Trent Suidgeest

Lighting Designer

Trent Suidgeest is a dynamic young Lighting Designer who made his Opera Australia mainstage debut with Carmen in the 2016 Winter Season.

2015 began in collaboration with director John Sheedy on the Perth International Arts Festival / Melbourne Festival commission The Rabbits, a new opera by Kate Miller-Heidke, Lally Katz and Iain Grandage produced by Opera Australia and Barking Gecko Theatre Company. This marked a climax working for Barking Gecko with previous designs including Jasper Jones and Duck, Death & The Tulip and This Girl Laughs.

He has enjoyed collaborations on many of Perth Festival’s major hits in the past few years including Waltzing the Wilarra for Yirra Yaakin and The Sapphires for Black Swan and Belvoir, both directed by Wesley Enoch. The latter went on to travel Australia and internationally to South Korea and London’s Barbican, and was the beginning of his mainstage work at Black Swan State Theatre Company, an early-career defining relationship of 20+ commissions including co-productions with Queensland Theatre Company (Gasp!, Managing Carmen, Other Desert Cities) Melbourne Theatre Company (National Interest). Other highlights for Black Swan have included: Next to Normal, When The Rain Stops Falling, The White Divers of Broome, Boy Gets Girl. As Set and Lighting Designer: Dinner, Shrine, Death of a Salesman.

Other lighting credits: I Am Eora for Sydney Festival/Performing Lines, Nice Work If You Can Get It, The King & I, Kismet (The Production Company)

Trent designed the lighting to launch the Jackman Furness Foundation for the Performing Arts and for the Perth Festival Gardens 2012-2015.

In 2015 he was a recipient of the Mike Walsh Fellowship and the Department of Culture and the Arts Young People Fellowship. He received an OzCo Creative Professionals Grant in 2014 and an Artstart Grant in 2010.