Victoria Theatre - The Vic

**The Vic
by Celia Walker
**
The Victoria Theatre (The Vic) sits proudly at the top of Devonport’s Victoria Road, a survivor of rough times in the cinema business. A smart coat of paint on the exterior, considerable labouring on the interior, along with a whole community of contributions to the fundraising effort, has revived it from a low-point of decline and near demise in the late 1990s.

The use of the theatre space for concerts, comedies, theatre and other live acts make this just a little bit different from other boutique suburban cinemas, and provides a performance space that would otherwise be lacking at this southern end of the Devonport peninsula. With a couple of tiny lounge cinemas, as well as two larger screens, it also offers obscure and unusual festival fare alongside mainstream movie releases.

Embracing the commercial possibilities of the new silent cinema era, the theatre opened to great fanfare, with opening celebrations including the strange but attention getting enhancement of a caged monkey on the roof. Built in 1912 by American entrepreneur John Benwell, it is the oldest purpose built cinema in the Southern Hemisphere that is still operating, although many changes inside and out have vastly altered it from its original state.

The Art Deco façade is the most obvious transformation (from 1929) – other internal shifts have been more recent to squeeze in the extra cinema spaces.

The cinema had its ups and downs commercially, and after a brief surge of life in the late 1980s it seemed destined to go the way of the cinema across the road and become transformed into apartments. Hard campaigning by local heritage enthusiasts forming the Victoria Theatre Trust have enabled this newly invigorated life for the theatre. The North Shore City Council was persuaded to purchase the building in 2006, leasing it back to Victoria Theatre Trust – an act of generosity that pays dividends through the community focus of many of the one-off events in the theatre. Despite variations on the name – The Victoria Theatre and Picture Palace (too many words), The Vic (snappier, easier to type in a web address) and The Victoria Theatre (very official) – the current operation looks likely to become the most stable in its long history of operation, with the Trust being granted a 33-year lease on the building.