Country Arts SA adding cutting-edge theatre to mainstream delights of regional music groups across South Australia
From the South Coast Choral and Arts Society's The Sound of Music (2012) at Victor Harbor.
Image courtesy South Coast Choral and Arts Society
Country Arts SA in 2018 reached 25 years of bringing thousands of productions – including Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Ballet – to South Australian regions, funding local creative arts and running the four major regional theatres: Northern Festival Centre in Port Pirie, Chaffey Theatre in Renmark, Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre in Mount Gambier and the Middleback Arts Centre in Whyalla plus the Hopgood Theatre in Noarlunga.
Theatre also was kept buoyant in regional centres by groups such as the Whyalla Players who started with Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury in 1956. Moving from the Whyalla Institute to the Middleback Theatre in the 1980s enabled bigger productions such as The Wizard of Oz, The King and I, Grease, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Mary Poppins.
South Coast Choral and Arts Society at Victor Harbor also staged its first full-scale musical The Pirates of Penzance in 1956 at the town hall, with more than 100 productions to follow since then.
Port Pirie Theatre Guild – a merger of the Port Pirie revue company and dramatic society – had its golden era in the 1960s under Harry Madigan.
In 2018, Northern Festival Centre in Port Pirie saw the world premiere of emerging locally-born playwright Elena Carapetis’ Gods of Strangers, an historical fiction piece inspired by migrant stories of regional South Australia.
Although commissioned by the State Theatre Company, Gods of Strangers is one of a string of shows brought to the regions by Country Arts SA. In another possible world first, Mount Gambier’s Gener8 Theatre in 2018 arranged In the Pines, an immersive experience when the audience dons visual reality headset to step inside the plight of the ice drug addiction and its consequences.
Country Arts SA also funded a multimedia police drama experience, Bingo Unit, where audiences helped film scenes across their regional communities. The audience also was invited on a backlot tour of the regional theatres, where they could choose to interrogate suspects, search for evidence or just watch the drama unfold.
