Back to Te Maunga's Lighting Designer Harrie Hogan on storyboarding worlds, the elasticity of time, and creating depth.
1. How do you approach your art?
I am routinely working on text based works set in environments I have never experienced, whether they are imaginary, far away or a period work so I spend a lot of time researching. Collating visual arts references, documentary content and learning about heritage lighting techniques all allow me to storyboard a project as if it were a film being shot on location. Even if the design ends up being very stylised, knowing there is a foundation of references and world building I can draw from gives me the confidence to make creative decisions in the thick of a hectic tech week.
I know when I’m really in a project when everything I see or read, no matter how tangential, connects back to the work.
2. What’s your favourite way to work?
There are so many ways lighting can be integrated into the making of a work long before it reaches the stage and I find it so rewarding to be involved in the early genesis of a show.
3. What are you experimenting with in Back to Te Maunga?
The play is set in real time over the course of one hour in a tiny cabin so I’m really looking forward to experimenting with duration and the elasticity of time within that hour. Keegan, the Director, has some really cool ideas for the emotional arc of the show and how design can subvert expectations of Gothic tropes to allow the two characters to forge a new kind of story for Melbourne audiences.
Zoë, Set and Costume Designer, and I are also experimenting to create some literal depth in the La Mama Courthouse space and evoke the nighttime landscape surrounding the cabin.
HARRIE HOGAN (she/her)
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Harrie is a lighting designer working across theatre, circus, musical theatre and experimental performance. She grew up in Sydney before completing a Bachelor's Degree at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her recent design credits include Do Not Pass Go (Melbourne Theatre Company); Honour (Red Stitch Actors' Theatre, 2025); Flesh Mirror (Arts House); Of The Land on Which We Meet (Na Djinang Circus); Milk + Blood (fortyfive Downstairs). She is also an ongoing design collaborator with theatre collective Pony Cam, most recently for The Orchard (Malthouse Theatre). She has been nominated for three Green Room Awards for her work on Kerosene, Sirens, and Grace and her designs have been featured in state festivals and toured overseas. Harrie is a keen collaborator and proud to be counted amongst the growing number of women in her field.
Far right, Harrie Hogan in All This Could Be Yours dress rehearsal. Image by Darren Gill
LA MAMA PRESENTS Antipodes Theatre Company's Back to Te Maunga
From 4 March 2026
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