The State Government Insurance Office Theatre (also known as the SGIO Theatre or Suncorp Theatre), was a 600-seat proscenium theatre built within the SGIO office building at 179 Turbot Street,

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia.

History

The Queensland Government purchased the site of the old

Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genre ...

on Albert Street, a popular theatre venue, from the Methodist Church and the new theatre opened on 27 May 1969. It was designed by

Conrad Gargett Conrad Gargett was an Australia, Australian architectural firm, architecture and design practice founded in Brisbane in 1890, one of Queensland's earliest architectural firms. The practice operated out of studios in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, ...

and Partners, with input from several of the Brisbane theatre companies. The exterior of the building reflected its function as an office building. The first production at the theatre was Peter Shaffer's

The Royal Hunt of the Sun ''The Royal Hunt of the Sun'' is a 1964 play by Peter Shaffer that dramatizes the relation of two worlds entering in a conflict by portraying two characters: Atahuallpa Inca and Francisco Pizarro. Performance history Premiere ''The Royal H ...

for the new

Queensland Theatre Company Queensland Theatre, formerly the Queensland Theatre Company and Royal Queensland Theatre Company, is a professional theatre company based in Brisbane, Australia. It regularly performs in its own Bille Brown Theatre and the Queensland Performin ...

(QTC). The QTC used the theatre as its chief venue for 30 years.

Closure of the theatre

The government owned the SGIO and

Twelfth Night ''Twelfth Night, or What You Will'' is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Viola an ...

theatres in Brisbane and following the success of the

Commonwealth Games The Commonwealth Games is a quadrennial international multi-sport event among athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations, which consists mostly, but not exclusively, of territories of the former British Empire. The event was first held in 1930 ...

and

World Expo 88 World Expo 88, also known as Expo 88, was a specialised Expo held in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia, during a six-month period between Saturday, 30 April 1988 and Sunday, 30 October 1988, inclusive. The theme of the Expo w ...

in Brisbane, plans proceeded on the development of the

Queensland Performing Arts Centre The Queensland Performing Arts Centre (also known as QPAC) is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre and is located on the corner of Melbourne Street and Grey Street in Brisbane's South Bank precinct. Opened in 1985, it includes the Lyric Thea ...

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. The theatre closed in June 1998 when the Queensland Theatre Company relocated. The Amalgamated Property Group took ownership of the theatre building. The state government of Labor Premier Anna Bligh gave approval for the demolition of the taxpayer funded theatre. A 35th anniversary commemoration of the theatre in 2004 for the

Brisbane Festival Brisbane Festival is one of Australia's leading international arts festivals, and is held each September in Brisbane, Australia. Its presence dominates the city for three weeks in September and its line-up of classical and contemporary music, t ...

led to it being re-opened for three productions in that year.

Performers

Googie Withers Georgette Lizette "Googie" Withers (12 March 191715 July 2011) was an English entertainer. She was a dancer and actress, with a lengthy career spanning some seventy-three years in theatre, film, and television. She was a well-known actress and ...

and

John McCallum John McCallum (born 9 April 1950) is a Canadian politician, economist, diplomat and former university professor. A former Liberal Member of Parliament ( MP), McCallum was the Canadian Ambassador to China from 2017 to 2019. He was asked for ...

performed in ''

The Cocktail Hour ''The Cocktail Hour'' is a comedy of manners by A. R. Gurney. It premiered in June 1988 in San Diego, California, at the Old Globe Theatre and, on October 20, 1988, in New York City at the Off Broadway Promenade Theatre. Like many of Gurney's ...

''. Programmes and ephemera from productions that were performed at the theatre are held in the University of Queensland's Fryer Library.

References

{{coord missing, Queensland Former buildings and structures in Brisbane Theatres in Brisbane Buildings and structures demolished in 2007 Demolished buildings and structures in Brisbane Turbot Street, Brisbane