Venue: Queen's Theatre
Town: Adelaide, AU

The Queen's Theatre is a building of historic importance in Playhouse Lane, Adelaide, South Australia. It is the oldest intact theatre in mainland Australia, having originally been built in 1840, the only earlier one in Australia being the still-operational Theatre Royal in Hobart, Tasmania (completed in 1836). It was not the first theatre to open in Adelaide however; there were two earlier, less sophisticated earlier venues created in 1838-39. The Queen's original incarnation only lasted for a couple of years before a recession forced closure, and the building was turned to other uses. The New Queen's Theatre operated in the billiard room of the tavern next door between 1846 and 1850, until the Queen's refurbishment and re-opening as the Royal Victoria Theatre in 1850. "The Victoria", as it was known locally, was Adelaide's only theatre until 1868, when competition from the new Theatre Royal in Hindley Street led to its closure. After a series of other uses, Heritage SA bought the building in the 1980s, and it was eventually restored and reopened as a performance venue in the 1996 Adelaide Festival. By the early 1800s, live performance was increasing in popularity in Australia, although no entertainment venues existed to house performances. In the 1830s, both Sydney and Hobart received two theatres, the first in the Australian colonies. The first theatre to open in Adelaide was the Theatre Royal in 1838, on the first floor of the Adelaide Tavern in Franklin Street, one of Adelaide's main hotels, just two years after the colony was founded. On 23 November 1839, Samson Cameron, an actor and theatre company manager, opened the Royal Victoria Theatre on North Terrace near Morphett Street in a converted warehouse. Attempts to build a more substantial theatre in an increasingly prosperous Adelaide were made, with a declaration by the South Australian Register stating "...Mr Solomon, of Currie Street, is about to make an important addition to the quarter of Gilles Arcade,