The Arts Theatre

The Arts Theatre is at no. 53. It is home to the Adelaide Repertory Theatre, which had the theatre built in 1963.^[17] The 500-seat theatre was built for £45,000, on land bought 15 years prior by the long-running amateur theatre company. It has since become a major venue for other amateur companies as well as Adelaide Fringe and other performances.^[18] It hosts around 14 shows per year.^[17]

Bakehouse Theatre

The building at no. 255 started life as Lovell's Bakery in the 1890s. It was subsequently used as the bookshop of the Adelaide branch of the Communist Party of Australia, and for a while was home to Farmer’s Radio and Suburban Taxis. In the 1970s, Keith Gallasch OAM (who went on to found RealTime magazine with his partner Virginia Baxter OAM) and David Allen, then both lecturers at the Salisbury College of Advanced Education, formed a theatre group comprising some of their students, called Troupe. They rented the warehouse-like building, calling it The Red Shed, which spawned a new theatre company, the Red Shed company, which later moved to Unley. The Troupe collective grew, and performed new Australian works, including some penned by Gallasch.^[19][16]

In the 1990s Peter Green took over, renting the property at a low rent from the Communist Party,^[20] and renovated the old theatre, reopening it as The Bakehouse Theatre in 1997. Arts SA provided some funding until 2006, when Pamela Munt and her daughter Melanie took over the theatre for their Unseen Theatre Company, which specialises in works by Terry Pratchett. The theatre was expanded to include a second performance space, and played host to a number of resident theatre companies as well as Adelaide Fringe shows.^[19] The theatre hosted more than 250 shows, including British comedian Ben Elton.^[20]

In early 2022, the theatre was given notice to vacate the building by its new owners, the Life Christian Centre. The theatre closed after its final run of A Streetcar Named Desire on 7 May 2022.^[20][19]