Advisor
Carmel Schenke is a co-founder of InPlay Arts, having led the business and overseen work with our clients. She remains as a special advisor, although her work has taken her to the role of General Manager at the Sydney Fringe.
She is a producer with over 25 years experience working across the performing arts with some of Australia’s leading arts organisations. As well as producing and project management, Carmel has a particular interest in the area of strategic innovation for 21st Century audiences and organisations.
In her producing work, while she has particular expertise in music presentations, across jazz, world music, classical and contemporary genres, Carmel has substantial experience producing and presenting theatre, dance and festival events.
Alongside a strong understanding of multiple artforms and a love of working with artists and the artistic process, her talent lies in a shrewd understanding of the business side of presenting performance, finding the best way to make commercial sense of extraordinary artistic work. While being an accomplished programmer herself, Carmel has a particular talent for working alongside artistic directors to realise their artistic vision.
Carmel has extensive experience working within venues and in core producing functions, such as budgeting, business development, business casing, programming, negotiating and planning, as well as contracting, scheduling, touring, immigration, artist liaison, relationship management, team management, funding proposals & acquittals, overseeing production and marketing & publicity campaigns. She has presented in venues ranging from 100 to 2,500 seats, including outdoors.
With InPlay Arts she consulted with Sydney Opera House to develop, from the earliest stages, two multi-arts festivals for its Indigenous Program, working alongside the visionary Artistic Director Rhoda Roberts, as well as managing some smaller performance and business development projects.
From 2006 to 2011, Carmel was engaged by Sydney Opera House, working first as assistant producer to Virginia Hyam on her outstanding Studio program of contemporary performances, ranging through cabaret, music, dance, theatre and comedy. She went on to work as a producer for the Concert Hall music series, programming and presenting jazz, world music, classical and contemporary concerts. In this role Carmel developed the Opera House’s jazz program into a box office success that was embraced by the jazz community as a crucial part of the Sydney arts calendar, with presentations of jazz greats otherwise unattainable to Sydney audiences. In her time at the Opera House, Carmel also produced the Theatre & Dance program, working alongside the highly acclaimed Head of Theatre & Dance, Wendy Martin. In these roles, highlights for Carmel were presentations of greats such as Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Cesaria Evora, Zakir Hussain, Wayne Shorter, Charlie Haden, Philip Glass, Emir Kusturika, Bill Frisell, Sylvie Guillem, Juliette Binoche, Akram Khan, Sara Baras, Eva Yerbabuena, Complicite, Barry Kosky and many more, as well as working with innovative companies such as Elevator Repair Service, Hoipolloi, Ronnie Burkett, Daniel Kitson, Australian Dance Theatre, Meryl Tankard and Lucy Guerin.
From 2002 to 2006 Carmel worked for Musica Viva Australia: first managing the business and operations of the renowned Musica Viva In Schools program (2,415 concerts in schools annually); then managing the Export program, building tours and touring music ensembles throughout South East Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific Islands, mostly for the Australian government under DFAT and Austrade contracts; and finally she ran the Café Carnivale multicultural concert series, alongside Music Director Justo Diaz. In this role, she managed the transition of the long-standing series from Carnivale Festival to the umbrella of the chamber music organisation. As its producer, with funding from Arts NSW, Carmel reignited Café Carnivale following the unfortunate demise of Carnivale Festival. She brought it into the fold of Musica Viva, culturally a very different organisation to Carnivale Festival, and reengaged the musicians, media, membership and audiences, developing it into a regular series of 72 concerts annually across four Sydney venues.
Earlier in her career, Carmel spent time working in venue management for a leading Sydney jazz venue (The Basement), in box office and ticketing management for a 2,000 seat venue staging contemporary music, film festivals and theatre events (the State Theatre, Sydney), in legal & business affairs within a major music company (Universal Music International, London), and short stints in sponsorship roles for Sydney Festival and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. She made her first move into producing through working as a producers’ assistant for commercial musical theatre producer, The Gordon/Frost Organisation in 2001.
For Carmel’s CV, see Linked In