What is Chamber Made?

Discover the story of an ever-evolving company

Anyone familiar with Chamber Made will tell you it is a many-headed beast.

Established in 1988 as Chamber Made Opera, the company began as the only performing arts company in Australia exclusively dedicated to the creation and presentation of entirely original, new chamber opera.

Stretching and inverting the meanings of both ‘chamber’ and ‘opera’ was always part of the brief, and since 2014 that formative focus on chamber opera has broadened out into an expansive interest in creating works that re-imagine how music and performance can converge and interact.

The works emerging from this model are engaging and complex, and in each case the mode and format of presentation emerges out of a deep consideration of the relationship between form and content, expression and reception.

View a collection of Chamber Made’s works – click here

SYSTEM_ERROR

Creator/performer: Tamara Saulwick
Creator/performer/sound and instrument designer: Alisdair Macindoe
Director: Lucy Guerin
Data visualisation artist: Melanie Huang
Lighting designer: Amelia Lever-Davidson
Text consultant: Emilie Collyer
Audio Engineer: Nick Roux

Book tickets to SYSTEM_ERROR here

Tamara Saulwick

Appointed as Artistic Director in early 2017, Tamara is an accomplished performance-maker, director and dramaturg working across and between artforms. Over 20 years, she has presented her award-winning work nationally & internationally, most recently touring Endings to Canada, USA, Ireland and the UK. Other works include the Green Room Award winning Pin Drop, audio walks Seddon Archives and Newport Archives, PUBLIC (nominated for an Outstanding Hybrid Performance Green Room Award) and audio/visual installation work Alter. Tamara is an Australia Council Theatre Fellow (2015/2016) and has a PhD in Performance Studies from Victoria University.

Tamara’s first work for Chamber Made, Permission to Speak, co-created with composer Kate Neal, won the 2017 APRA/AMCOS Victorian Performance of the Year and was nominated for Choral/Vocal Work of The Year.

Alisdair Macindoe

Alisdair has been working in the Melbourne contemporary dance scene for 15 years as a performer, composer and sound designer. His experience in these fields has taken his work to many countries and cities worldwide, earning critical acclaim in the media and receiving local and international awards including five Green Room Awards, a Helpmann, and a New York Bessie. Notable collaborations include his work as a dancer for Lucy Guerin, Chunky Move, Antony Hamilton and Stephanie Lake and his sound design work for Chunky Move, Antony Hamilton and Dancenorth. As a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans performance and technology, the intersection of humans and technology is one of his recurring interests.

Lucy Guerin

Lucy Guerin is a Melbourne-based choreographer and Artistic Director of Lucy Guerin Inc, a contemporary dance company founded in 2002. It supports the development, creation and touring of new works with a focus on challenging and extending the concepts and practice of movement and dance.

Guerin has toured her work extensively in Europe, Asia and North America as well as to most of Australia’s major festivals and venues. Her work is presented regularly in Paris at Théâtre de la Ville. She has been commissioned by Chunky Move, Dance Works Rotterdam (Netherlands), Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project (USA), Lyon Opera Ballet (France), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden) and Rambert (UK) among many others. Her awards include the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, a New York Bessie and several Green Room Awards, Helpmann Awards and Australian Dance Awards. In 2016, Guerin received the Australia Council Award for Dance.

Melanie Huang

Melanie Huang is an interactive designer for the arts, culture and education sectors collaborating with institutions such as Dark Mofo, NGV and Art Gallery of NSW. She is founder of Technecolour, an RMIT sessional lecturer of Creative Coding and is passionate about building communities around the creative side of technology.

Emilie Collyer

In her artistic practice Emilie writes plays, prose and poetry. Awards and shortlistings of note include Patrick White Award, Green Room Award, Melbourne Fringe Best Emerging Writer, George Fairfax Award, Queensland Premier’s Drama Award and Scarlet Stiletto Awards. She has been widely published in a range of literary journals and has two collections of short fiction published with Clan Destine Press.

Collyer has been commissioned, supported by and worked with organisations including Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, Wheeler Centre, Varuna Writers Centre, Darebin Arts Speakeasy, Big West Festival, Arena Theatre and ABC Radio. Emilie is a graduate of Professional Writing and Editing Diploma RMIT and Masters in Writing for Performance VCA, University of Melbourne and is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at RMIT.

Nick Roux

Nick Roux is an artist working in sound and video. His work is primarily focused on live performance and has manifested itself in composition, instrument creation, computer programming and visual/spatial design. He has created work locally and internationally across a wide spectrum of artistic platforms from solo gallery performances to multi-million dollar mainstage theatrical productions.

Amelia Lever-Davidson

Amelia Lever-Davidson is a lighting designer based in Melbourne, whose practice encompasses theatre, dance, television and events. Her recent designs have been presented at Melbourne Theatre Company, Belvoir St Theatre, Malthouse Theatre and Chunky Move. Her festival work has been presented at Next Wave Festival, Dance Massive, Castlemaine Festival, Brisbane Festival, Dark Mofo and Darwin Festival, and has been presented in China, UK and Europe.

Lever-Davidson’s work has been recognised with three Green Room Awards. She is an Australia Council ArtStart and JUMP Mentorship recipient, and a past participant in The Malthouse Besen Family Artist Program and The Melbourne Theatre Company’s inaugural Women in Theatre Program. Lever-Davidson is also a member of The New Working Group.

Image: Pier Carthew