newy.com.au – Newcastle’s Playhouse Theatre is being fitted with 180 new seats and fresh carpet as an almost $800,000 renewal reaches its final stages, marking the venue’s first major upgrade in more than two decades.
The City of Newcastle project has included the replacement of the roof, new aisle lighting and fresh paint inside the theatre. Council’s contracts register records a $554,404 roof contract with Kingston Building, plus $12,893 in variations, and a separate $207,228 seating contract with Hadley Australia. The roof package also covered associated structural and plumbing work.
The renewal comes more than 21 years after the Playhouse reopened in its current form. The original theatre opened in 1979 as the home of the Hunter Valley Theatre Company, Australia’s first regionally based full-time professional theatre company dedicated to new and original work.
The company folded in 1996 and the Playhouse closed two years later, which led to a community campaign for an affordable and well equipped performance space for local practitioners. City of Newcastle and the NSW Ministry for the Arts subsequently committed $1.5 million to refurbish the venue, which was redesigned by Newcastle architect Brian Suters and reopened on 21 December 2004.
The latest investment will extend the life of a venue that remains central to Newcastle’s community theatre sector, particularly through Civic Theatre’s UpStage at the Playhouse initiative.
Counting its 2023 pilot and the works selected for the 2026 season, the program has provided Playhouse opportunities for 13 productions across four calendar years. City figures show the four productions supported during 2024 sold more than 3000 tickets and received nine City of Newcastle Drama Association award nominations, while the four-show 2025 season sold more than 2500 tickets.
When the 2026 season was announced, Civic Theatre executive manager Leonie Wallace said the program was helping both new and established artists reach wider audiences.
“The Upstage program aims to amplify the work of both emerging and established creatives, giving them visibility within our community and beyond,” Ms Wallace said.
The first UpStage audiences to experience the completed auditorium will attend The Libertine, produced by HER Productions, from 2 to 11 July. The work will be staged in two distinct versions: a period production centred on the male Earl of Rochester and a contemporary reimagining featuring a woman in the role. The production is restricted to audiences aged 18 and over and contains violence and sexual themes.
The Playhouse’s former seats will also remain part of Newcastle’s cultural community after being donated to Young People’s Theatre Newcastle. The Hamilton organisation will retain most of the seating for its own theatre, with the balance to be redistributed to other community and arts groups.
Young People’s Theatre, established in 1948, provides weekly classes for more than 400 students and stages as many as eight productions each year. The donation also continues a long history of repurposing theatre fittings at its Lindsay Street home. When its original Hamilton auditorium opened in 1974, its seats had been bought from the Capitol Theatre in Tamworth and installed by a local Rotary club.
Young People’s Theatre manager Chelsea Willis said the latest donation would give another generation of seats a new purpose.
“Young People’s Theatre is incredibly grateful for the generosity of the council and the Civic Team in allowing us to repurpose the playhouse seating in our own theatre. It has become part of our history in repurposing seating and giving it a new life.”
