Like Broadway or the West End: Sydney set to get a dedicated theatre district

Planning is under way to create a new theatre district centred on Sydney’s George Street and Haymarket in the tradition of London’s West End and New York’s Broadway.

The NSW government has been identifying old picture palaces and other properties ripe for conversion while quietly talking to theatre owners and producers about what it will take to snatch Melbourne’s mantle as Australia’s cultural capital.

Live Performance Australia has facilitated roundtable meetings between the nation’s leading theatre players and Create Infrastructure, a division of the government’s arts agency.

The old Plaza Theatre built to seat more than 1650 people during the heyday of cinema. Credit: Wolter Peeters

The market soundings come just weeks before the Theatre Royal’s red carpet opening on December 9, five years after it closed.

The feedback will help finalise the state’s first theatre and film strategy driven by key cabinet ministers: Arts Minister Don Harwin, Treasurer Matt Kean, Premier Dominic Perrottet and Industry Minister Stuart Ayres.

A $5 million fund has been set aside to fund appraisals of suitable properties – to be built or acquired – as prioritised by Create Infrastructure. On the radar is the heritage gems Roxy Theatre and The Minerva.

One of the country’s largest theatre producers, Trafalgar, has declared an interest in securing a commercial lease on a 1500-seat theatre in the CBD. Michael Cassel Group says it supports government and industry assessments that two lyric theatres are desperately needed for Sydney.

A third company, Foundation Theatres, is about to submit plans for a 1550-seat Broadway-style theatre and a 1000-seat Live Room at Pyrmont opening 2023.

A render of the new Broadway-style theatre coming soon to Pyrmont.Credit:

“Sydney doesn’t have a defined theatre precinct because we’ve never planned for one,” theatre planner Sean Macken says. “Almost all of Sydney’s existing venues are either the result of political opportunism, the heroic efforts of Sydneysiders to preserve particular places, or just accidents of history.

“The end result is a sprinkling of isolated theatres across the city, none of which connect with each other and none of which, on their own, can generate the secondary industries which drive the economics of theatre precincts in other cities.

“In Sydney, it’s all tactics and no strategy when we think about theatres and live performance. Too often we don’t think about it at all.”

The strategy will draw down on a 2019 government cultural infrastructure plan that found a lack of suitable theatre space was strangling long-running musicals and contemporary shows.

That report identified the need for a CBD cultural precinct co-located with centres of technology, investment in Parramatta and Sydney Olympic Park and a precinct serving the new city of Bradfield and hub centres of Penrith and Liverpool.

The investigations will determine if there is a role for government in securing Parramatta’s Roxy Theatre for shows. The government last year passed up on an opportunity to invest in the redevelopment of the nearby Riverside Theatres.

Theatre owners and producers have backed the reopening of the Roxy Theatre, now in private ownership.

“A first-class theatre offering with 1500 seats in Paramatta within the next decade makes sense as presenters seek to develop the touring market for productions in Australia beyond the capital cities,” says Graeme Kearns, chief executive of Foundation Theatres.

In the CBD, the Plaza Theatre at 600 George St has been identified as having sufficient internal volume to be repurposed as theatres or live music venues.

A survivor of decorative cinemas built in Sydney during the golden age of cinema, it sits in the middle of the dilapidated George St entertainment strip between the Theatre Royal and the Capitol Theatre.

Another potential site is the smaller 500-seat Australian Hall at 150 Elizabeth St, and Chinatown’s Twin Cinema on Goulburn St, built in 1885 by the Salvation Army and ideal as a small venue or rehearsal space, of which there is a dire shortage.

Macken says there are only three possible places in Sydney to build a defined theatre precinct.

The heritage-listed Australian Hall on Elizabeth Street. Credit: Louise Kennerley

“A small one at Kings Cross, clustered around the Minerva,” he says. “The second is in the southern part of the CBD around George St and the Capitol and delivered through the City of Sydney’s draft density bonus scheme.

“The other is one centred on Parramatta. Anchored by the Riverside, the new theatre aligned with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, and a revitalised Roxy. All are within 500 metres of each other.

“In the next two decades Sydney will pass the 7 million-people mark and I think we’ll need all three. We should start planning for them now.”

Historically, Sydney’s entertainment district followed the skinny retail spine of George St. That concentration was broken first by the Sydney Opera House, then compounded by the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, says architect and urban designer Craig Allchin.

The requirement that big developments demonstrate public benefit also contributed to the dispersal, says Allchin. “The Lyric Theatre is in The Star rather than a theatre district.”

The Roxy Theatre.Credit: Brook Mitchell

A revived theatre district could revive the now shabby George St and Chinatown precinct, seeding restaurants and bars. “That’s what those precincts need, is a variety of reasons to visit,” Allchin says.

There was no better time for government and entrepreneurs to act, he says, when office space was lying empty with the lockdown shift in work habits.

“All the A-grade office space will fill up; it’s the B- and C-grade offices that might lend itself to other things and lead to other uses. You can try and carve out new uses from these old spaces. I feel it’s an important time to focus on [the creative arts] while the market is adjusting and eventually those things can become the lifeblood of the city.”

Sydney has no shortage of entrepreneurs keen to invest but views are mixed as to how much extra capacity is needed and when.

“When you’re looking at Sydney, you have to look at the national footprint – especially in commercial theatre because all shows have to move,” Live Performance Australia’s chief executive officer Evelyn Richardson says.

Sydney also needed to look beyond the next 10 years, and focus not just on presenting work but making work.

“As a starting point, we need to take a 20-year view of cultural infrastructure,” Richardson says. “There needs to be recognition of Foundation Theatres’ investment plans for 1550- and 1000-seat theatres in Pyrmont.

“[In the meetings] there was also discussion around the need for a diversity of spaces, a multi-purpose hub to scale up successful works, a Black Box theatre. There was lots of industry support for the Minerva Theatre. The question is does NSW want to play around the edges or go quickly?”

Foundation Theatres warns of oversupply. “Considering the national touring landscape for major productions, additional theatres with more than 1000 seats will not be required for some time,” Kearns says.

“When our project is completed in the next couple of years, there just won’t be enough touring content in or out of Brisbane and Melbourne to fill more theatres of that size in Sydney.”

The construction of new theatres, too, needed to be carefully balanced to encourage private investment in theatre infrastructure, Kearns says.

A big blockbuster like Hamilton or Harry Potter and the Cursed Child can take out a theatre for years. But they are balanced by a circuit of evergreen productions like Mamma Mia and Wicked which need smaller houses.

With Singapore ramping up cultural investment, Sydney cannot depend on theatre tourism as New York does, it is argued.

But once Foundation’s two theatres open, Sydney’s next priority, says theatre producer John Frost, should be a 1750-2000-seat theatre with an orchestra pit, and backstage big enough to put on the Opera epic Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, the Ballet and blockbuster musicals.

“We are lacking a venue for big-event productions, where Melbourne gets them because of the size of their arts centre,” he says. “The population of Sydney is only going to get bigger and the interest in cultural events and musicals is only going to get stronger.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be built in the CBD but close to it, near to the Powerhouse at Haymarket, or White Bay. It could be a whole arts precinct, no different to the finger wharves.”

Just as important is a smaller theatre that could take hit productions from Hayes and Belvoir St and more intimate work.

Kearns says those smaller performance spaces are critical to the development of the theatre industry on multiple levels.

The Minerva, an art deco cinema house in Potts Point, could fill that role. Current hotel plans have been strongly opposed by Minister Harwin who supports its conversion to a 1000-seat theatre.

It was Harwin who rescued the Theatre Royal from the ignominy of becoming a food court in 2019, sub-leasing it to the impresario Howard Panter.

Kearns thinks the Minerva would fit nicely into the Sydney theatre landscape if the theatre could be restored for the mooted $35-40 million price tag.

“But having worked on a number of similar projects, it’s unlikely that it can be delivered for even double that amount,” he said.

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