Kaoru Alfonso's design for Stopera's Jane Eyre

BIOGRAPHY
Kaoru Alfonso has produced work in lighting design, multi-media installations, soundscapes and site-specific design for a number of theatre, opera and dance companies, as well as working as a sculpture and installation artist. The companies, theatres, festivals and organisations he has worked with include: Ausdance, Culturally Innovative Arts (CIA), Australian Choreographic Centre, Festivals ACT, Festival of Sydney, Pacific Wave Festival, The Performance Space (Sydney) The Street Theatre, Jigsaw Theatre, Padma Menon Dance Theatre, Stopera, Splinters, Shadowhouse PITS, Mirramu Dance Company.

Works for Splinters include Utopia/Distopia (1995), Long Time Earth View Gone (1996), Mysteries (1996 with Nigel Kellaway) and Faust (1996). He produced installation work for Compression 100 (1996) with Tess De Quincy, a project of 100 perfomances in 100 different locations in one month. He was the multimedia consultant for The Pool is Damned (1997) for Company in Space and worked with Nigel Kellaway on The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (1997).

For Stopera he worked on two productions in 2001 as production manager and designer respectively: the double-bill of 1950’s American operas, The Pet Shop (Rieti) and The Medium (Menotti), and the centenary tribute Viva Verdi! In 2002, he was designer for the Stopera production of The Country Philosopher (Galuppi), which toured to the Castlemaine State Festival in 2003. In September 2003, he was also part of the design team and production manager for cantata, a Stopera production of French baroque opera devised and directed by noted contemporary theatre artist, Nigel Kellaway.

In 2005 he was designer for Stopera’s Australian premiere of Jane Eyre by Michael Berkeley and David Malouf, creating a stunning on-stage art installation, using video projections and materials from the burnt-out ruins of Mt Stromlo.

In 2003 he was designer for the Australian premiere of Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, presented by Operalive! in Melbourne. Also in 2003 he designed two productions for Melbourne Opera Company, The Magic Flute (Mozart) and The Pearlfishers (Bizet).

Other theatre design work by Kaoru includes: dance works Seen but not heard (Janine Ayres), Silk & Sun; Landscape; and Red Sun (Mirramu Dance Company); The Looking Glass (Vivienne Rogis & Australian Choreographic Centre); and theatre works: Violine; The Maids; Speaking in Tongues; and Ivanov (The Street Theatre). Most recently he worked with director Caroline Stacey on the design and visual projections for the play QED at The Street Theatre in July 2006.

Kaoru is a member of the Canberra artists’ collective Temple State and has collaborated on touring exhibitions and public art installations for festivals in Canberra and Sydney. He has also toured Australia with the Japanese theatre company Kashinoki and collaborated with Teatro Galego in Spain.