This week I attended a performance at the new Concourse theatre in Chatswood.
Yet I have a problem, I love the whole concept of a large new theatre being built in the suburbs, now I want to see it work. There are some world class concert acts coming into the concert venue, but I would like to see a fully professional theatre company set up for the superb smaller theatre. From my experience, these venues built and financed by local councils, tend to have a hodge-podge of events that are often more community based than professional. Certainly there has to be time and space for some community events, but unless there are a strong selection of professional productions in the space, it will never be taken very seriously by the industry.
As I say, yes there must be some time in a community based theatre complex given over to community events, but if this exciting new venue wishes to succeed and be recognised by the profession as the superb performing space that it is, it needs to carefully balance and programme its events. How wonderful it would be to see a professional company being allowed to programme seasons for six months of the year in that lovely 550 seat theatre. Sydney suburbs surely needs more of this and it would be a highly competitive company set up in a nearby area to the Ensemble theatre and Glenn St, and surely with the oft missed Marian Street Theatre now long gone, the Northern suburbs could do with more professional theatre. I also would love to see perhaps a series of professional concert versions of musicals staged in that 1,000 seat concert hall. It’s one thing to have venues like this, it’s another to manage and programme them properly.
Bring it on, Chatswood !!
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