WHEN world-renowned Newcastle actor, playwright and director Carl Caulfield was asked to stage a play at the historic Victoria Theatre he had no hesitation in agreeing.
He had seen other shows there and was impressed by the way the theatre, which was Newcastle's first purpose-built theatre when it opened in Perkins Street in 1876, had maintained its nature despite having been converted to a movie theatre in the 1930s, then closed in 1966 and made a business centre.
A variety of companies have been involved since the early 2000s in trying to restore it to a theatre, and now it's close to re-opening the doors.
So it's not surprising that the show, An evening with Carl Caulfield & 'The Vic' history with Gillian Arrighi, which will be staged there on Saturday, January 22, at 7pm, is selling well.
The show, which originally had been planned for staging in August last year and had to be postponed because of COVID-19, will have Caulfield talking about two of his works. One of those, Shakespeare's Fools, had actors playing characters, such as King Lear, who were generally serious, but with their words and actions amusingly showing they weren't necessarily able to do or say what they wanted to.
Cauflield's latest play Creativity - which will premiere at the Civic Theatre from February 18 to 26 presented by Stray Dogs Theatre, a company formed by he and his wife Felicity Biggins - will also have sequences in the Victoria-staged work
The play's title is a reference to the way students and staff at a university view music and theatre as important elements to giving people good lives, and then take action to stop the venue's controlling team removing such subjects from its courses.
Dr Gillian Arrighi, a theatre historian, will talk about the important role of the Victoria Theatre, which still retains the classical visual nature of its 1891 rebuild and is the longest-running major theatre in Australia's history.
The show will be hosted by Newcastle actor, director and write Jonathan Biggins.
