The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse beckons young people and their adults to explore the endless wonders of light. This immersive promenade performance is part installation, part scientific quest, part rave.
Designed for all ages, this house of marvels is full of intimate vignettes and grand lighting. A series of interconnected rooms await, each full of hands-on experiences exploring a different property of that elusive yet fundamental force of nature: light.
Taking light out of traditional theatre spaces and moving it into a new terrain, The Lighthouse puts children and their families at the centre of an exploration of light.
The Lighthouse is a conversation with the universe. It exists at the intersection of science and art, sparking curiosity at the world around us. Through its innovative use of light, sound, perspective and reflection, the performance encourages you to engage and experiment.
Credits
Geoff Cobham is the Artistic Director of Patch Theatre and one of Australia’s leading culture professionals, with over 40 years’ experience collaborating in all forms of theatre.
His artistic reputation both nationally and internationally comes from an outstanding multi-award-winning career working with several of Australia’s foremost arts organisations and events. He spent ten years as Associate Director of dance theatre Force Majeure, five years as resident designer at State Theatre Company South Australia and has worked in senior management roles at Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival and WOMAD.
Geoff founded Bluebottle in 1998, an award-winning lighting design company which integrates outstanding lighting design into theatres, galleries, installations, architecture, exhibitions and music.
He has a long and notable history with Patch Theatre, having worked on a variety of productions including The Fastest Boy, Emily Loves to Bounce and Me & My Shadow before taking the reins as Artistic Director in 2018. While at Patch, Geoff has created in-theatre works ZOOOM, I Wish…, and Home and installation works The Lighthouse, Sea of Light, and Mirror Mirror.
Zoë is an acclaimed cellist, composer, sound artist, performance maker and educator. She creates chamber music, scores for film, theatre & dance, gallery sound installations and immersive theatre experiences for intergenerational audiences. She collaborates with leading theatre & sound makers across Australia and internationally. Zoë works across traditional performance spaces, found spaces, and the digital world. Her process is collaborative, relational and reflective, exploring an ongoing inquiry into the politics of slowness, amplifying quiet voices, and relational experiences.
Daisy continues her 20+ years in the Adelaide arts scene as a theatre maker, directing and devising over 30 new Australian works. Daisy co-created theatre company Control Party (formally known as The Misery Children) who dare to be anything but ordinary. In 2021 Control Party produced their most ambitious work yet, The World Is Looking For You, with writer Finegan Kruckemeyer and a team of leading SA artists, presented by Brink Productions, Adelaide Festival Centre and County Arts SA. Home reunites Daisy with Patch Theatre, having worked as a creative on their highly successful 2020 Adelaide Festival production The Lighthouse – an immersive creation which won the 2020 Ruby Award for Best work or event within a festival. As a director Daisy has discovered her voice as a female maker. Major directing works include: 19 weeks (writer Emily Steel) sold-out seasons in Adelaide/Melbourne/Perth Fringes 2017/18, Rabbits (writer Emily Steel) as part of STCSA 2018 Umbrella Program, and Ruby Bruise (writer Finegan Kruckemeyer) presented by Vitalstatistix and Mützenball which toured Nationally. Daisy's work has featured in Australia’s leading festivals, and she is the proud winner of the Best Theatre Award at the 2017 Adelaide Fringe and winner of a Green Room award for her devised production Mützenball in 2009.
Michelle 'Maddog' Delaney is a maker of things. Places, spaces, feelings and things – forests in disused buildings, themed bars and bespoke furniture, shattering plaster BMX wheels, Ediacaran based décor, rocket stands and giant cocoons, and more. She has worked as a designer, production manager, builder, scenic artist, stage manager, sourcer and sorcerer for major companies, festivals and independent artists. She likes nothing better than working in great teams to produce beautiful experiences. She is currently Creative Associate at Patch Theatre and, with Geoff Cobham, has co-designed all of Patch’s shows since 2019. Maddog’s design credits include Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2018–2021, Dark Mofo 2018 & 2019, Adelaide Festival 2013–2016, Darwin Festival 2010– 2015, Adelaide Fringe 2007–2009, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2012, Red Sky Morning – State Theatre Company of South Australia (2016), and co-design with Meg Wilson on Life is Short and Long – Emma Beech and Vitalstatistix (2016).
Graeme Denton of Bright Spark Entertainment has been producing and performing his entertaining Science Shows for over 15 years. His most popular show by far has been The Scientific Bubble Show, in which he performs as Marty McBubble. Along the way he has also achieved not one, but two World Records. In 2017 he created the World’s Largest Indoor Bubble, and in 2020 he made the World’s Tallest Bubble.
Graeme especially loves the creative aspects of his work, and he is always up for challenge, so you can imagine how excited he gets whenever Patch Theatre ask him to create a new bubble extravaganza for one of their productions. What will he be asked to create next he wonders?
Since 2003 Jason Sweeney has collaborated with some of Australia’s leading performing arts companies and organisations as well as directing and creating a number of his own interactive works for the internet and participatory community engagement projects for galleries and theatre spaces. As a composer of electronic music, he has also been releasing music internationally with Panoptique Electrical and solo project Sweeney. Over the last few years Jason has completed a trilogy of research sound-based works focused on quietness and urban ecologies, including major projects Stereopublic: Crowdsourcing the Quiet which won a TED City2.0 Prize and the research odyssey, Quiet Ecology. In 2021 he released the major double album retrospective Decades (2001-2021).
Wendy has done set and costume design for a variety of performing arts companies and has done everything else from site co-ordination to prop maker and scenic artist. Set and Costume Designer Credits include: Worldhood [Australian Dance Theatre], One [Tutti], Skip Miller [Brink Productions], The Little Green Tractor [Patch Theatre], Ruby Bruise [The Misery Children & Vitalstatistix], Harbinger [Brink Productions], Man Covets Bird [Slingsby], Superheroes [Stone/Castro Productions], The Hypochondriac [Brink Productions], Freaky [Cirkidz & Circus Monoxide], After The End [Adelaide Fringe 09], Beetle Graduation [Brink Productions), The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy [Slingsby 2007], and Three Men in a Tub [Fringe 2009]. Other roles have included Designer and builder of Travelling Street Theatre, Assistant Designer for the Persian Garden, [Adelaide Festival of Arts Nightclub 2008 & 2006]. Site Coordinator [WOMADelaide 07], Prop Maker & Scenic Artist [Moonlantern Parade 2007–2009, Fringe Parade 2009, Windmill Performing Arts, State Theatre Company of SA, Australian Dance Theatre and Performing Lines Wicked The Musical].
Meg Wilson is an Adelaide-based interdisciplinary artist and designer whose practice spans installation, performance and set, lighting and costume design.
Recently she has designed set and costume with State Theatre Company of South Australia (Terrestrial 2018, Euphoria, 2021, Eureka Day 2021, Antigone 2022) and Windmill Theatre Co. (Amphibian, 2018/2021 and RELLA 2022) and works extensively with Vitalstatistix (The Photo Box set design Adelaide Festival 2022, Bedroom (lighting design 2021) and Progress Report (set, costume and lighting designs 2021), Patch Theatre (Lighthouse, AF 2020) and Restless Dance Theatre, including designs for the 2018 Adelaide Festival productions of Intimate Space (2018) and Guttered (2021). She has been largely involved with the establishment of RUMPUS for whom she was venue designer. In 2016, Meg was Lead Artist Intern with The Rabble.
Meg premiered performance work SQUASH! with Arts House during the Festival of Live Art (FOLA, 2018) and has exhibited independently with Contemporary Art Centre SA (2015), BLINDSIDE, VIC; Constance ARI, TAS; Nexus Arts and FELTspace. She has created public projects for FELTspace (2014), Open Space Contemporary Arts (OSCA) (2017), and curated a public program for ACE Open (2019). In 2018 she was a resident artist with Urban Theatre Projects (NSW), hand-weaving trampolines for production Right Here. Right Now. Meg was awarded the 2019 Green Room Award for Contemporary and Experimental Performance (Innovation in Durational Performance), for SQUASH!.
Renate Henschke is a costume and set designer working in film, television and theatre. Currently based in Adelaide, South Australia, Renate spent 12 years working in Dublin, Ireland in costume departments for many international film and television series. Recent Australian work includes costume design for the ABC/Aquarius Films 10 part series Born To Spy and Sissy a stylish horror film premiering at SXSW 2022 as well as costume and puppet maker for the Beep and Mort television series for the ABC & Windmill Pictures. An ongoing collaboration with film collective Closer Productions has lead to costume designing for the acclaimed SBS 4 part drama The Hunting (Asher Keddie, Richard Roxborough) and the Irish Australian co production Animals (Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat), and the ABC/Screen Australia television series Fucking Adelaide (Pamela Rabe, Kate Box) and the Berlin Film Festival Crystal Bear Award winning short film A Field Guide to Being a 12 Year Old Girl (Tilly Cobham-Hervey). Renate has created work with many theatre makers such as State Theatre Company of South Australia (That Eye the Sky, The Club), Gravity and Other Myths (Pulse), Patch Theatre (I Wish...), Vitalstatistix (The Photo Box, Cher), Windmill Theatre Company, (Honey I’m Home, Girl Asleep), Restless (Exposed) Brink Productions (Memorial) for Adelaide Festival, Is This Yours? (The Club, Angelique), The Border Project (I Animal), Sandpit, Google Creative Lab (Ghost Toast and Things left unsaid) and The Seam (Tiny Things).
Seana is a costume maker with over twenty years experience. She has worked in all aspects of the industry; events, theatre, physical and street performance, TV and film. Seana's particular interest is in specialty costume pieces, including millinery, costume/props crossovers and sculptural costuming.
James Dodd exhibits regularly across Australia in publicly funded institutions, commercial galleries and artist-run spaces. He works with a range of approaches including particular interests in painting, machines as art, graffiti, adventure and public space. He maintains a curiosity in sheds, backyards suburbia and the creative activities and transgressions that occur in these spaces.
A recent and ongoing project is The Painting Mill; a contraption that is cobbled together from various household, shed-found and DIY parts such as cordless drills, rollerblades and bicycles, which are operated via remote control. The Painting Mill becomes somewhat performative in its presentation whilst also pursuing painted outcomes that can be engaging in their own right.
Dodd is active as an educator at Adelaide Central School of Art and regularly delivers youth and community based arts programs across a range of outcomes. He is often finding ways to tap into his kinetic art interests to develop educational projects that lean into both visual art and STEM streams.
Alex is an Adelaide-based technician, working across lighting, sound, and av; specialising in technical/system design. Alex started tech at high school to try and skip class, but it ended up becoming something he fell in love with and eventually turned into a career. Since then, he has worked across theatre, film, live music and events for companies including Patch Theatre, Windmill Theatre Company, Australian Dance Theatre, Restless Dance Theatre, Gravity & Other Myths, Marvel Studios and more. He first worked with Patch during a high school work experience placement. He came in for a week of creative development on The Moon’s a Balloon and helped to build set and lighting elements of the show. After getting into the industry as an adult he found his way back to Patch and has become the System Designer, Touring Technician and Operator on most of Patch’s shows/productions.
Max is a Perth-based lighting designer working across theatre, events and immersive experiences. A graduate of WAAPA with a Bachelor of Arts specialising in Lighting for Live Performance, he brings a dynamic and collaborative approach to storytelling through light.
He has lit numerous musicals, exhibited work as part of Vivid Sydney, and over the past seven years has worked with Gravity & Other Myths - assistant designing, touring and helping to create new shows. A highlight of this work was operating the opening of the Edinburgh Festival in 2022. Max’s professional journey was shaped early on through a secondment with Geoff Cobham, now Artistic Director of Patch Theatre, who introduced him to G&OM and has remained a key mentor.
When not working on theatrical productions, Max works full-time with LUX Events in Perth, helping design and deliver large-scale corporate events and lighting installations.
Having previously facilitated Lighthouse for Perth Festival, Max is excited to return to this beautiful work and collaborate with the team at Patch Theatre.
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