Resource | Text: Article | |
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Title | Australian Contemporary Theatre Company | |
Creator Contributors |
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Related Organisation | ||
Source | Philip Parsons, Victoria Chance, Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, NSW, 1995 | |
Page | 71 | |
Date Issued | 1995 | |
Language | English | |
Citation | Geoffrey Milne, Australian Contemporary Theatre Company, Companion To Theatre In Australia, 1995, 71 | |
Resource Identifier | 59067 |
Provide feedback on Australian Contemporary Theatre Company
Professional alternative-theatre company in Melbourne founded in 1983 by John and Lois Ellis. Closed February 1990. venue The Church, Hawthorn. directors 1983-85 John and Lois Ellis. 1985-89 John Ellis first production Dance in the Ashes by Sandy McCuthcheon, 1983. landmark productions The Comedy of Errors, 1987. The Pathfinder by Darryl Emmerson, 1986. Call of the Wild by Jenny Kemp, 1989.
In its seven-year life the Australian Contemporary Theatre Company - also known as the Church after its theatre – presented 50 productions or co-productions with itinerant alternative groups, mostly of plays by contemporary Australian playwrights. There were challenging works, including music-theatre, by lesser-known local playwrights andd by some better-known Australian and overseas writers who were largely ignored elsewhere in Melbourne. The Church also housed some splendidly staged plays for children, especially Dorothy Hewett’s Golden Valley and adaptations of children’s classics by Ernie Gray. The lofty spaces and flexible seating of the old church, formerly home of Pilgrim Puppet Theatre, encouraged visual excitement in production and generally more interesting actor-audience relationships than in most mainstream theatres. The chronically underfunded company closed down in February 1990, when state and federal subsidies were withdrawn.