Theatre-maker | performer | teacher
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Mitch Riley is a versatile artist, interpreting and devising works in opera, theatre, music, dance, clowning and puppetry. His performances have been critically acclaimed, often noting his “unique vocal timbre” and “astonishing physical abilities”. He has been sought after as a movement coach, and as an "outside eye" in the development of new works. In December 2024, Mitch returned to Australia after more than 8 years based in France.
Recent work includes Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale (Australia Ensemble UNSW), concerts with Ensemble Offspring (Avant Gardens Summer, Visions of Purple), Clouds still know our names (New Old Now dance company), Pierrot lunaire (Sydney Chamber Opera/Ensemble Offspring), and Midnight Static (BackStage Music).
Mitch studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (Bachelor of Music - classical voice). Wanting to develop his skills as a performer and theatre-maker, he later studied at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in France, renowned for its work around the body of the actor and the mask. Whilst in France, Mitch also studied clowning with Vincent Rouche and Hervé Langlois, and puppetry and object theatre with artists from the Compagnie Philippe Genty, La Nef and Les Anges au Plafond.
Central to his career has been his collaboration with Sydney Chamber Opera, which has seen him perform works by Pascal Dusapin (O Mensch!, Passion), György Kurtág (...pas à pas - nulle part...), Peter Maxwell-Davies (The Lighthouse), as well as giving world premieres of operas by Jack Symonds (Gilgamesh, The Shape of the Earth, Climbing Toward Midnight, I've Had Enough, Notes from Underground), Elliott Gyger (Oscar and Lucinda, Fly Away Peter), Huw Belling (Victory over the Sun), Bree van Reyk (The Invisible Bird), Peggy Polias (Commute), Josephine Macken (The Tent), and Michael Smetanin (Mayakovsky). He was camera operator on SCO's world-premiere production of Aphrodite by Nico Muhly.
Alongside this work, Mitch's career has seen him involved in a range of projects across different artistic forms, including L’Homme est une fleur, a theatrical adaptation of music by György Kurtág combining physical theatre and clowning (La compagnie des choses humaines, le Quatuor Béla); V-I-T-R-I-O-L by choreographer Francesca Bonato and composer Aurélien Dumont; Maman. Source, Origin, Cause., a play created and directed by Marta Tkaczuk; as Ensemble Collaborator on Clockfire Theatre’s production of Ruins; performances by Collective Disorder (previously Chronology Arts), an emergent experimental multi-disciplinary collective based in Sydney.
He has performed with various contemporary music ensembles, including Ensemble Offspring, Ensemble Offrandes, and Manchester Collective, and at a number of international festivals, such as the Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije (France), Louth Contemporary Music Festival (Ireland), Sydney Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, and Resonant Bodies Sydney. He has collaborated with Australian artists Justene Williams (Biennale of Sydney, National Gallery of Australia) and Kirsty Kross (Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf).
He has also been involved in the creation of various works for clown(s), most notably Perte, a work he directed and co-wrote with the French clown Ruthy Scetbon.
Teaching is one of Mitch’s great loves, whether giving workshops on movement or the interpretation of texts and arias for young professionals in opera and theatre, devising new works with amateur theatre troupes, or introducing children to the worlds of clowning and puppetry. He is a lecturer in stagecraft/acting and French diction at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Mitch is an artistic associate of Sydney Chamber Opera.