HITTING THE BIG STAGE
School’s new 667-seat theatre has city reaching high note
THE city’s reputation as a cultural and performing arts leader has hit a high note with the opening of St Andrew’s Catholic College’s new 667seat theatre. The venue, built for more than $6m, is being hailed as the perfect complement to CPAC and Tanks with 10 bookings already.
CAIRNS’ pedigree as a performing arts destination has been attained with 10 events already booked in the city’s newest theatre, built in the grounds of a Redlynch school.
St Andrew’s Catholic College students staged sellout performances of the musical Godspell at the school’s new 667-seat, $6 million All Saints’ Theatre last week.
Principal Lee MacMaster said the theatre, set to complement the city’s soon-to-beopened 940-seat Cairns Performing Arts Centre, Tanks Art Centre and Munro Martin Parklands, was funded through a government grant and donations from the school community and took three years to complete.
Cairns Regional Council’s Linda Cooper said the city was now the arts capital of Northern Australia.
“It’s an amazing facility,” she said. “For the council sometimes it is hard because we try to do extra curating and programming of arts and shows up to two years in advance and there have been times we struggled for space.”
Dance 2XS director Kath Robertson, who has pledged to hold up to three years’ worth of concerts at the venue, is also thrilled by the new venue.
“I was really taken aback by the state-of-the-art design and quality of the theatre. It is a credit to the school and a huge asset to Cairns with its full size stage and large licensed foyer area,” she said.
“Cairns is steadily becoming an arts destination to be proud of and will become an attractive location for future entertainment with the new CPAC coming online and now also the All Saints’ Theatre.”
Theatre manager Mark Jennings said the facility was just two seats short of the old Cairns Civic Theatre and had attracted interest from Gold Coast and Townsville event organisers.
“The civic theatre was the only one we had for 30 years and now we have one the same size in a school,” he said.
“There is competition between (the council and the school) for events, but it enables us to say there isn’t just one facility in the city.
“This has been a bit of a dream of the music department for several years.”
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