Michael Hankin

Michael is a multi-award-winning set and costume designer whose practice encompasses theatre, opera, dance and film.

His career highlights include On The Beach for Sydney Theatre Company, Into The Woods, The Boomkak Panto, Wayside Bride, Light Shining In Buckinghamshire, The Glass Menagerie, Ghosts, Ivanov, Twelfth Night, The Sugarhouse, The Great Fire, Mark Colvin’s Kidney, My Urrwai and Fool For Love for Belvoir St Theatre; Three Little Words and Jumpy for Melbourne Theatre Company/Sydney Theatre Company; The Merchant Of Venice, As You Like It and Othello for Bell Shakespeare; Lake Disappointment for Carriageworks; The Peasant Prince for Monkey Baa theatre; The Aspirations Of Daise Morrow for Brink Productions and Tartuffe for Brink/State Theatre Company of South Australia.

In the UK, he set designed Bourgeois and Maurice’s cabaret musical Insane Animals for Manchester’s Home Theatre,  Memorial for the Barbican Centre/Adelaide Festival/Brisbane Festival/Brink productions. Michael set designed the critically acclaimed musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Theatre Royal and Songs For The Fallen which has toured Australia, Sydney Festival’s Spiegeltent and the New York Music Theatre Festival. His other theatre designs include Ugly Mugs for Malthouse / Griffin Theatre; Golden Blood, Rust And Bone and The Ugly One for Griffin; The Boat People for The Hayloft Project; Miracle City for the Hayes Theatre; The Hypochondriac, Deathtrap, Miss Julie, The Paris Letter and Macbeth for the Darlinghurst Theatre and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf for Ensemble Theatre.

For dance and opera, Michael designed the set for 247 Days for Chunky Move / Malthouse Theatre, and the set and costume designs for You Animal You and Flock for Force Majeure and The Lighthouse, In The Penal Colony and Through The Gates for Sydney Chamber Opera.

For film, Michael was the art director for Ireland’s 2020 entry for Eurovision, the production designer and art director of Limitless for National Geographic and Disney Plus, the challenge designer for season six of Survivor Australia and the weapons designer/co-ordinator for George Miller’s new feature film, Three Thousand Years Of Longing. He has collaborated with art departments on Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Thor: Love And Thunder, The Fall Guy and The Great. He has Production /Costume designed the short films Julian, The Amber Amulet and Reason To Smile.

Michael has won three Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Stage or Costume Design and a Broadwayworld Award for Best Scenic Design.  He has been nominated for four Australian Production Design Guild Awards and four Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Set Design. He was the recipient of the Loudon Sainthill Scholarship (2023), the Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship for Design in the Performing Arts (2018), and the 2016 Mike Walsh Fellowship (2016).

Michael is a NIDA Graduate and has taught as an Associate Lecturer of Design.