Dianne Wolfer’s Lighthouse Girl Saga, adapted to the stage by Theatre 180, to premiere in Albany next week

Dianne Wolfer’s Lighthouse Girl book series has been adapted in a new production that blends cinema elements with the stage and premieres in Albany next week. The adaptation by Theatre 180 brings together the Albany-based author’s acclaimed four-part historical fiction series into one production. The series began with Lighthouse Girl in 2009, was followed by 2014’s Light Horse Boy, In the Lamplight in 2018 and the final instalment The Last Light Horse, which was released last year. Wolfer said she was “really excited and honoured” to see her series, which follows the titular Lighthouse Girl Fay and characters Charlie, Jim, Rose and Sandy, the only warhorse to return from World War 1, brought to the stage. Their intersecting stories travel from the First Australian Imperial Force convoy that embarked from King George Sound to Gallipoli, the muddy trenches of the Western Front, rural England and country Victoria. Wolfer lent her historical expertise, developed through the years of research that went into perfecting the true-to-life aspects of her books, to the production’s writing team of Jenny Davis and Hellie Turner. The adaptation, starring Sienna Cate as Fay, Isaac Diamond and Nick Maclaine is the second time Turner and director Stuart Halusz have worked with Wolfer’s series after they also helmed a version of the first two books for the Black Swan Theatre Company in 2017. Halusz said he felt he had unfinished business with the story and wanted to stage another adaptation now the series was completed. “It’s such a special story and we got such a good reaction to it from audiences, I felt I needed to approach it again,” he said. The Lighthouse Girl Saga marks Theatre 180’s third adaptation of a WA story into their “CineStage” format, after A. B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life and Sydney II: Lost and Found. The CineStage style blends cinema with theatre, with a screen acting as a backdrop on the stage that also tells parts of the story and reveals details of the characters. Halusz said the style of production suited The Lighthouse Girl Saga, which travels from Albany to the World War 1 battlefields. “This particular genre is ideally suited to epic storytelling where you’ve got a range of characters,” Halusz said. “The screen acts as a backdrop to the action on stage, not just to give locational settings and that sort of thing but also to provide this huge canvas on which you can explore the emotional journey of the characters. “We use the screen in an abstract way, but we also use it in a very strong, strident visual way to underpin the settings and the locations. “The scenes in this play, for example, we’ve got war scenes in the mud of the trenches of France and the Somme, we’ve got the pyramids of Egypt and the night sky. “And it’s just such a wonderful opportunity to evoke a visual storytelling that supports and augments what’s going on stage.” Production audio and visual designer Josephine Hayes has developed what will be shown on the screen and said the visual elements on stage would behave “like a subconscious”. “I’m really working to combine those two elements of theatre and cinema together and really bring out those moments that really sing out with impact,” Hayes said. “But also I’m weaving motifs and symbols all the way through, so that what you see in the background is giving you that deeper level of insight and understanding into the characters.” Some of the footage shown on screen was filmed in Albany last month, including scenes with the 10th Light Horse Albany Troop on a property in Warrenup and at Breaksea Island in King George Sound. A boatful of crew members, including Hayes, Halusz and Wolfer, travelled out to the island where drone footage was shot of the lighthouse. It took the production back to the real-life setting of the first book where the real Lighthouse Girl, Fay Catherine Howe, lived as the lighthouse keeper’s daughter. While in Albany, the production’s theme song was also recorded featuring local performers, including the Albany Shantymen. It even includes Wolfer’s vocals, with the author singing “very far in the background”. For Wolfer, it was vital that there be a strong Albany connection to the behind-the-scenes of the production, given the series begins in a local setting, was written by a local writer, features locals in the crew and will premiere locally. “It’s been terrific to have the team come down here to Albany; it really honours the story and the really strong links to Albany, which I think an Albany audience will really resonate with,” she said. For Halusz, it was “always a given” to premiere The Lighthouse Girl Saga in Albany at the Entertainment Centre — which he said “rivals the Sydney Opera House” — that looks out to King George Sound, where the first Anzac convoy gathered in 1914. “It was essential for us to say this story belongs to Albany,” he said. “It’s seated there, part of the story ends there. It’s so ingrained in the Anzac legend that it makes sense.” The Lighthouse Girl Saga premieres at the Albany Entertainment Centre on February 23 and 24, with shows on both days at 11am and 7pm. It will officially open with a gala event at the 7pm show on February 23, with the 10th Light Horse Albany Troop in attendance. Tickets are available from bit.ly/ 3lhKO4E