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 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 com ...

. The theatre was designed by

ARM Architecture (Ashton Raggatt McDougall) 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 wer ...

, and opened in January 2009 with a production of ''Poor Boy'' starring

Guy Pearce Guy Edward Pearce (born 5 October 1967) is an Australian actor. Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire in England, and raised in Geelong, Victoria in Australia, he started his career portraying Mike Young in the Australian television series ''Neighbours ...

. The theatre is adjacent to the

Melbourne Recital Centre 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 classi ...

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 Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

artist

Al Held Al Held (October 12, 1928 – July 27, 2005) was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings. As an artist, multiple stylistic changes occurred throughout his career, h ...

. 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 Raymond Evenor Lawler (born 23 May 1921) 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 ...

respectively. The theatre is also home to Script Bar & Bistro, function rooms and foyers and two foyer bars.

References

External links

Melbourne Theatre Company website
Theatres in Melbourne 2009 establishments in Australia Theatres completed in 2009 Buildings and structures in the City of Melbourne (LGA) Southbank, Victoria {{Melbourne-stub