Australia Ensemble UNSW Single Ticket Sale and Creatives Announcement
Australia Ensemble UNSW is excited to announce the opening of single ticket sales to the 2026 season.
We are also thrilled to announce the creative team joining the Ensemble who are behind the delivery of
Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, for the first concert of the season.
Imara Savage | Director
Imara Savage is a director and dramaturg with a cross disciplinary practice, working across opera, ballet,
film, installation, theatre & performance art in both the Australian and international festival market and within State theatre companies.
Imara is the currently undertaking a creative residency with Sydney Chamber Opera focusing on the creation of new work alongside designer Elizabeth Gadsby, lighting designer/director Alexander Berlage and filmmaker Mike Daly.
Imara was the resident director at Sydney Theatre Company between 2016-2018 and the Richard Wherret Fellow in 2014. She was the first Australian woman to have a premiere production of a new work in the Roslyn Packer Theatre with her acclaimed adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s SAINT JOAN. This production featured Sarah Snook in the title role and received multiple Helpmann nominations.
Other credits include; Puccini’s SUOR ANGELICA (IL TRITTICO) (Opera Australia); Andrew Upton’s THE SEAGULL, Caryl Churchill’s TOP GIRLS, Andrew Bovell’s AFTER DINNER, Sophie Treadwell’s MACHINAL, Moira Buffini’s DINNER, Colm Toibin’s THE TESTAMENT OF MARY, and Noel Coward’s HAYFEVER (Sydney Theatre Company); Elliott Gyger’s FLY AWAY PETER (adapted from the novel by David Malouf), IN THE PENAL COLONY, and Benjamin Britten's OWEN WINGRAVE (Sydney Chamber Opera).
In 2022, Imara directed the world premiere of Mary Finsterer and Tom Wright’s ANTARCTICA, presented by SCO and leading Dutch new music ensemble Asko|Schönberg in the Holland Festival (June, Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ, Amsterdam), followed by a second season at the 2023 Sydney Festival.
In 2022 the same creative team presented an Australian-first staging of Benjamin Britten’s Canticles, interwoven with the Australian premiere of Sydney-born composer Luke Styles’ response to them, AWAKENING SHADOW, in a co- presentation with Carriageworks.
This award-winning creative team collaborated in 2019 for the SCO/Sydney Festival production of Kaija Saariaho’s LA PASSION DE SIMONE, described by Time Out as “bold, uncompromising and musically spectacular… extraordinarily rich and rewarding.”
Michael Hankin | Designer
Michael Hankin is a multi-award-winning set designer whose practice encompasses theatre, opera, dance, and film.
Dance & Opera: Il Trittico (Opera Australia); The Lighthouse and In the Penal Colony (Sydney Chamber Opera); 247 Days (Chunky Move/Malthouse Theatre); and You Animal You and Flock (Force Majeure).
Theatre: On The Beach and Jumpy (STC); Golden Blood (Griffin, STC, and MTC); Amplified, Into The Woods, The Boomkak Panto, Wayside Bride, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, The Glass Menagerie, Hir, Angels in America, Ghosts, Ivanov, Twelfth Night, The Sugarhouse, The Great Fire, Mark Colvin’s Kidney, and The Darkroom (Belvoir St Theatre); Ugly Mugs (Griffin Theatre); The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Othello (Bell Shakespeare); Memorial (Barbican Centre); Insane Animals (Manchester’s Home Theatre); The Aspirations of Daise Morrow and Tartuffe (Brink Productions); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Queen’s Nanny, and Liberty Equality Fraternity (Ensemble Theatre); A Model Murder (Sydney Festival); and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Theatre Royal).
Film & Television: Michael was art director for Ireland’s 2020 Eurovision entry, challenge designer for Survivor Australia (S6), and weapons designer/co-ordinator for Three Thousand Years of Longing.
Michael trained at NIDA, where he later returned to teach as an Associate Lecturer of Design.
Mitch Riley | Actor
Mitch Riley is a versatile artist, interpreting and devising works in opera, theatre, music and clowning. His performances have been critically acclaimed, often noting his “unique vocal timbre” and “astonishing
physical abilities”.
Recent work includes Pierrot lunaire (Sydney Chamber Opera/Ensemble Offspring), Clouds still know our names (New Old Now dance company), Ruins (Clockfire Theatre) and Midnight Static (BackStage Music).
He is an artistic associate of Sydney Chamber Opera and has performed as a soloist in nearly twenty of the company’s productions, including major works by György Kurtág, Pascal Dusapin and Peter Maxwell-Davies, and new works by Australia composers Jack Symonds, Elliott Gyger, Bree van Reyk, Michael Smetanin and Huw Belling.
Mitch studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (classical voice) and the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School. He also trained extensively in clowning, puppetry and object theatre whilst living in France.
Mitch teaches French diction and stagecraft at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
For more information click HERE
