In a career embracing his skills as an actor, director, dancer, musician and contemporary performance maker, Nigel Kellaway’s initial professional performance training was in music, majoring in piano and composition at the universities of Melbourne and Adelaide.

He was the first Australian actor to train with Tadashi Suzuki and his Suzuki Company Of Toga (1984-85) and also worked with butoh artists Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno in Tokyo. Over nearly 40 years, he has created more than eighty full length theatre, dance and music works with companies including The One Extra Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Entr’acte, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Sidetrack Performance Group, Legs on the Wall, Ihos Contemporary Opera, the Australian Dance Theatre, Stalker, Calculated Risks Opera Productions, the Song Company, Splinters Theatre of Spectacle, Urban Theatre Projects and Stopera and for venues including Performance Space (NSW), the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (WA), Salamance Arts Centre (Tas) and The Royal Court Theatre (UK).

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He was a co-founder, in 1987, of the performance ensemble The Sydney Front, with major productions including THE PORNOGRAPHY OF PERFORMANCE (1988), PHOTOCOPIES OF GOD (1989), DON JUAN (1991), FIRST AND LAST WARNING (1992) and PASSION (1993). The Sydney Front toured extensively within Australia and Europe, to the UK and Hong Kong.

Solo performance works include PERFORMER (1977), GIVE ME A ROSE TO SHOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE (1986), THE NUREMBERG RECITAL (1989), THIS MOST WICKED BODY (1994), a ten day, 240 hour performance marathon with percussionist David Montgomery, video artist Peter Oldham and restaurateur Gay Bilson, which toured to the 1998 Telstra Adelaide Festival with pianist Gerard Willems and Gay Bilson, and SLEEPERS WAKE! WACHET AUF! (2007).

Over the past fifteen years a major focus of his work has been in contemporary music theatre. In 1997 he directed the Colin Bright/Amanda Stewart opera THE SINKING OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR with the Song Company and Australysis for the Sydney Festival on Sydney Harbour, and in 2001 co-devised and directed LITTLE GEORGE, again with the Song Company. His collaborations with Canberra based Stopera have been dISTRESSING THE DIVA in 1998 and the Clérambault/Rameau derived CANTATA in 2003.

The multiform theatre pieces Kellaway realizes as a composer, director, performer and collagist of texts are “scenic concerts” considering the interaction of complex spatial arrangements with musical and linguistic practices, bringing together disparate languages (acting, music making, installation, light, poetry, song, dance, etc.) that can otherwise become disintegrated.  For him composition (musical, choreographic and theatrical) is, first and foremost, the shaping of time and the processes of perception.  A particular musicality imprints itself on the aesthetics, meaning and reading of this work, providing dramaturgical, emotional and rhythmic drive.  This is theatre exploring the abstract qualities of dynamics, tempi, light and staging, alongside textual coherence and intention.

In 1997 he co-founded with Annette Tesoriero The opera Project Inc., a loose ensemble of actors, musicians and physical performers dedicated to the mission of reassessing “opera” (and its accoutrement) as a contemporary performance practice.

He served on the dance committee of the Australia Council from 1993-96 and in 1997 was awarded the Rex Cramphorn Theatre Scholarship by the NSW Ministry for the Arts.

Kellaway has been a leader in the development of avant-garde and hybrid performance practices in Australia over the past three or four decades, and in 2004 was awarded a senior artist’s Fellowship by the Theatre Board of the Australia Council to devote two years to his continuing research into theatrical, operatic and contemporary performance practices.

Kellaway continues his role as Artistic Director of The opera Project Inc. and also works widely as a freelance director, performer and mentor.

In 2015 he was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts (with highest reccomendation) by the University of Wollongong, and since 2010 has been a yearly Artist-in-Residence at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon Estate.

Kellaway continues his role as Artistic Director of The opera Project Inc. and also works widely as a freelance director, performer and mentor.