Man of fertile ideas casts spell on a dry space
May 11, 2009 A tree, denuded of leaves, hangs upside down from the ceiling, its bare branches sitting starkly against a gauze screen. A scrubbed pine table and chairs sit on stage. Video of rain, snow and roads are projected onto the screens. As a set design, it verges on austere.
It is the kind of almost poetic design for which the
Designing the set for Andrew Bovell's play When The Rain Stops Falling , which opens for the Sydney Theatre Company tonight, is the Iranian-born artist's first foray into theatre.
Valamanesh was invited to work on the project by Chris Drummond, the artistic director the South Australian theatre company Brink Productions.
There followed a four-year gestation involving Drummond, Bovell, composer Quentin Grant and Valamanesh, who came together before a word was written. It was a contrast to Valamanesh's usual work practice, in a studio behind his house.
"The reason I agreed was because the concept was very open. There was a general direction in which we all went, but there was no text, no music. It really was a blank page. We all came from a beautiful, empty space and slowly built this up. From the first day, Quentin Grant was writing songs. It was a very organic coming together of minds."
The table and chairs became a central idea. "One day I said let's bring them in and see what happens, then the idea of domesticity came to it and the writing took that on," he says.
Another day, after Bovell had said he wanted to tell several layers of stories, Valamanesh brought up the idea of the gauze screens. "It was just for experimenting, and it stayed in."
By the time the writing was completed in late 2007, Valamanesh had a good idea of what the set would look like.
The epic work is set 30 years in the future.
The action ranges across continents and eras, sometimes showing two at once, so the set and Niklas Pajanti's lighting provide visual and emotional cues.
"The simplicity of the set and its clarity, I hope, help the viewers' imagination. They just need little hints of atmosphere," Valamanesh says. "It's a play that respects the viewer, we challenge them to take their own creativity to the play. It's not all put on the plate for them. And I think that's good. We're not trying to make it difficult for the sake of it, it's about getting involved and creating connections."
The work was a hit at last year's Adelaide Festival, its strong word-of-mouth creating high expectations for the
"It's set up differently with an English director, a designer from
While this is Valamanesh's first theatre design, he was once intimately acquainted with the stage, working as an actor in his native
"In that sense, I have always loved the theatre. If you see some of my installations, I like to create a sense of theatre, even in a gallery. Then the viewers become kind of the actors."
The Hyde Park Barracks memorial to the great Irish famine, An Gorta Mor , was created by Valamanesh and his wife, Angela, in 1999 and features a table and stool, the table split by a sandstone wall. "I visited it again recently and it's the same table as the one in the theatre set in a way - the simplicity of the table and the stool. When I looked at it again, I realised there was this certain vocabulary," he says.
He would like to do more theatre work, but is at the mercy of funding bodies.
"It's not that often that theatre companies have the luxury of inviting somebody or commissioning a piece of writing, music and design to come together. There was some funding from the Australia Council that helped us do this."
When The Rain Stops Falling opens at the Sydney Opera House drama theatre tonight. Hossein Valamanesh's exhibition No Love Lost opens at Grantpirrie Gallery in Redfern on May 28.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/man-of-fertile-ideas-casts-spell-on-a-dry-space-20090511-azbj.html