One thing director Angela Goh learnt about making a film about the Sydney Opera House’s acoustic reflectors known affectionately as “the doughnuts” is that while not everyone loved them, everyone has a story about them.

“People loved to talk to me about them, even if they didn’t like them, they told me lots of ‘first time I saw them’ stories which added to the doughnuts’ mythical qualities,” said Goh.

A still from Angela Goh’s film, The Concert.Credit:Matt McGuigan

Over the years, the 21 lifebuoy-shaped Perspex rings installed in 1972 in the Concert Hall to improve acoustics, have been known by various nicknames: giant “lifesavers” by the workmen who winched them into place, “calamari rings” by the symphony orchestra players who performed beneath them.

But “doughnuts” has been the term of endearment that has stuck for the best part of 50 years. When they were brought down in 2020 for acoustic improvements in the $200 million Concert Hall renovations, the team even honoured the occasion by eating Krispy Kremes onstage.

Since early 2020, they have been sitting in suburban storage until last year when Sydney Opera House Contemporary Art Curator Micheal Do came to Goh with a proposition: turn the “doughnuts” into a piece of contemporary art.

The Sydney Opera House Concert Hall with “doughnut” acoustic reflectors in 2015.Credit:Dallas Kilponen

They now star in Goh’s film The Concert, featuring 20 dancers aged between seven and 75, including director Go who is also a dancer and choreographer.

With cinematography by Matthew McGuigan, an original soundtrack by Corin Ileto which features a song written and performed by Marcus Whale, inspired by the “potency of the doughnuts”, it premieres next month in the Utzon Room.

“In a special project like this, we wanted somebody who would take the proposition to its absolute limit, into new territory… and Angela has absolutely done this,” Do said.

“I had actually never been into the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall before,” Canberra-born Goh said, when she was chosen for the commission.

“But during lockdown, while the Concert Hall renovations were going on, I was alone in the main rehearsal room sitting inside one of the perspex ‘doughnuts’ as if it were a pool floatie, thinking about it as an artefact from the past.

“These Heritage-listed iconic objects began to take on this great gravitas, so I decided to make a film about the objects we remember,” Goh said. “For many Sydneysiders like songwriter Marcus Whale the ‘doughnuts’ loomed large in their childhood memory.”

The film consists of nine chapters, some filmed inside the Concert Hall before renovations were complete, others in an outdoor storage facility at Bringelly in Sydney’s southwest.

Sydney Opera House Heritage Manager Laura Matarese said the doughnuts were a significant part of the Opera House story.

“The acoustic reflectors and their doughnut shape were the result of a collaboration of the acoustic engineer of the time, Dr Wilhelm Jordan, who designed the acoustics of many mid-20th century concert halls, and architect Peter Hall.

“They were a unique shape in the 1970s, not used anywhere else in the world.

A scene from the film with doughnuts and dancers, inside the Concert Hall while it was under renovation.Credit:Matt McGuigan

“They are also part of people’s memory and visual experience of the Concert Hall. However, acoustic technology has evolved significantly since the 1970s, enabling the extensive improvements incorporated in the recent Concert Hall renewal,” she said.

The Concert, part of the Opera House’s Unwrapped will be screened for free November 17-19. Register here.

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