Set Design Deconstruction: Picnic at Hanging Rock

in ,

New Theatre, 2020
written by Tom Wright, based on the novel by Joan Linsday directed by Sahn Millington
📸Bob Seary

In 2020 I designed the set for the Sydney premiere of Picnic at Hanging Rock. I’ve always been drawn to the strange and the dark, so it was a real joy to design this show and explore the psychological hinterlands of Tom Wright’s play.

Sarah Jane Kelly and Alice Birbara in Picnic at Hanging Rock

Sarah Jane Kelly and Alice Birbara in Picnic at Hanging Rock

The Concept

Australia Spring Landscape, Arthur Boyd, 1959

Australia Spring Landscape, Arthur Boyd, 1959

Peter Weir’s 1975 film adaptation.

Peter Weir’s film is seared into the Australian cultural psyche with girls in white disappearing in the bush and the haunting music of pan pipes. Tom’s play stands alone and is a very different beast to the film. The play is not an adaptation of the film, it is a retelling of the story in the sense that it is told and recreated by the actors on the stage. The names of the characters in the published version of the script are those of the actors who originated those parts, and as the story is told on stage they embody the characters of the book. For me, this was a really important point for the design of the production: it must not feel like we are trying to put the film on stage.

The question then, what is the world of the play?

“What is the dominant note of the Australian scenery? That which is the dominant note of Poe’s poetry – Weird Melancholy […] The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter.”
— Marcus Clarke (author 'His Natural Life')

I was inspired by Clarke’s impressions of the Australian landscape and how it related to Freud’s idea of the uncanny. The German word for the uncanny is unheimlich - literally un-homely - to Clarke and the colonising British the landscape would have been filled with recognisable forms: trees, plants, wildlife etc, and simultaneously strange and unnatural: trees that do not lose their leaves, unfamiliar animals etc.

I created the concept of the skeletal trees to capture both a sense of the physical landscape of the play, but also to evoke that sense of the uncanny and gothic by taking the trees out of the context of their natural surrounds and placing them in an artificial environment. It should almost feel as though the trees have just grown through the floor of the theatre, like the tree growing through the man in Anselm Kiefer’s “Man Lying With Branch”, and they will continue to grow through the lighting grid and beyond.

Check out my Pinterest Board of weird Australian Gothic inspo:

Process

A model box outlining the concept of the trees.

Working on a production with a limited budget is always a stimulating creative challenge because you need to distill your idea and be very intentional with every element. It also forces you to be resourceful when finding materials. Because of its ephemerality theatre can be inherently wasteful, and so I make a point of trying to source as much of my materials second hand. (If you are in Sydney, The Bower and Reverse Garbage are my happy places.)

The trees were made out of recycled and found materials: heavy cardboard tubes provided the base and were covered with calico. They were then finished with paper and paint to create layers of peeling, skin-like bark. And, I don’t want to boast, but the total cost of the set came in at: $292.43.

Transporting some raw materials

Transporting some raw materials

Trees in progress in the New Theatre paint room.

Trees in progress in the New Theatre paint room.

Detail of the tree textures (from a photo by Bob Seary)

Detail of the tree textures (from a photo by Bob Seary)

Bumping in Picnic at Hanging Rock

“Victor Kalka’s sculptural set provides a forest in which to get lost. ”
— ★★★★, Sydney Morning Herald

Picnic at Hanging Rock - Cast and Crew

Cast
Megan Bennetts, Alice Birbara, Alana Birtles, Audrey Blyde, Sarah Jane Kelly

Crew
Set Designer Victor Kalka
Costume Designer Leela Landers
Lighting Designer Louise Mason
Sound Designer Patrick Howard
Composer Georgia Condon
Assistant Director Caitlin Andrews
Dialect Coach Benjamin Purser
Stage Manager Doug Cairns
Operators Emma Johnston, Ricci Costa