Russell Street Theatre

Theatre in Russell Street, Melbourne. Converted from church and opened as theatre seating 374, 1944. First used by Union Theatre Repertory Company 20 July 1960. Altered to seat 416 - later reduced to 394 - and reopened by Melbourne Theatre Company 12 February 1968. Architect: Robin Boyd.

Australia's oldest existing professional theatre company, the Melbourne Theatre Company made the Russell Street Theatre its home during a period of consolidation and development in the 1960s and has remained there ever since. The building in downtown Russell Street was a church until the Victorian Council for Adult Education took it over in 1944 and converted it for amateur theatrical performances. In the late 1950s audiences for amateurs were falling away and the Union Theatre Repertory Company was seeking premises off the University of Melbourne campus. It presented a revue at Russell Street for a month in 1960 and next year it began a six-month season there. The company left the university at the end of 1965 and moved to Russell Street full time in 1966. Between the 1967 and 1968 seasons the architect Robin Boyd remodelled the converted church into a delightfully intimate theatre. The capacity was increased by the addition of two boxes each seating 15 persons, at the rear of the raked stalls and a small central balcony - virtually another box – seating about 12 and filling one-third of the auditorium width. The proscenium stage, lacking a fly tower, was cleverly designed to minimise separation of the audience from the action. A wall-covering pattern reproducing the company's new symbol in a variety of sizes enriched the red-toned auditorium. The company reopened the theatre with The Crucible by Arthur Miller - its first performance as the Melbourne Theatre Company. The company intended to use the theatre only until the larger Playhouse at the Victorian Arts Centre was available in the mid-1970s, but it had to wait until 1984 for that theatre. Since then it has retained the Russell Street Theatre as its second venue. The theatre was redecorated in greys in 1989.