New Theatre

New Theatre was set up in 1932 as the Sydney Workers Art Club, opening with the slogan “Art is a Weapon”. The first full-scale production in 1933 was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. The theatre helped galvanise opposition to Nazism in the 1930s and led the ultimately successful fight against stage censorship from the 40s to the late 60s, culminating in the now legendary staging of the banned America Hurrah in 1968. It has produced plays on important political and human rights issues through the struggles of anti-apartheid and black deaths in custody, to political satire on the Howard government. Since 1994 it has also regularly mounted productions in association with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. In the 1950s, new theatre staged the first Australian production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and performed his All My Sons before Paul Robeson. In 1954 new theatre produced Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets, which went on to become a Broadway hit, playing coast to coast in twenty American cities. The company performed for builders in the bowels of the Sydney Opera House while it was being built, went out to the factories and the shop floors with revues and satires, and took a production down a mine in Glen Innes to entertain striking miners. The theatre has mounted some 550 productions, and is one of Australia’s oldest continuously producing theatres, moving from Pitt Street to Castlereagh Street and then to Kings Cross, until finally settling in its current home on King Street Newtown in 1973. The theatre purchased the current premises at 542 King St, Newtown in late 1972 and established New Theatre ( Properties ) Limited to convert the previous picture tube factory into a theatre, to then maintain the building and to exclusively support the ongoing activities of New Theatre (Sydney ) Incorporated. New theatre has played a major role in educating young talent, providing a career springboard for new performers, directors, artists, technicians and playwrights. The large number of artists who have benefited by their association with New Theatre include Maggie Kirkpatrick, Nick Enright, Dinah Shearing, Noeline Brown, Alex Buzo, Linal Haft, Tasma Walton, Simon Burke, Carol Skinner, Lyn Collingwood, Doreen Warburton, Elaine Hudson, John Hargreaves and Steve Peacocke.