Nick Schlieper

Nick Schlieper designs for all of Australia’s main theatres and opera houses, and also works regularly in Europe and the USA. He is one of Australia’s most-awarded designers, and has received seven Sydney Critics Awards (two for set design and five for lighting design), seven Melbourne Green Room Awards and five Helpmann Awards for best lighting design.
His international work includes Lear and Médée for the Salzburg Festival, Billy Budd and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hamburg State Opera, Die Teufel von Loudun at the Bavarian State Opera, The Hostage for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Government Inspector for Theatre Clwyd in Wales, Waiting for Godot at the Barbican Centre in London, Armut, Reichtum, Mensch und Tier and The Ginger Man at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, Kasimir und Karoline and Leas Hochzeit at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, UFA-Revue in Berlin and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Michael Kramer and Ein Florentinerhut at the Schillertheater in Berlin, Michael Bogdanov’s productions of Macbeth and Peer Gynt at the Residenztheater in Munich, Liv Ullmann’s productions of Uncle Vanya and Private Confessions at the National Theatre in Oslo, Aristokraten at the Schauspiel Stuttgart, Away and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at the Summerfare Festival in New York and Hedda Gabler, A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya and The Maids – all with Cate Blanchett – in New York.
Nick Schlieper’s numerous productions at the Sydney Theatre Company include The Tempest, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chimerica, Macbeth, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Present, Big and Small and The War of the Roses and also – as both a set and lighting designer – Endgame, Face to Face and Baal. At the Melbourne Theatre Company he has designed lighting for productions including As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Richard III and Hamlet, and sets and lighting for North by Northwest, Photograph 51 and Death and the Maiden. The Present was also staged on Broadway, Big and Small in Vienna, Paris and London and North by Northwest in Bath and Toronto. His lighting design for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was seen – after the show’s Australian opening – in London’s West End and on Broadway.
Nick Schlieper has designed lighting for many of Opera Australia’s productions. In 2004 he designed lighting for the first complete production of Wagner’s Ring, in Adelaide.
From 1996 to 2006 he was guest lecturer in lighting design at the Bavarian Theatre Academy in Munich.