Richard Roberts

Professor Richard Roberts serves as Deputy Director of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), Head of Design and Production, Associate Professor, and Melbourne Enterprise Professor in Design and Production in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. He completed a degree at Flinders University in Adelaide during a period when university fees were abolished under policies supporting the arts. Roberts launched his professional career in 1977 as resident designer at the State Theatre Company of South Australia. Over nearly five decades, he has designed sets and environments for drama, dance, film, television, and opera, collaborating with all major Australian performing arts companies including the Melbourne Theatre Company, Victorian Opera, and the Australian Ballet, as well as numerous international productions. Notable designs include the set for Victorian Opera's Parsifal in 2019, the Adelaide Festival production of Sophocles' Oedipus The King with costume designer Tania Moiseiwitsch, and reimagined sets for the Australian Ballet's Don Quixote, drawing on original 1973 film documentation by Barry Kay.

Roberts has shaped arts education through key administrative roles. He was Head of Design at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts from 1992 to 1996, establishing a three-year Design Diploma program. From 2000 to 2010, he headed the School of Production at VCA, one of Australia's premier arts training institutions, before resuming design work. He served as Head of Design at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from 2013 to 2015. His contributions earned four Greenroom Awards: Best Design for Drama for the Playbox premiere of Stolen in 1998 and the Melbourne Theatre Company premiere of Life After George in 2000; Best Design in Dance for The Australian Ballet's Requiem in 2001 and Molto Vivace in 2004. Roberts advocates production-based teaching that cultivates curious, resilient, inventive students through real-world practice led by practitioners. He engages in scholarly dialogue on scenography, co-authoring the visual essay 'Shaping Our Australian Scenographic Identities' and participating in roundtables on Australian performance design state.