Former names | MTC Theatre |
---|---|
Address | 140 Southbank Boulevard Southbank |
Coordinates | 37°49′26.6″S144°58′5.8″E / 37.824056°S 144.968278°E |
Operator | Melbourne Theatre Company |
Type | Theatre |
Construction | |
Opened | 27 January 2009 |
Construction cost | AUD $55 million |
Architect | ARM Architecture |
General contractor | Bovis Lend Lease |
Southbank Theatre is a performing arts venue located in the Southbank region of Melbourne, Victoria. It is the principal home of the Melbourne Theatre Company. [1] The theatre was designed by ARM Architecture (Ashton Raggatt McDougall), and opened in January 2009 with a production of Poor Boy starring Guy Pearce. [2] The building was awarded the 2009 Victorian Architecture Medal, the highest award in the state.
The theatre is adjacent to the Melbourne Recital Centre venue on Southbank Boulevard, with the two buildings constructed simultaneously. The distinctive geometric shapes on the theatre's facade were inspired by the paintings of the American abstract expressionist artist Al Held. [3]
The theatre contains two performance spaces: the 559-seat "Sumner", and the smaller "Lawler" with 150 seats. These were named after director John Sumner and playwright Ray Lawler respectively. The theatre is also home to Script Bar & Bistro, function rooms and foyers and two foyer bars. [1]
Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central Melbourne suburb of Southbank in Victoria, Australia.
The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, colloquially referred to as "Jeff's Shed," is a group of three adjacent buildings next to the Yarra River in South Wharf, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The venues are owned and operated by the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Trust.
The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten.
The Purcell Room is a concert and performance venue which forms part of the Southbank Centre, one of central London's leading cultural complexes. It is named after the 17th century English composer Henry Purcell and has 370 seats. The Purcell Room has hosted a wide range of chamber music, jazz, mime and poetry recitals. In the context of the Southbank Centre it is the smallest of a set of three venues, the other two being the Royal Festival Hall, a large symphony hall, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH), which is used for orchestral, chamber and contemporary amplified music.
The Melbourne Theatre Company is a theatre company based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1953 as the Union Theatre Repertory Company at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne, it is the oldest professional theatre company in Australia.
The Queensland Cultural Centre is a heritage-listed cultural center on Grey Street, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is part of the South Bank precinct on the Brisbane River and was built from 1976.
Raymond Evenor Lawler is an Australian actor, dramatist, and theatre producer and director. His most notable play was his tenth, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1953), which had its premiere in Melbourne in 1955. The play changed the direction of Australian drama. The story of The Doll is preceded by Kid Stakes, set in 1937, when the characters of The Doll are young adults, and then Other Times, which is set in 1945 and includes most of the same characters.
Malthouse Theatre is the resident theatre company of The Malthouse building in Southbank, part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct. In the 1980s it was known as the Playbox Theatre Company and was housed in the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne's CBD.
Canberra Theatre Centre (CTC), also known as the Canberra Theatre, is the Australian Capital Territory’s central performing arts venue and Australia's first performing arts centre, the first Australian Government initiated performing arts centre to be completed. It opened on 24 June 1965 with a gala performance by the Australian Ballet.
ARM Architecture or Ashton Raggatt McDougall is an architectural firm with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, Australia. The firm was founded in 1988 and has completed internationally renowned design work. ARM's founding directors were Stephen Ashton, Howard Raggatt, Ian McDougall.
Melbourne Recital Centre is a venue for live music in Melbourne and welcomes over 200,000 visitors each year. The organisation programs and presents more than 500 concerts and events a year across diverse range of musical genres including classical and chamber, contemporary, pop, folk, rock, electronica, indie, jazz, cabaret and world music. It was opened in 2009, as part of the Melbourne Recital Centre and Melbourne Theatre Company Southbank Theatre complex designed by Ashton Raggat McDougall, and is located on the corner of Southbank Boulevard and Sturt Street in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, Southbank. It is Melbourne's second largest auditorium for classical music.
Storey Hall, located at 342–344 Swanston Street in Melbourne, Australia, is part of the RMIT City campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. It consists of a grand meeting hall constructed in 1887, extended and renovated in 1996, providing a large upper hall, the lower hall as home to RMIT Gallery First Site, and a range of lecture theatres and seminar rooms.
The Melbourne Arts Precinct is home to a series of galleries, performing arts venues and spaces located in the Southbank district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It includes such publicly-funded venues as Arts Centre Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria and Southbank Theatre, along with various offices and training institutions of arts organisations.
Hamer Hall is a 2,466 seat concert hall, the largest indoor venue at Arts Centre Melbourne, used for orchestra and contemporary music performances. It was designed by Roy Grounds as part of the Cultural Centre that comprised the National Gallery of Victoria and the Arts Centre Melbourne. It was opened as the 'Melbourne Concert Hall' in 1982 and was renamed Hamer Hall in honour of Rupert Hamer shortly after his death in 2004.
St Kilda Library is a public library in Melbourne, Australia. The library is located in the suburb of St Kilda, in the City of Port Philip. The building was recognised by the Australian Institute of Architects as one of the “notable public buildings” designed by award-winning architect Enrico Taglietti.
John Hackman Sumner, was an English-born director and producer and theatre impresario, who was the founder and artistic director of Melbourne Theatre Company in Australia, gathering a group of later internationally famous stars including Ray Lawler, Zoe Caldwell, Barry Humphries and Fred Parslow.
Ian Lachlan McDougall is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Adelaide and a founding director of the Australian architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall or ARM Architecture. His most significant projects include Melbourne Recital Centre and Melbourne Theatre Company's Southbank Theatre, Hamer Hall at Arts Centre Melbourne, masterplanning of Melbourne Docklands, Albury Library Museum and the Shrine of Remembrance Visitors Centre in Melbourne.
Ladies in Black is an Australian musical with music and lyrics by Tim Finn and book by Carolyn Burns, based on the 1993 novel The Women in Black by Madeleine St John.
The Dimity Reed Melbourne Prize (Architecture) is awarded annually by a jury appointed by the Victorian chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects to projects that have made a significant contribution to the civic life of Melbourne, Australia. It was first awarded in 1997 to Six Degrees Architects for the small bar Meyers Place. The winner is drawn from direct-entry categories in the annual Victorian Architecture Awards, and any project located within the Urban Growth Boundary of the Melbourne metropolitan area is eligible for consideration for the prize which can be drawn from any category in the awards.