THEY are the humble heroes of the Perth professional theatre scene – the backstage creatives who make it all happen before audience members settle into their seats, the lights go out and the director calls ‘action’.
Meet Bruce McKinven and Trent Suidgeest – the set and lighting designers for Black Swan State Theatre Company’s opening production for the 2012 season, The White Divers of Broome, a story of greed, betrayal and survival in the fight for the pearling fortunes of 1912 Broome.
While the actors were busily learning their lines and the costume designer was putting the final touches to the cast wardrobe, McKinven and Suidgeest spent many long days in a non-descript suburban industrial workshop, building the play’s complex set before moving into the Heath Ledger Theatre last Thursday in readiness for ‘showtime’ this weekend.
“It’s a pretty vast design and it’s the first time in the brief history of the Heath Ledger Theatre that anyone’s attempted to use the entire stage space,” McKinven said.
“The biggest parameter is trying to facilitate 40-odd scenes and how you get from one scene to the next very smoothly and quickly.”
Suidgeest had his own set of challenges in lighting the multitude of inter-changing locations, including luggers on sea, underwater, beaches, bungalows, brothels, a pub and packing shed.
“A regular play might be a little more subtle and contain more of a nuance to the design, but this play is so exotic and varying, so it allows me to be a little bolder with my choices, which is challenging but exciting,” he said.
Both men were set on their chosen careers from an early age – McKinven was inspired by theatre after featuring in a school musical and briefly studied visual arts before getting into NIDA’s competitive design course.
WAAPA graduate Suidgeest, meanwhile, first became involved in his native Wagga Wagga’s amateur community theatre scene and worked in a cabaret restaurant as a teenager when serendipity struck.
“I started dropping out backstage and doing some props, then one day, the lighting designer moved town so I jumped into that role and it just grew from there.”
The White Divers of Broome is at the Heath Ledger Theatre (within the State Theatre Centre of WA), Northbridge, from January 28 to February 16.
Emilia Vranjes