The curtain at the Canberra Theatre Centre has gone down on many stars over the years but once, the curtain accidentally went up and seeing as it’s their 60th anniversary, CD is sharing some backstage yarns.
It was the final curtain call for The Australian Opera in the early days, when the principal dancers were about to pop their heads through the curtain to take a bow. The stage manager had his hand through a loop in the curtain to let them through but someone mistakenly pressed the button to raise the curtain, hoisting the stage manager in the air with feet dangling for all to see.
This is a true story, as told by head electrician Alex Scibberas, who worked at the Canberra Theatre Centre for 43 years (he began casual work there as a 19-year-old).
Another yarn from the ‘90s stems from a performance by the Australian Ballet, when a local star ballet pupil, who had missed out on tickets, was snuck in by a lighting technician to watch the show from the lighting booth, up in the rafters.
She and her friend were leaning over a table to watch the show when they accidentally turned off the power for the headsets for the entire stage crew. Everything went quiet. Some lighting cues were missed and a panicked phone call from the stage manager soon rectified the near disaster. The lighting technician didn’t lose his job because he’s now the Canberra Theatre Centre’s director, Alex Budd.
“We were very lucky there weren’t any major cues,” Alex said. “Very quickly, everything was saved but that dancer who I snuck in went on to be a principal in the Australian Ballet.”
Drama doesn’t only take place on the stage and the Canberra Theatre Centre has also experienced mishaps with the audience.
“There was this famous Iron Maiden concert where people actually got so into the performance, they were pulling seats out and throwing it around,” Alex Budd said. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the number of people that came through the door here in comparison to the population was just through the roof. When it opened in 1965, I think Canberra had 80,000 people and not long after that, more than 200,000 tickets a year were being sold.”
Anarchy has also played out at the Canberra Theatre with a concert by British punk band The Stranglers in 1979. Twenty-eight seats were slashed with razors, pulled from the floor and beer cans and spirit bottles left strewn all over the theatre. Despite the damage, the theatre director at the time said that theatre management would not put a complete ban on punk groups.
Probably one of the most memorable events (or not as the case may be) is that the Canberra Theatre Centre had the ACT’s first liquor license.
It’s lucky that alcohol was on tap because the grand opening of the theatre in 1965 almost didn’t happen smoothly because the building wasn’t finished on opening night (the Australian Ballet Company couldn’t rehearse properly until the day before).
So, the unfinished tiling, carpet and curtains went mostly unnoticed by patrons because alcohol was on sale in the foyer.
Despite the unfinished aesthetics, the Canberra Theatre Centre still beat everyone else to the post, becoming Australia’s first performing arts centre in 1965. We beat the Sydney Opera House by eight years – and for the bargain price of £200,000 (about $6.6m in today’s money).
Funnily enough, when Canberra sought advice from Jorn Utzon (designer of the Sydney Opera House), the design brief for the Canberra Theatre was “substantially reduced” because officials stated, “nothing so elaborate [as the staging arrangements at the Opera House] would be needed in Canberra”.
Try telling that to movie star Marlena Deitrich, prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, soprano Dame Joan Sutherland and global megastars The Seekers – all of whom have graced Canberra Theatre’s stage.
As part of the Canberra Theatre Centre’s 60th anniversary, a memory capture project is underway to collect stories, photos, videos and memories of time spent at the theatre. Did you used to work at the theatre? Have you performed on the stage? What’s the best show you’ve attended over the years? Were you at the opening night back in 1965? Visit the online portal to submit your memories: forms.gle/R9UokbnvaZ6nf6sY9
