Little Theatre Blasts Off

How would you turn a tiny theatre into a rocketship? Last year Set and Lighting Designer Brockman launched the Hayes Theatre in Sydney into orbit with an incredible production of the world premiere of  Flat Earthers the Musical. David Spicer reports. 

In my review I described it as the  “most technically brilliant musical staged at the Hayes, which already has a long history of cleverly shoe-horning productions into its cosy venue.”

For those outside of the harbour city,  the Hayes Theatre  has a capacity of 111 seats with a stage just 8m by 8m with no wing or backstage area. 

The special effects included eye popping imagery blending text messages, emojis, with  live actors appearing inside and outside of projected frames, all seamlessly choreographed with dance and song.

It perfectly suited the narrative of the two young leads, Flick and Ria, who fall for each other over the internet without being entirely sure that the other suitor was on same page. I spoke with  Brockman about the project. 

What was your overall artistic aim?

Like any strong production design, the goal is to serve the story. While there’s beauty in moments of pure design, they always need to anchor back to that essential connection. Our role as designers is to present the world in the right frame — one that draws the audience closer rather than holding them at a distance.

The musical navigates extreme locations — from the murky depths of the internet, to isolated underground bunkers, to the cold, vast expanse of space. The central challenge for Declan Greene (the director) and me was clarity: how do we clearly delineate when we’re online and when we’re IRL (in real life, as the kids say)?

It was clear that projection would be a vital storytelling tool. The internet demands a screen, but our task was to make that screen feel live, visceral, and inhabited. I didn’t want to just present images, but allow physical bodies to interact with them.

I wasn’t interested in a boxed-in, passive frame. Instead, I kept returning to the image of the circle — the arch — drawn from the flat earth disc. This shape held the tension at the heart of the piece, and I wanted it present as a visual motif throughout.

We spent a long time sourcing the right material we could project onto, see through, and move through. It needed to feel fluid, like stepping in and out of a portal. I selected a string curtain. It offered everything — permeability, visibility, and a sense of transformation. It became the membrane between the physical and the digital.

Lighting, in this world, was about amplifying the projection. The vision was rich with visual and contextual clues, so my role was to let that world sing. I worked with tight focus, sharp pick-ups, and deliberately minimal interventions — allowing the projected image to dominate and breathe. But when we shifted into the ‘real’ world, when we left the digital, the lighting stepped forward. I returned to more traditional approaches, using light to shape space, evoke feeling, and highlight presence in a tangible world.

How ambitious was it to stage within the limitations of the Hayes?

We all know the world of big musicals: moving parts, hydraulic lifts, revolves, flying walls, rapid-fire set changes. The wonder of working at the Hayes is distilling that frenetic momentum into something bold, simple, and inventive — crafting vivid theatrical moments that carry all the energy without all the machinery. And it turns out, you really can fit a lot into a small space.

In  Flat Earthers  we used mirrors and reflective surfaces to create the illusion of environments far larger than the theatre’s physical bounds. These are age-old tricks, but when used with precision and imagination, they still have real magic.

On paper, installing a full-width proscenium arch sounds simple enough — but the reality of an older heritage venue means nothing is square. So, despite all the measuring, the arch didn’t fit on arrival. Much of the construction had to happen on-site, hands-on, adjusting and shaping the structure in real time.

The second major challenge was a moving wall that needed to glide silently and seamlessly across the stage — without a budget, or even the room to install motorized tracks. The solution was the wall would be moved manually, by the ASM and an actor, mid-show. We had to engineer it carefully — calculating weights, designing tracks, balancing counterweights. It was one of the most elegant pieces of backstage choreography I’ve seen at the Hayes. 

Please describe the framework of the set?

At the centre was a physical proscenium arch, with a second, smaller arch nested inside it that could travel all the way upstage. Together, the arches framed the performance space and helped define a visual language that could shift between digital and real worlds.

Behind the arches was the white string curtain. It allowed for projection while also letting performers move through it.

We brought the sides of the theatre in by about one metre, building narrow walkways on either side. These were lined with black PVC strip curtains — the kind you'd typically see in a butcher shop or cool room. This gave performers extra entrance and exit points and visually tied in with the texture of the string curtain. 

The floor was raised by 12mm to allow for LED tape to be installed in recessed channels. It was painted with a forced perspective grid, helping to extend the visual depth of the stage. Outside the grid, we used a high-gloss black mirror finish, which reflected the arches and grid back into the floor. This made the white lines appear as though they were floating in a void-like space.

The design was influenced by early internet visuals — simple shapes, grids, and bold contrasts. The goal was to create a flexible, layered environment that could move fluidly between live performance and projected content.