Draft Coffs Harbour Cultural Plan 2013 - 2016 - Coffs Harbour City ...

Agenda - Ordinary Meeting 22 November 2012 - CITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT REPORTS
Attachment 3
8.3.1 Community theatre
The local theatre groups predominantly use the Jetty Memorial Theatre to perform a wide
range of theatre from musicals to drama and comedy. While they would enjoy expanded
facilities, the local community theatre groups do not pay for the use of the Jetty Theatre
facilities at a commercial rate. There is no evidence that local community theatre groups
would be able to afford the hire, and access to specialist staff, for a full scale theatre of 600
seats plus (i.e. over twice the size of the Jetty Memorial Theatre at 250 seats). There is also no
evidence that the audience for community theatre would be able to fill a larger venue. In
2011, the average number of tickets issued for the most attended community theatre shows at
the Jetty Memorial Theatre was 168. 19
In order for community performing arts to flourish, there is certainly a requirement for
physical resources such as buildings; but for the ongoing development of the community
theatre sector in particular, the continuing development and extension of the skills of the
community participants is a key aspect.
8.3.2 Professional theatre
There is not a large amount of professional performance product available to Coffs Harbour
which requires the scale of facility under discussion, and there is no guarantee that there
would be sufficient product in the future to supply a regular and predictable program to such
a facility.
As a point of comparison, of 13 shows in May to December of the Glasshouse Season 2012, six
will also be presented at the Jetty Memorial Theatre, as well as one more show which was at
the Glasshouse earlier in the year. A further concert which will be performed at the
Glasshouse during this period will be performed in Coffs Harbour at the Botanical Gardens.
There are therefore six shows, totaling ten performance nights, where the company or
individual performer has made the decision not to perform in Coffs Harbour. Of these, five
decisions are highly likely to have been made at least in part because of lack of a suitable
capacity venue – either in terms of staging, audience capacity or both (the other is a one man
show). One of these five shows - OzOpera - was in fact available to Coffs Harbour this year at
Sportz Central (and has been staged there before), but will not be offered in 2012 because of
high demand on the human resources of the sponsoring organization.
19 The King and I, 17 performances and The Invisible Woman, 8 performances.
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