Nick Schlieper designs for all of the major performing arts companies in Australia and works regularly in Europe and the USA. He is one of Australia’s most highly awarded designers having received six Melbourne Green Room Awards, eight Sydney Theatre Awards (2 for set design and 6 for lighting design), the inaugural 2013 Australian Production Designers Guild Best Lighting Design Award, as well as 5 national Helpmann Awards.
Nick Schlieper will begin his year recreating his design for the West End London production of STC’s Dracula starring Cynthia Erivo. Back in Sydney, he returns to Opera Australia to light the highly-acclaimed production of Phantom of the Opera for Handa on Sydney Harbour. He will then journey back to London to light Simon Stone’s production of Ivanov at The Bridge Theatre, before once again joining his long-term collaborator, Simon Phillips, to light The Unfriend for Sydney Theatre Company. Nick rounds out his year with another production for Archipeligo Productions, The Children, with Marta Dusseldorp.
Nick’s most recent international work includes Love Never Dies in Tokyo and The Picture of Dorian Gray in both London and subsequently in New York with Sarah Snook (for which he received both a Tony Award nomination as well as a Broadway World Theater Fans’ Choice Award nomination for best lighting design); Reiman’s Lear, Martinu’s Greek Passion (winner of Opera Magazine’s 2023 Best Opera Production of the year) and Cherubini’s Médée (also seen at the National Opera of Poland, Warsaw), all for Salzburg Festival and Penderecki’s Die Teufel von Loudun at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich.
His significant list of recent credits for STC includes Happy Days (set and lighting and co-direction) with Pamela Rabe, Into the Shimmering World, Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Tempest, Playing Beatie Bow, The Real Thing, Saint Joan, Harp in the South, A Cheery Soul, The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI, Chimerica, Three Sisters, All My Sons; for MTC: As You Like It, Macbeth, Twelfth Night and Photograph 51 (also set design); for Company B Belvoir: Grief Is The Thing With Feathers (STA Award for Best Lighting, and co-set design with Simon Phillips), Orlando, The Master and Margarita, The Cherry Orchard, Packer and Sons, Ghosts and Twelfth Night; and for Bangarra: Sandsong, Bennelong (also at Adelaide Festival), Unaipon, Patyegarang and Bush (which has toured extensively in the USA and to London).
His international work includes productions of Waiting for Godot (at The Barbican, London), Billy Budd and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hamburg State Opera; The Hostage for the Royal Shakespeare Company; The Government Inspector for Theatr Clwyd in Wales; Armut, Reichtum and The Ginger Man for Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg; Kasimir und Karoline and Lea’s Hochzeit for Theater in der Josefstadt, in Vienna; U.F.A. Revue in Berlin and the Kennedy Centre Washington; Michael Kramer and Ein Florentinerhut for Schillertheater in Berlin; Michael Bogdanov’s productions of Macbeth and Peer Gynt for the State Theatre of Bavaria; Uncle Vanya and Private Confessions (both directed by Liv Ullman) for The National Theatre of Norway; Aristokraten in Stuttgart. The Present, Hedda Gabler and A Streetcar Named Desire, all with Cate Blanchett, also played in New York.
Nick’s work in Music Theatre includes Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in Australia, on Broadway, the West End, Toronto, and Sao Paolo and Love Never Dies in Hamburg, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne and a US national tour for The Really Useful Company.
His extensive work in opera in Australia includes Don Giovanni, Nabucco, Tannhäuser, Il Trovatore, L’elisir d’amore, Andrea Chenier, Freischütz, Falstaff and ‘Seraglio’ for Opera Australia; Salome (lighting and set design) and Parsifal for State Opera South Australia; Flying Dutchman, Don Giovanni, and Ken Russell’s Madama Butterfly for Victorian State Opera; Macbeth (lighting and set design) and The Elixir of Love for Opera New Zealand and Don Giovanni (lighting and set design) for Opera Queensland. He was also lighting and associate set designer of the first Australian production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Adelaide in 2004.
His many other theatre credits include Endgame (for which he won the Sydney Critics Award for Best Stage design in a Mainstage production), The Present, King Lear, The Serpent’s Teeth, Blackbird, Dissident, Mother Courage, The Season at Sarsaparilla, A Kind of Alaska/Reunion, Hedda Gabler, Victory, A Doll’s House, Volpone, Don Juan, Cyrano de Bergerac, A Delicate Balance, Les Parents Terribles, The Life of Galileo, Pentecost, As You Like It, Threepenny Opera, and Racing Demon for Sydney Theatre Company; North by Northwest and Death and the Maiden (lighting and set design), Hamlet, Pennsylvania Avenue, Ninety, The Glass Soldier, Cyrano de Bergerac, Two Brothers, The Visit, Inheritance, Great Expectations, Proof, The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, Poor Boy, and Measure for Measure for Melbourne Theatre Company; The Department, Cosi, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Marat/Sade, Kafka Dances, and The Idiot for State Theatre Company of South Australia; The Tempest, Good Works (lighting and set design), and XPO for Queensland Theatre Company; Lulu, Black Mary, The Unexpected Man, and Measure for Measure for Belvoir Street Theatre.
He has also designed lighting for Scheherazade for the Australian Ballet, the acclaimed Cinderella for Royal New Zealand Ballet and many works for Bangarra Dance Company.
Nick has served on the boards of Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne and Belvoir St Theatre Ltd in Sydney. He has consulted on theatre and architectural projects and has taught extensively, including a 10-year post as guest lecturer at the Bayerische Theaterakademie in Munich.