Her Majesty's Theatre Ballarat

Theatre, opened 7 June 1875 as Academy of Music. Architect: George Browne. Altered and renamed Her Majesty's Theatre 1898. Architect: William Pitt jnr. Leased as cinema from 1938. Bought by Royal South Street Society in 1965 and renamed South Street Memorial Theatre 1966. Given to City of Ballarat and restored. Reopened 7 November 1990 as Her Majesty's Theatre, seating 931. Architects: Clive Lucas. Stapleton and Partners.

One of the finest Australian theatres is Her Majesty's in Ballarat (Vic.). No other has as many extant 19th-century architectural elements in the auditorium and stage. The theatre belongs to the second generation of the gold town's development. Within five years of the initial Victorian gold rush three significant theatres were built in Ballarat – the Charles Napier Theatre in 1854, the Victoria Theatre in 1856 and the Montezuma Theatre in 1856. All were associated with hotels and the Academy of Music in 1875 was exceptional in not having bars or a hotel in front. A patron, Sir William J. Clarke, built the theatre and for its first ten years it was run by community leaders, mostly lawyers interested in promoting the performing arts. The opening program included W. S. Lyster's opera company. 

The building was a substantial brick structure on a steeply sloping site which allowed for future expansion into the basement space. There were shops in front of the auditorium, which was a lofty two-level hall. The circle was partly supported by four cast-iron posts but largely hung by iron rods from the roof trusses. The roof continued over the raked stage. About 10.5 metres above the stage the grid was fixed to the bottom of the trusses. The stage itself was generous at 18 metres wide by more than 15 metres deep. The hall was 18 metres wide by 22 metres long by 12.3 metres high. Within this height, in 1898, the architect William Pitt Jnr managed to rebuild the existing circle and add another above it, utilising the same balcony-front design. He cut a large hole in the old coffered ceiling and inserted an opening dome to provide ventilation through a new sliding segment in the roof.

The brick wall between stage and auditorium was extended to the roof line as a fire wall, and a new grid was inserted about 1.5 metres above the bottom of the truss line. As a result, full-height scenery could be flown between the roof trusses. The stage was cleared of dressing rooms and the paint frame. New dressing rooms and a scene dock were housed in an extension at the side of the building. Pitt also raked the stalls floor. Renamed Her Majesty's, the theatre now rivalled some in the capital cities. At first it was under the direction of Williamson and Musgrove, who toured major productions and personalities. In 1911 the Plimmer-Denniston Company was so popular that the crowd blocked the street and women were knocked down in the rush for tickets. Touring companies played in the theatre until the 1930s but it was mostly used as a Hoyts cinema from the Great Depression until the Royal South Street Society, which had held competitions and performance in the theatre since 1896, bought it in 1965.

Alterations in 1906, 1912, 1927 and 1943 resulted in minor changes to the auditorium and undistinguished lobby and foyer accommodation, which left nothing of the original front of house. In the 1980s restoration the entrance was given a quasi-Victorian canopy and front doors. A new lobby replaces all the original shops and offices on the second floor have been sympathetically converted to the foyer-bar. Pitt's large dome has been reinstated in the auditorium, which has been restored close to the 1898 version. The stage has been re-equipped with mechanised fly lines. The theatre now presents local and touring productions with entrepreneurial flair.