When the same person writes it, directs the vision, builds the set and designs the costumes, a show stops feeling assembled
Here's a small idea about creative work that Varuna proved to me better than any project I've done: coherence is easier to build than to assemble.
Most productions are assembled. A writer hands off to a director, who hands off to a designer, who hands off to a costume department, and everyone is good, and something is quietly lost at every handoff. On Varuna, several of those handoffs didn't happen, because they were the same person. I came on as co-writer, creative director, and set and costume designer — four jobs, one pair of hands — and the show holds together in a way that's hard to get any other way.
The basics: Varuna opened at Bali Safari Park in 2023, directed by Peter Wilson and produced by Taman Safari Indonesia. It's Indonesia's first underwater theatre and a dinner show in one. The name is Varuna — the deity of the waters in Hindu tradition — and it's built from a classic Balinese fantasy.
Why holding four jobs is a design method, not an ego trip
This isn't about going everything yourself for the sake of it. It's about where ideas leak. When a single decision has to travel through four departments, it gets reinterpreted four times, and by the end the costume is solving a different problem than the one the writing set up. Keep the core decisions in one place and the whole thing lines up. The story asks for something; the set answers it; the costume finishes the sentence — with no translation loss in between.
The living-world constraint
Varuna raised its own bar in a way most shows don't: parts of it are real. There's a back-wall aquarium with marine life and live mermaid performers in water. Once something genuinely alive is in the frame, every built element has to be good enough to stand next to the real thing without looking like a prop. That constraint made the design sharper, not harder — real things next to your work are the most honest critics you'll ever get.
The costumes took the brunt of it. They perform under underwater light, against glass, beside performers in water — an environment where a lot of "nice" fabric simply dies. So they were designed for that specific medium: how they move, how they hold colour when everything is blue and slow, how they survive being worn night after night in a permanent show.
The lesson I took from Varuna is portable: if you want a thing to feel whole, keep its core decisions close together. Coherence isn't something you add at the end. It's something you protect from the beginning.
More on Varuna: full gallery on Behance · the design-challenge piece.
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About Patrick Larsen
Patrick Larsen is an Emmy Award–winning production designer and the founder of Studio Bound, a Singapore studio working across immersive experiences, themed attractions, live shows, ceremonies and broadcast design. In partnership with Taman Safari Indonesia he co-wrote, creative-directed and designed the sets and costumes for the underwater dinner show Varuna in Bali. Over more than two decades he has designed for the Expo 2020 Dubai ceremonies, Olympic broadcasts, Las Vegas residencies, and resident shows across Asia and the Middle East.
