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When Neil Armfield heard that Belvoir, the Sydney theatre company he helmed for 17 years, had lost its storage warehouse in a fire, the first thing he thought of was his washing basket, which had recently been borrowed by artistic director Eamon Flack for a show. It’s strange where the mind goes in moments of shock, and he laughs now at the ridiculousness of this thought. Having made scores of shows at Belvoir during his tenure and in the 15 years since – including acclaimed productions like Cloudstreet – it felt like “my work had been erased,” he says. “It’s a bit like your house burning down.”

This sense of history and nostalgia has brought an extra poignancy to his latest project: a remount of his acclaimed 2010 production The Book of Everything, created in collaboration with Kim Carpenter, his co-artistic director at Belvoir’s predecessor, Nimrod, in the early 80s, and a frequent collaborator through his pioneering visual storytelling company Theatre of Image. The show also stars many of Armfield’s Belvoir stalwarts, including Peter Carroll, Rebecca Massey and Julie Forsyth.

“There is a lot of history, and it’s all sort of woven into [this show],” he reflects, during a rehearsal break in early August.

Thankfully, none of Belvoir’s workshop staff were hurt during the fire, which broke out in the storage and production facility in Marrickville on the afternoon of 22 June, from causes unknown. But the company’s tools, equipment, sets, costumes and props were destroyed, including most of the set materials for The Jungle and the Sea, scheduled to open three weeks later.

Lost to the flames was a disparate collection of chairs originally scavenged from Armfield’s back yard, for use in The Seagull (starring a young Cate Blanchett) which featured in many Belvoir shows, and his plastic-coated wire washing basket.

A washing basket is just a washing basket, but it exemplifies the inventive, junkyard aesthetic and scavenging spirit that has come to characterise Belvoir; what Flack calls “rough magic”, and Belvoir’s production manager, Ren Kenward, calls “tricks from the bin”.

“The number of times in a design and rehearsal process where one of us will go, ‘Oh, we can just grab that thing [from the warehouse]’ or ‘What about the chair from that show?’ – it’s such a big part of how we work,” says Flack. “It was a library of things that we would draw on to make our shows.”

Flack was in rehearsals for The Jungle and the Sea when the fire occurred. In the days after, he recalls, “I kept finding myself saying, ‘Oh, we could just grab’ – and then realising no, it’s all gone.”

Armfield is feeling the loss of his door bell – another item scavenged from home, for use in the original production of The Book of Everything. It was cheap and plastic, but it had a distinctive sound that he had his heart set on. “They don’t make them any more,” he says.

It’s just one small problem in a plethora facing Kenward and the production department in the after the fire. The first hurdle was re-sourcing the materials and creating the sets for The Jungle and the Sea in just 11 days – accomplished by working around the clock in a makeshift workshop set up in a former furniture shop beneath Belvoir’s Surry Hills HQ.

“We didn’t miss even an hour of rehearsals because of how quickly the production team adjusted and pulled together,” Flack says, still incredulous. “It was one of those moments where something horrible brings out something wonderful.”

The Book of Everything presented a different kind of challenge. The sets, designed by Carpenter, were not casualties of the fire. The difficulty was reproducing Carpenter’s designs with no workshop and a tight budget.

Belvoir “runs pretty close to the wire financially”, the executive director, Aaron Beach, says – now so more than ever, with declining arts funding and soaring production and materials costs. What money the company does have, it “likes to invest in people rather than things,” Kenward says.

But The Book of Everything has a large cast, and an elaborate and complex set, including a giant illustrated book with pop-outs and pages that turn, modelled after the wondrous book created by the story’s nine-year-old protagonist Thomas Klopper: a big hearted boy with an even bigger imagination, living in a strict Christian household in postwar Amsterdam, and trying to find joy and magic in the aftermath of Nazi occupation and the shadow of domestic violence.

“The beauty and the spirit of child’s play in this production can really be found in the pages of the book,” says Kenward.

In Belvoir’s temporary workshop, gorgeous recreations of Carpenter’s illustrations, hand-painted on canvas by acclaimed scenic artist Russell Carey, are lying and hanging in the mezzanine space. “It’s the most beautiful way to do it,” Kenward says.

The company had planned to make the rest of the set in-house, to save money, but the loss of the workshop forced them to outsource to more expensive specialists.

Belvoir will be making these kinds of adjustments and financial recalculations for years to come, says Beach. The company has an ethos of “recycle, repurpose, reuse”, and its collection – ranging from small props to an in-the-round seating bank – was built up over “many, many years”; replacing it is a long term project.

In the short term, the company has been amazed and heartened by the outpouring of help from their colleagues in the sector, including offers of space and tools.

“It’s such a shit time for Australian theatre, in terms of funding and policy and everyone is struggling just to keep their company alive, let alone provide any sense of possibility or hope to our artists and our audiences,” Flack says. “So to see all of those companies instantly step out of their own ongoing crises and offer help was so moving. It really does make a difference. It takes the edge off the pain and shock.”

In this context, The Book of Everything is the perfect show to be remounting, Armfield says, “because it’s so much a work about healing, and how through your connection with your family, and yourself, and your community, you can achieve a kind of grace.”