Stage Left

The new Arts Centre café assumes stage left; giving centre stage to the grand theatres entrance and the chorus of urban life. It is generous and welcoming, with an open stance to the forecourt and the tide of theatre patrons.

Stage Left is a place of anticipation and reflection; a place to gather and collect with friends and ideas, before and after a show. The prologue and the epilogue. A natural extension of the Arts Centre Melbourne experience.

Stage Left offers audiences the chance to slow down and absorb the atmosphere; to observe the ritual of patrons arriving; to overhear the development of a work in progress discussed between rehearsals. A gentle, temporal threshold into the world of imaginative performance.

“The jury agreed that this was a bold vision, demonstrating both an intelligent resolution of elements and a spatial rigour that is highly commendable.”