Damien Cooper

Lighting Designer

Damien’s career highlights include Neil Armfield’s production of The Ring Cycle for Opera Australia; Exit The King on Broadway starring Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon; Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake for the Australian Ballet which has been presented in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo; Keating! The Musical, Australia’s most successful subsidised theatre show ever; and Australian Dance Theatre’s Birdbrain which has played over 60 venues around the world.

Damien’s opera design includes Alcina, The Magic Flute, Death In Venice for Opera Australia; Aida, Così fan tutte and Peter Grimes for Opera Australia and Canadian Opera Company; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Houston Grand Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Lyric Opera Chicago; Chorus! for HGO; Penelope for Opera UNSW; Grandma’s Shoes for Theatre of Image/Opera Australia, Julius Caesar for Victorian Opera Company and Flamma Flamma for Adelaide Festival and South Australia Opera.

Damien has designed more than 100 theatre productions, including: Disgraced, Arcadia, Suddenly Last Summer, Arms In The Man, Orlando, Cyrano De Bergerac, Children Of The Sun, The Effect, The Long Way Home; Storm Boy, The Splinter, Under Milk Wood, Pygmalion, Women of Troy, The Great, Riflemind, The Art of War, Ying Tong, The Lost Echo Parts I and II, Fat Pig, A Hard God, The Cherry Orchard, Summer Rain, Metamorphosis, Boy Gets Girl, Julius Caesar, Far Away, Bed, Thyestes, Morph, The Shape Of Things, These People, King Lear, This Little Piggy (Sydney Theatre Company); The Great Fire, Radiance, Blue Wizard, Elektra/Orestes, The Glass Menagerie, Corranderk, Miss Julie, Stories I Want To Tell You In Person, Peter Pan, Conversation Piece, Strange Interlude, Summer Of The Seventeenth Doll, The Seagull, Toy Symphony, Keating!, Peribanez, Stuff Happens, The Chairs, The Spook, In Our Name, Underpants, The Cosmonaut’s Last Message To The Women He Loved In The Former Soviet Union, The Ham Funeral (Company B, Belvoir); Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Belvoir/Theatre Royal); Neighbourhood Watch (Melbourne Theatre Company); Exit The King (Malthouse/Company B, Belvoir); Honour Bound (Sydney Opera House/ Malthouse); Macbeth, The Tempest, The Government Inspector (Bell Shakespeare Company); Doctor Zhivago (Gordon Frost Organisation); Theft of Sita, Three Furies (Performing Lines); Am I (Sydney Festival and Adelaide Festival); Habitus, Universal Playground, Ainadamar, Red Square (Adelaide Festival); The Rocky Horror Show (Paul Dainty Productions); Company (Kookaburra Theatre Company); Self Esteem (Wharf2Loud, STC); The Happy Prince, Gypsy Boy, Hansel And Gretel, Exotic Pleasures (Theatre Of Image); Songket, What A Piece Of Work, Monkey Trap (Griffin Theatre Company); The Director’s Cut, Grand, Some Rooms, Shades Of Gray, Ellipse, Air And Other Invisible Forces, Body Of Work, Mythologia (Sydney Dance Company); The Navigator (Elision Ensemble/ Brisbane Festival); The Narrative Of Nothing, Romeo and Juliet (The Australian Ballet); Tivoli (Australian Ballet/Sydney Dance Company); The Age Of Unbeauty, Plastic Space, Birdbrain, Attention Deficit Theory, Spectre, In The Covert Memory (Australian Dance Theatre); Mortal Engine, Corrupted 1 + 2, Fleshmeet, Bodyparts (Chunky Move); The Woman in Black, Wild with Style (New Theatricals); Frank: The Sinatra Story In Song (Tom Burlinson); The Lord Of The Rings Symphony (Sydney Opera House); The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Revolutionary Productions); Puncture, Runners Up, Under The Influence, Homelands (Legs on the Wall); Skipping On Stars, The Gift and Fusion (Flying Fruit Fly Circus) and Mathinna (Bangarra Dance Theatre); Cut The Sky (Marrugeku Theatre); Be Yourself (Australian Dance Theatre); Giselle (Universal Ballet) and Team Of Life, Sundowner (KAGE Physical Theatre Company).

Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Lighting Design, three Green Room awards for Best Lighting Design and he won the inaugural Australian Production Designers Guild Award for Lighting Design for his work on The Ring Cycle for Opera Australia.