Regional Touring

Regional touring — when the majors come to town

Australia’s major performing arts companies don’t only play the capital cities. Bell Shakespeare’s national tour reaches roughly forty regional centres a year. Musica Viva tours an international ensemble through every state and territory annually. The Australian Chamber Orchestra plays Wollongong, Newcastle, Geelong, the Gold Coast and Canberra most seasons. Bangarra, Sydney Dance Company and The Australian Ballet all run regional tours of the most touring-friendly works in their repertoire.

For audiences outside the capitals — and increasingly for capital-city residents who treat a regional weekend as a destination — the touring circuit is a different way of consuming the arts: smaller halls, closer to the stage, often paired with a country drive and a meal in town.

The companies that tour the deepest

• Musica Viva Australia — the most consistent regional presenter in the country. National tours of international chamber ensembles reach roughly twenty-five regional venues each year, plus the capitals. Their venue list spans Coffs Harbour to Mount Gambier to Albany.
• Bell Shakespeare — built around national touring. A typical mainstage Shakespeare gets twelve to eighteen months on the road across thirty-plus venues.
• Australian Chamber Orchestra — runs a regional subscription series in Newcastle, Wollongong, Canberra and the Gold Coast, plus one-off tours to Geelong, Cairns and others.
• Bangarra — tours its main work nationally, including First Nations community performances in remote and regional centres. Their Knowledge Ground education programme runs even more widely.
• The Australian Ballet — selected works tour to regional centres, particularly the children’s and community programmes. Major mainstage rarely leaves the capitals.
• Sydney Dance Company — most years one main work tours regionally.
• Circa — Brisbane based, but tours show like-for-like internationally and within Australia; Brisbane Powerhouse to Cairns to Mount Gambier in a single year is not unusual.

The touring centres worth a weekend

• Newcastle — Civic Theatre and Newcastle Town Hall. Two-and-a-half hours from Sydney; ACO regional series, MV chamber, Bell Shakespeare. Pair with the Hunter Valley.
• Wollongong — Wollongong Town Hall and IPAC. Easy Sydney day trip; ACO and MV. Pair with the Illawarra coast.
• Geelong — Geelong Arts Centre, recently rebuilt. Hour from Melbourne; growing programme reach.
• Bendigo — Capital Theatre. Solid touring drop. Pair with the Bendigo Art Gallery.
• Toowoomba — Empire Theatre. The major tour stop in regional Queensland; pair with the Carnival of Flowers in September.
• Cairns — Cairns Performing Arts Centre, opened 2018. The first major arts centre in tropical Far North Queensland. Pair with the reef or the Daintree.
• Albury–Wodonga — Albury Entertainment Centre and HotHouse. Country Victoria/NSW border touring stop.
• Mount Gambier — Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre. Limestone Coast SA; consistently on Musica Viva and Country Arts SA programmes.
• Launceston — Princess Theatre. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Ten Days on the Island work.

How to use the touring circuit

Capital-city audiences forget how good the regional acoustics can be. The Empire Theatre in Toowoomba, Civic Theatre in Newcastle and Princess Theatre in Launceston are all proper restored heritage halls — closer-to-the-stage seating than you’ll get at Hamer Hall, more atmosphere than the Concert Hall renovation. We treat regional weekends as a way to see a touring show with cheaper tickets, less crowd, and a country town to walk around in for a day.

Our running regional touring coverage is in Regional, with the next-three-months touring schedule published quarterly.