Damien Cooper

Damien’s lighting design for theatre, opera and dance includes:

Riflemind, The Art of War, Ying Tong, The Lost Echo Parts I and II, Fat Pig, A Hard God, The Cherry Orchard, Summer Rain, Metamorphosis, Boy Gets Girl, Julius Caesar, Far Away, Bed, Thyestes, Morph, The Shape Of Things, These People, King Lear, This Little Piggy (Sydney Theatre Company); Self Esteem (Wharf2Loud, STC);  Toy Symphony, Keating!, Peribanez, Stuff Happens, The Chairs, The Spook, In Our Name, Underpants, The Cosmonaut’s Last Message To The Women He Loved In The Former Soviet Union, The Ham Funeral (Company B, Belvoir); Exit The King (Malthouse Theatre/ Company B, Belvoir); Alcina, The Magic Flute, Death In Venice (Opera Australia); The Government Inspector (Bell Shakespeare Company); Theft of Sita, Three Furies (Performing Lines); The Happy Prince, Gypsy Boy, Hansel And Gretel, Exotic Pleasures (Theatre Of Image) Songket, What A Piece Of Work, Monkey Trap (Griffin Theatre Company); Universal Playground (Adelaide Festival 2004); The Director’s Cut, Grand, Some Rooms, Shades Of Gray, Ellipse, Air And Other Invisible Forces, Body Of Work, Mythologia (Sydney Dance Company); Tivoli (Australian Ballet/Sydney Dance Company); Swan Lake (Australian Ballet); Flamma Flamma (Adelaide Festival/South Australia Opera); Penelope (Opera UNSW); Grandma’s Shoes, (Theatre of Image/Opera Australia); Red Square (Barrie Kosky’s 1996 Adelaide Festival); The Age Of Unbeauty, Plastic Space, Birdbrain, Attention Deficit Theory, Spectre In The Covert Memory (Australian Dance Theatre); Corrupted 1 + 2, Fleshmeet, Bodyparts (Chunky Move); The Woman in Black, Wild with Style (New Theatricals); Frank: The Sinatra Story In Song (Tom Burlinson); The Lord Of The Rings Symphony (Sydney Opera House); Honour Bound (Sydney Opera House/ Malthouse); The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Revolutionary Productions); Heavy, Remote (Lucy Guerin Dancers); Runners Up, Under The Influence, Homelands (Legs on the Wall); Skipping On Stars, The Gift and Fusion (Flying Fruit Fly Circus); Company (Kookaburra Theatre Company).

Damien graduated from the NIDA Technical Production Course in 1996 where he now lectures in Lighting Design. During 2003 Damien received a Mike Walsh Fellowship which enabled him to travel to America and work with Director Robert Wilson. Damien has won two Sydney Theatre Critics Award for Best Lighting Design for Summer Rain in 2005 and The Lost Echo, Parts One and Two in 2006.

Damien’s most recent productions include The Government Inspector with Bell Shakespeare Company, Riflemind for the Sydney Theatre Company and Company with the Kookaburra Theatre Company and Toy Symphony for Company B, Belvoir. . His forthcoming productions include A Midsummer’s Nights Dream and Chorus with the Houston Grand Opera Association.