Mitch Riley

Mitch Riley is a performer, theatre-maker and educator whose work spans opera, contemporary music, theatre, clowning and physical performance. Originally trained as a classical singer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, he has always been drawn to forms of performance in which music, movement and dramatic expression are inseparable. An early encounter with the music of György Kurtág brought this passion into focus and eventually led him to the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris, where he discovered a way of making theatre centred on play, physical expression and collective creation.

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A long-standing artistic partnership with Sydney Chamber Opera has seen him perform in more than twenty productions, including world premieres by Jack Symonds, Elliott Gyger, Huw Belling and Bree van Reyk, alongside works by Pascal Dusapin, Liza Lim, György Kurtág and Peter Maxwell Davies. Mitch is an Artistic Associate of Sydney Chamber Opera.

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Beyond opera, his work extends across contemporary music, dance and physical theatre through projects with organisations including Ensemble Offspring, New Old Now and Clockfire Theatre. As co-founder of the French theatre company La compagnie des choses humaines, he created and toured original interdisciplinary works, an experience that continues to inform the way he approaches performance, rehearsal and the development of new work.

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Today, Mitch is increasingly invited into the creative process of new productions as both a performer and assistant director, contributing to their conception and development from within the rehearsal room. He is drawn to rehearsal processes that seek the theatrical language most appropriate to each work.

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Mitch also lectures in Stagecraft, Acting and French Diction at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His teaching draws on the same principles that underpin his creative practice, encouraging singers to approach musical performance as a living theatrical event in which voice, body and imagination work together.​