Trudy Dalgleish is one of Australia’s most successful Lighting Designers having won many awards including a Helpmann Award, Entech Award, John Truscott Design Award for Excellence and a couple of Green Room Awards. She is known for her extensive work in musical theatre, opera and arena spectaculars.
What would you normally be doing this time of year?
This week I have just opened Secret Garden at the Lyric Theatre and would be bumping in Women in Black at the Ensemble Theatre, before starting Fiddler on the Roof, in Yiddish, at the Sydney Opera House next week. July and August are usually my busiest months!
What’s a fairly normal day at the moment for you?
Getting up at a normal hour, reading the paper followed by breakfast and taking the dogs for a walk – I have three dogs! Then I do a bit of work, take the dogs for another walk, dinner, bed … rinse and repeat. I’m spending half my time up the coast at Avoca Beach and half my time in Sydney. I’m blessed to have the option!
Are you learning anything to improve your skills set?
I’m dabbling in domestic lighting at the moment. I am doing the lighting design for a very large house up at Avalon Beach, well it’s more like a castle really, it’s huge and owned by a tour manager, so he wants a very theatrical look. It’s really extending me as domestic fixtures are so different and then there are smart control systems that I’m learning about. It’s huge, the site is 100m long by 30m wide and most of that is house and its on a really steep block so its in modules that snake up the hill. It will be awesome when it’s finished. They even have a stage in the huge living area.
What bad habits have you slipped into?
Not getting enough exercise! That’s probably the worst, I’m a bit of a couch potato, other than that I’m slowly starting to enjoy the downtime , it’s only taken me 6 months of kicking and screaming to get to that stage.
How are you coping financially?
I’m on Jobkeeper which is great as it takes a lot of stress out of the financial impact of not working. I have also received some grants from the NSW government that support the arts in this time so that’s been a relief as well.
When do you think live entertainment with return and in what format?
I think it’s going to be an extremely long time before we get back to anything that is close to normal. Had you asked me before Victoria’s second wave or the new cases in New Zealand, I would have confidently said by the end of the year would be a possibility, but now I really don’t know. I would have said when they find a vaccine, but I really don’t know if that will ever happen.
Do you have any words of encouragement?
Everything has a beginning and an end, we will come out of this. I don’t know when, but we will. Use this time to have some downtime, a very precious commodity in our industry till recently, spend time with the people who you are closest to and who you hardly ever used to see when you were working. Try and enjoy not working for a while.
What makes you happy at the moment?
Nature, seeing my people a lot more than I used to. Getting more than enough sleep, cooking great food and sharing it, walking my dogs, taking time to smell the flowers, getting in the sea, not having deadlines, not getting on planes, being at home.
