew through the cracks in the pavement.”
When collaborating with Christine Felmingham on lighting design, Laura had one focus, “How do we get as much light inside this set as possible so the world looks organic?” But it was a mood board session Laura shared with Karen and Bianca in which they settled on the floral, organic theme. Everything from the backdrop, to furniture, props, and costumes included textile flowers, moss, turf, branches and wherever possible, was lit from within.
In keeping with the eco theme, Laura revealed Opera Queensland is focussed on sustainable prop making, with 90 % of what you see on the stage being repurposed from past shows.
“It's not just work smarter not harder,” Laura said, “It's also let's make sure that we're being kind to the environment and the land that we have the privilege of singing on.”
Macbeth - La Boite Roundhouse Theatre
Image: Macbeth
A bold, witch-centric reimagining of Macbeth called for an equally bold design. Co-director and Designer Lisa Fa'alafi, Set Realiser Freddie Komp, and Lighting Designer Teegan Kranenburg delivered a moody, noir world dominated by a giant net branching to three strands. A central hatch lit from within perfectly depicted the witches’ cauldron and the net’s strands and other giant textiles were manipulated by the cast throughout the play.
Having worked on other projects with master weavers Ranu James, Nata Richards, and Maryann Talia Pau, Lisa was keen to incorporate their traditional Bilum weaving work into this production.
“In many cultures weaving is women's work and we really wanted to portray these witches as everyday people, so for me it was a signifier of that, and the three strands as the three witches and their connection,” she said.
In realising the set, Freddy said, “I often see myself like an artisan or artificer in a way rather than like an artist… Lisa’s having beautiful creative initial ideas and then together (we’re) fleshing it out... It’s what I think is the fun bit.”
When lighting the net, Teegan said, “It is such a beautiful textural piece so you want to create shadows on it and you want to shoot light onto it from different directions… For a lighting designer your biggest concern always is … Do my actors have enough face light? But in this one we had to release that a little bit and accept that at some times they were going to be in a little bit of shadow because they had this beautiful, almost other performer on stage with them in the form of this weave.”
Wanderings – Diane Cilento Studio
Image: Wanderings. Photographer: Jen Dainer
The Nest Ensemble staged Wanderings, an intimate two-handed play about changing family dynamics. It featured a dopamine décor, rainbow coloured cloth cubby house, festooned in fairy lights. Created by renowned installation artist and designer Rozina Suliman and lit by the visionary Freddy Komp, together this talented team conjured a world rich with visual metaphor.
“Essentially it was a big cubby house that was reflective of Stella and Kidd’s relationship,” Rozina said, “It was made of colourful, bright fabrics … that then moved and pulled away to create a sad beige fabric old people’s home world.”
Rozina’s emotionally powerful design was perfectly supported by Freddy’s lighting. He told Stage Whispers he sees himself as a responding artist, revealing “I like to add on to concepts and visions.”
During development, Freddy said they discussed, “How light could shine through and how we could illuminate the fabric from behind.”
His work included creative video projections and fairy lights. As the show progresses and the colourful cubby fabric is pulled away the lighting behind is revealed to be shaped like a brain. His goal was to represent the neural changes occurring in Stella, a character living with dementia, through lighting.
“There’s that beautiful moment where she has the voiceover about her lights going out one by one, and we did that with this extra strand of LED. She's holding it in her hand and there's literally three of the bulbs at the end sort of going out, slowly fading out as she does … It's those kinds of moments are the ones that I’m really excited about.”
Kitty Goodall is a Brisbane based reviewer.
