Melbourne Theatre Company

Melbourne Theatre Company
IndustryTheatre
Founded1953; 71 years ago (1953), as Union Theatre Reportory Company
FounderJohn Sumner
Headquarters,
ProductsTheatrical productions
Websitewww.mtc.com.au

The Melbourne Theatre Company is a theatre company based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1953 as the Union Theatre Repertory Company at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne, it is the oldest professional theatre company in Australia.[1]

The company's Southbank Theatre houses the 500-seat Sumner and the 150-seat Lawler, and the company also performs in the Arts Centre Melbourne's Fairfax Studio and Playhouse, all located in Melbourne's Arts Precinct in Southbank. Considered Victoria's state theatre company, it formally comes under the auspices of the University of Melbourne. As of 2013 it offered a Mainstage Season of ten to twelve plays each year, as well as education, family and creative development activities, and reported having a subscriber base of approximately 20,000 people and played to a around quarter of a million people annually.[2]

  1. ^ Geoffrey Hutton (1975). "It won't last a week!": the first twenty years of the Melbourne Theatre Company. Melbourne: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-17506-9.
  2. ^ Annual report 2013