Queensland Performing Arts Complex

Performing-arts centre in Brisbane, opened 20 April 1985 as part of Queensland Cultural Centre. Concert Hall seats 2000. Cremorne Theatre seats up to 315. Lyric Theatre seats 1000, 1500 or 2000 people on three levels. Architect Robin Gibson. Managed by Queensland Performing Arts Trust.

The last mainland state capital to complete a performing arts complex, Brisbane benefited from the others' experience and obtained good value for the $66 million spent between 1979 and early 1985. The origins of the Queensland Performing Arts Complex date back to 1969, when the state government set up a committee to assess the needs of a new art gallery. In 1973 the architect Robin Gibson won a two-stage limited competition for that building. On 8 November 1974 the government announced that it would establish a cultural centre with a performing-arts complex as its major element. On 16 June 1975 Gibson was appointed to produce a conceptual design for an integrated complex, including the Performing Arts Complex, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Museum and State Library. Gibson, the theatre consultant Tom Brown and others produced the planning brief for the Performing Arts Complex in January 1978, and a building contract was let in 1979. 

The Art Gallery, which opened first, set the pattern by winning an award from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Its interior spaces were not lavish, but provided the public with a great feeling of comfort. The foyers, the Concert Hall and the Lyric Theatre continue in this vein, providing a quiet richness more appropriate to a theatrical occasion, yet without architectural gimmicks or postmodern references to past styles.

The Lyric Theatre was designed for current styles of performing opera, ballet and musicals, with a proscenium width of 14.7 metres and depth from house curtain to last flying line of 15.5 metres. The total width of the stage behind the proscenium is 40.5 metres. The almost rectangular auditorium has two balconies of almost equal size, each seating about 500 persons. The rake of each balcony extends in a leg down each side of the auditorium as a modem equivalent of the horseshoe balcony. The colours of Queensland walnut wall panelling and deep rose carpet and upholstery are graded from back to front of the theatre to direct the eye towards the proscenium arch. Opera and dance companies and musical-theatre companies toured by commercial entrepreneurs perform in this theatre.

The Queensland Theatre Company has used the Cremorne Theatre since it opened. It is a studio theatre which can be arranged into any of five modes---cabaret, in-the­round, thrust stage, flat-floor concert and single-rake cinema. Its name commemorates an old vaudeville theatre that stood on part of the site from 1911 to 1954.

The two-level Concert Hall is used for events ranging from symphony-orchestra concerts to rock concerts and solo shows by popular entertainers. The whole complex also caters for convivial social occasions through the bar service, a cafe and two restaurants.