PAWA Awards – GUI SHU take home Best Stage Design and Best Lighting

Steamworks Arts’ most recent work, GUI SHU, has taken out Best Set Design (Tyler Hill and Ashley de Prazer) and Best Lighting (Chris Donnelly) at the 2019 Performing Arts WA Awards early this month.

Co-produced with the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), GUI SHU premiered in November 2019 and is the result of a 4-year cross-cultural collaboration between Australia and Taiwan. Devised by an extraordinary collective of independent artists, the show blends together dance, sound, music, and video projections live on stage, with audiences sitting on three sides, offering different viewing experiences.

Often with dance, the choreographers are (rightfully so) quite concerned with every audience member being able to see every movement. I was lucky that Sally Richardson (the Director) was on board immediately for having certain elements of the show only seen by particular sections of the audience.”

shares Chris Donnelly

“The concept of balance is threaded all through this show, and particularly in the lighting design. We tweaked the plot several times to find the right balance between seeing the dancers, the projection, the costumes, the musicians, the screens and my design elements – but not blowing any of them out, making sure every angle was getting the best possible show we could provide.”

GUI SHU is definitely a career highlight. Right from the original development, the entire team had a spontaneous connection.”

says Ashley de Prazer

“I would very much like to thank Sally Richardson for her willingness to allow me the freedom to explore crazy ideas and her openness to actually put them on stage. The connections we all made on this project with our Taiwanese colleagues I’m sure will continue onto future adventures.”

Congratulations not only to Ashley de Prazer, Tyler Hill and Chris Donnelly but the entire team on creating such a magical work of art!

GUI SHU is produced by Performing Lines WA and has received support from the WA Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, the City of Perth and the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.

The work also received support towards its development from the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Taipei Artists Village, Mandurah Performing Arts Centre, Strut Dance, The Bundanon Trust, Taipei Performing Arts Centre (ADAM 2018) and Ausdance (Open Studios, Dance Massive 2019).