Murray Bramwell

Set up to manage the Adelaide Festival Centre and to encourage the arts in South Australia, the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust has promoted all art forms and offered popular and artistically adventurous programs. The South Australian Parliament legislated in 1971 to establish the trust, which was initially concerned with managing the theatres in the centre. It also oversaw the running of Her Majesty’s Theatre. In 1980 it began co-production, staging the musical Evita with Robert Stigwood. Since then it has co-produced musicals with Cameron Mackintosh. The sets for all his major Australian productions have been built at the trust's workshops near Adelaide. The success of commercial ventures such as the musicals Cats, The King and I, My Fair Lady and The Phantom of the Opera has increasingly subsidised more specialised productions, the trust's education program and other arts developments. The general managers of the trust have been, successively, Anthony Steel, Kevin Earle and Tim Macfarlane.