Source : the age
Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre has vowed to keep performing despite fire gutting its main scenery workshop, including key sets and props two weeks out from its upcoming show.
The leased Marrickville workshop, where the 42-year-old theatre company has built and stored sets and props since 2009, burned to the ground on Monday afternoon in a blaze that forced Fire and Rescue NSW to dispatch more than 45 firefighters and 10 trucks to the Victoria Road premises. The cause is yet to be determined.
The set for its upcoming production The Jungle and the Sea, the follow-up to S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s award-winning show Counting and Cracking, was lost and needs to be remade.
“What’s in that workshop was everything we’ve ever kept, ever, that is not in our administrative archives,” said Flack, Belvoir’s artistic director. “It’s a blow. Our small props and costumes are off-site but everything else, any large props or sets we were building or saving or holding on for posterity, all of that is in there. There are a couple of shipping containers stored outside that, we hope, might still be OK.”
Among other items believed to be lost are signed posters, memorabilia, technical equipment and tools and machinery, flats and floors for the stage, and a ute and forklift.
Gone too is the “Cherry Orchard floor”, named after the Anton Chekhov play for which it was made in 2021. It had been a mainstay of many other shows, including King Lear, The Spare Room and The Master and Margarita. It is deemed irreplaceable.
“It’s decades and decade and decades worth of all those odds and ends that make a company like us able to keep going because we are such big re-users and recyclers and scavengers. That’s the story of Belvoir,” Flack said. “It’s devastating for the company and the guys who worked out there. Our construction manager made this sign a couple of years ago that said, Belvoir Street Working making the impossible possible. These are great craftsmen. It’s not only Belvoir’s tools that have been lost.”
Sydney’s theatre world has rallied to Belvoir’s aid, with the Sydney Theatre Company, Opera Australia and the National Institute of Dramatic Art offering to share its workshops. STC executive director Anne Dunn said: “We are devastated for our friends at Belvoir, and STC has offered to help in any way we can.”
Flack said the company was determined to proceed with its next productions, The Jungle and the Sea, due to open in early July, and The Book of Everything, opening in August.
“We are still taking stock, but we have every intention of the rest of the year going on as planned,” he said. “We think that’s possible and, certainly, it’s a company that has tested the limits of the possible, so I’ve come back in to do rehearsals for The Jungle and the Sea today, and we are continuing to work on sets at our warehouse in Surry Hills for The Book of Everything.”
The company was covered by insurance, but it is hoping to crowd-fund finance to meet some of its immediate expenses. Flack said the most meaningful way to support the company was “to buy a ticket, become a season ticket holder or make a donation”. “Every contribution helps,” he said.
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