Venue: Playhouse Theatre
Town: Perth, AU

The Playhouse Theatre was a theatre in central Perth, Western Australia. It was purpose-built for live theatre in 1956 and remained one of the city's principal venues for performing arts for over half a century until replaced by the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia in January 2011. It was home to the National Theatre Company from its establishment until 1984, and then to its successor, the Western Australian Theatre Company, until its disbandment in 1990. The theatre was demolished in October 2012 as part of a redevelopment of Cathedral Square. On 11 December 1919 the Repertory Club was established in Perth, with about forty members. Its earliest productions were The Amazons and Lady Windermere's Fan, staged in 1920. The Repertory Club initially worked out of a basement room at the Palace Hotel, then a room in Commerce Buildings, King Street, before moving into a cottage in Pier Street from 1921 to 1932. Their next move was to the old composing room of the Western Australian Newspaper Company in St George's Terrace, with their first performance there on 3 August 1933. The club organised a range of entertainments apart from plays, and usually had two productions in rehearsal while one was being staged. Its membership was restricted to 1,000 members and most shows were sold out before opening night, so advertising was seldom necessary. The need for the Playhouse arose as Perth's main theatre, His Majesty's Theatre was considered too large to provide a feasible venue for locally produced live-theatre productions, and had been functioning principally as a cinema since the early 1940s. In the mid-1950s the board and members of the Repertory Club commenced fundraising for the construction of a smaller purpose-built theatre to stage their productions. The theatre was constructed adjacent to St George's Cathedral on Pier Street land owned by the Anglican Church, the former site of the Church of England Deanery tennis court. The building was designed by the local ar