Bangarra’s SandSong is based on several stories from the Great Sandy Desert. Some are ancient, timeless and glorious. Some, like the history of the Canning Stock Route, are quite recent and utterly shameful. The establishment of this much-vaunted track, at the cost of the total dispossession of the Walmajarri and Wangkatjungka peoples, must be one of the darkest chapters of our history.
The connecting thread between the old and new stories was The Great Sandy Desert, so the first challenge was rendering a version of this showplace. A space that could feel as vast and simultaneously both threatening and beautiful as this extraordinary country. This eventually distilled into two principal elements; a printed ultramarine floor, evocative of a waterhole and a large gold cloth that represents not just the sky, but also heat, air, oppressiveness and freedom. This cloth (exquisitely painted by Russell Carey) needed to be the real chameleon in the set, as it’s in view for the vast majority of a show that goes to a lot of different places. As Russell worked on this cloth, set designer Jacob Nash and lighting designer Nick Schlieper encouraged him to make the gold that sits on its surface ever more reflective. The result is a dazzlingly golden, solid feeling mirror when front-lit directly, a dead almost coppery, heavy sheet when front-lit indirectly and a scarred, bleeding thing when backlit.
“I also used the high gloss ultramarine floor to bounce light back up onto its face,” added Nick. “Incredibly flexible, but also very tricky to light in ways that truly bring out all of its possibilities. In short – a great deal of the rig was pointed at it!
The upstage half of the grid (particularly in the perennially inadequate Drama Theatre says Nick) was very tightly packed, so the only truly traditional front light is provided by a set of Mini-Strips, that in Sydney were almost touching its front face. The reflective front light is in the form of a clutch of 1.2K Fresnels, double-rigged on the tops of the perches. These are supplemented with two Martin MAC Encores, which barely move, but provide a lot of the texture. The cloth is then side-lit from the tops of pretty well every boom in the rig, in a progression of golds through to deep ambers, staggered according to the angle of incidence.
“The cloth’s backlight is provided by four ShowPRO Collider Strobes and while these may seem a rather blunt tool, I needed that degree of punch to get through the dyed Tyvek base of the cloth and to be able to shift its colour a bit,” explained Nick. “The fact that they also go round corners was another big element in this choice, given the lack of space. Unfortunately, this requires a ridiculous amount of masking to contain the things to where you want them… PM Cat Studley and Head LX Marshall Bull gallantly leapt into that breach!”
Finally, there were 24 Par 64s piling light onto the floor from two different angles to get the deep blue bounce up the face of the cloth. At one point towards the end of the show, they’re joined by six MAC Viper washes overhead to get the blue floor singing and the cloth merging in the gold and the blue.
“The rest of the rig is very straightforward. Lots of 2k Fresnels doing three colours of backlight and lots of Source 4s and Pars with Scrollers (yes, I STILL use them!) doing the sidelight,” commented Nick. “All of the non-standard gear was provided per kind favour of Chameleon.”
The now inevitable Covid footnote: apart from one brief scare in production week that saw two people having to test and isolate, (including the SM who had to miss her own dress rehearsal) the show opened very smoothly. Not so since then, however. The Sydney season was cut basically in half by the lockdown.
“The company (and my poor Associate, Chris Twyman) then jumped through many a Covid-made hoop to realise the short Canberra season, under pretty draconian circumstances,” Nick said. “Bangarra then trumped this by taking the entire company to Howard Springs for two weeks (alcohol-free!!) isolation, to realise some of the Brisbane season, but despite all of that, had to cancel the rest of the tour, so no Melbourne or Bendigo for SandSong. It is extraordinary what companies are having to endure at the moment, to be able to perform to often limited houses, with bugger-all support from governments various. Let’s hope there’s an end in sight…”
