Chamber Made Opera - Ophelia.

A kitchen blender, benchtops and the odd coffee cup become part of the scenery in Chamber Made Orchestra's ''living room opera'', Ophelia Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

PEOPLE go to the theatre for many reasons: escapism, romance, drama, nostalgia. A love of language, the chance to see life's vivid tapestry frayed to its bare threads and sewn anew. But renovation tips rarely top the list - unless you've just attended a Chamber Made Opera production in a private Armadale home where, on this night, the building's architectural prowess proves more entrancing than the sight of Hamlet wading into the lap pool in a wedding dress.

Who knew the threat of actors being upstaged by marble benchtops, leopard-skin rugs and waterfalls? And what of the home's owners? Can you go back to rinsing lettuce in your kitchen sink after seeing Ophelia mercilessly strangled by her mother-in-law by the tap?

"Bespoke is really the word of the zeitgeist." 

This is opera with a difference: nary a song on the program, watched from the soft folds of a sofa and with household appliances - vitamiser, intercom, electric jug - insinuated into the script as metaphor-laden props.

Chamber Made Opera - Ophelia.

For Chamber Made Opera it's proved a winning gamble: an opportunity to develop new work on small scales and budgets, present audiences with provocative works and nurture a novel model of philanthropy. At a time when theatre companies face relentless funding cuts and slashed budgets, could ''living room operas'' be the saviour of the performing arts?

Ophelia Doesn't Live Here Anymore, the company's most recent production, is its sixth ''living room opera''. Staged over four nights to sold-out audiences of 50, it served as the premiere for a work that, like its predecessors, will have many incarnations. The company's Minotaur the Island premiered at Tasmania's Ten Days on the Island festival in March; it has since been staged in five locations. Another Lament, a 2010 collaboration with Rawcus, forms part of the Malthouse Theatre's 2012 program. Next March, Opera Box will combine the talents of Swiss musician Fritz Hauser, Swiss architect Boa Baumann, singer Deborah Kayser and Australian architectural genius Robin Boyd - it will staged in a Boyd house by the Yarra.

The term ''living room'' may conjure thoughts of humble, suburban productions but there's nothing amateurish or frugal about Chamber Made's endeavours. Ophelia's extravagant staging pooled the established talents of composer Darrin Verhagen, set designer Marg Horwell, video artist Richard Grant and director Daniel Schlusser in a setting that invited them to be as innovative as they pleased: a 100-year-old cork oak tree was painted with projections, actors suspended from its branches by ropes, marble benchtops morphed from mortuary slab to petrie dish to garden bed teeming with life. A nine-member choir serenaded audience members from a manicured lawn, while a map identified rooms (Norway, France, England, Hamlet's study) for narrative clarity.

Chamber Made Opera - Ophelia.

For artistic director David Young, who loves ''the idea of stickybeaking in people's houses'', it's the play of unfamiliar and familiar that makes domestic spaces intriguing to work in. ''It creates a context where people can handle and cope with work that is often extremely challenging and very contemporary,'' he says.

Schlusser says houses can be magic portals: ''You spend a lot of time and effort [in theatre] trying to find the transition point from the outside world into the world of the play, luring the audience into another realm. But a house can just automatically do that. There's this jolt and you're there.''

Yet getting that right ''jolt'' takes careful consideration. Young spends months ''auditioning'' living rooms across Melbourne, from one-bedroom flats in Northcote to terraces and townhouses in the inner city and manors in the leafy eastern suburbs. It's a task that involves ''getting to know owners and their appetite for challenge'' and matching plays to spaces, sensibilities and budgets. Belinda and Nick Elmore, who volunteered their Armadale home, struck him as risk-takers from the minute he met them; after reading about Chamber Made Opera in a magazine, Belinda photographed her lounge room - complete with leopard-skin rug, crystal chandelier and bold red furniture - and emailed Young, asking him if he was keen. Young didn't hesitate; the home's dramatic flourishes ran ''a gauntlet between scary and aggressive but also vibrant and fecund''. The kitchen's marble slab promised the ultimate Shakespearean prop: ''A tomb, a mortuary bench, its practical assumptions of feeding and domestic nurturing.''

Chamber Made Opera - Ophelia.

For Schlusser, who has been directing plays of all scales in Melbourne, Berlin and Sydney for the past 20 years, the appeal of a suburban living room production lies in the chance to experiment with new technology and methods, particularly live video mapping. ''Bespoke is really the word of the zeitgeist,'' he says. ''Everyone wants tailored, unique experiences and that throws out a huge challenge to theatre makers.''

The other challenge was to integrate as many elements from the setting as possible, from electric appliances to coffee mugs and even the Elmores' pet rabbit, Wallace, who appeared on the program notes. A memorable section of the show involved Ophelia covering her sobs by turning on the kitchen blender. Belinda was startled when, during one performance, she noticed Hamlet drinking from one of her coffee cups. ''It's a strange experience having strangers wander the house, commenting on books in the bookshelf, the CDs and our artwork,'' she says.

Novel, too, was seeing her home reimagined by theatre makers.

''On the Saturday night, we had 30 friends in the audience and the show had such an impact on them,'' Belinda says. ''Afterwards, the actors and crew stayed on and answered everyone's questions about the storyline, why they'd used certain props and done things in a certain way. Usually you're sitting at a distance from the stage and you wouldn't have a chance to meet performers afterwards. But this was a real insight into the individual artists and what they do.''

With backgrounds in finance broking and real estate, neither Elmore has connections to the arts. For the week of the shows, they simply delivered their two young children to the in-laws and booked a hotel room. When the crew bumped out on the Sunday, Belinda was sad to see them leave. ''I'm still having flashbacks to [the show]: onions being chopped up and seeds sprouting on the kitchen wall. But the kids' toys, Smurfs and cars are back in the living room, so it's a normal home again now.''