Mordialloc Theatre Company commenced its operations at the Shirley Burke Community Centre 50 years ago in 1962. The first production was The Man Who Came to Dinner, directed by the late Lorraine Madsen. Seventeen years earlier, Lorraine had been a founding member of the Mordialloc Theatre Company, which at that time was called The City of Mordialloc Theatre Group.
Our very first production in 1945 was Cuckoo in the Nest at the Mordialloc City Hall, where we produced four plays before moving to the Mechanics Institute Hall in Albert Street, Mordialloc, where the Allan McLean Hall stands today.
We performed more than 75 varied plays at the Mechanics Hall in less than ideal conditions until the old Mordialloc Council converted the Shirley Burke building, which also contained the Council library, into a theatre.
The theatre had a flat auditorium and stackable seats, which had to be put in place and restacked on a regular basis, as the auditorium was also rented out for birthday parties, wedding receptions, sporting club fundraisers, etc.
In the 1980s, the Mordialloc Council built a new library further down Parkers Road, where it remains today, and later turned the area vacated by the library at Shirley Burke into a multi-purpose area suitable for wedding receptions and the like.
Later on, because the auditorium floor had started to subside and the rear wall of the auditorium started to lean out, the timber auditorium floor was removed, a concrete slab laid and full raked/tiered flooring installed. Proper theatre seating from Brighton’s Dendy Cinema was unbolted, transported to Shirley Burke and installed by theatre company members.
During the more than fifty years since our first production at the Shirley Burke Theatre, Mordialloc Theatre Company has presented about 300 diverse productions, not only to people from the City of Kingston but also to people from all over Melbourne and further. Averaging 1200 people per production, that equates to more than 360,000 “bums on seats” since our first SBT production.
As the Shirley Burke’s major user, MTC has provided an artistic and social outlet not only to many actors and directors, but also to handyman/set builders, technicians, costumiers, painters, ushers, coffee makers, etc, all of whom have volunteered their time to be part of a successful not-for-profit community theatre company.
During 2011 the Council invested heavily in the refurbishment of the Theatre. However, we are no longer in charge of its management but enjoy the status of ‘major hirer’. We have a good working relationship with the Kingston Council, but no longer have the luxury of holding all our rehearsals in the theatre and building our sets over a protracted period. Nevertheless, we are now producing plays for a revitalized space and continue to present the high standard of production which our large number of patrons has come to expect from one of Melbourne’s leading community theatres.
Mordialloc Theatre Company 