Building issues force Port arts icon to kill the lights
A long-running theatre company has closed to the public weeks before its 99-year-old venue was due to welcome artists from around the country. It’s the latest heritage-listed arts space to close for maintenance.
Back in July, Port Adelaide experimental arts organisation Vitalstatistix was six days out from hosting a sold-out Illuminate Adelaide season when an engineer’s inspection flagged “load-bearing” concerns about the ceiling of its heritage-listed home.
Suspended from that ceiling was a semi-permanent aluminium rig that for years had supported lighting, sound and other essential equipment.
“We were able to pivot at very short notice,” Greer Holmes says of the decision to install a temporary, freestanding lighting system for the Illuminate Adelaide show.
“However, bringing in that kind of temporary infrastructure for an unknown amount of time was not a feasible solution for us.”
Last month, Greer Holmes announced the temporary closure of the venue while its landlord, the Department of Premier and Cabinet, oversaw remediation works in the building.
“Months of planning go into shows and events that frequently involve dozens of people behind the scenes,” Greer Holmes explains. “Pushing on with the potential of disruption wasn’t really an option for us.
“So that the building owners have ease of immediate ongoing access when they need it, we made the decision to move the 2027 program to other venues and spaces.”
"Pushing on with the potential of disruption wasn’t really an option for us."
The state government-owned Waterside Workers’ Hall originally opened in 1927 as the heartland of Port Adelaide’s then-booming – and highly unionised – workforce of wharf labourers. The building was later repurposed as an arts venue in the 1990s, at a time when the area’s ‘wharfie’ population had dwindled significantly.
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Vitalstatistix has called the hall home since 1992, and for over 30 years it has been a site for performances, artist development and community events.
A spokesperson for the Department of Premier and Cabinet told InReview that works will be completed “as soon as is practicable”, with a clear timeline to be set after a “thorough architect and engineer investigation, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year”.
The timing of the closure is particularly pointed for the company, which this week was due to open the latest edition of its long-running Adhocracy program, a “national hothouse” for new and experimental art and theatre that invites performers and producers from around the country to descend on the hall to present work-in-progress performances to local audiences.
This year’s program, spread over two weekends, was slated to begin on November 6. It has now been cancelled.
Greer Holmes says it was a “tough decision”, but that Vitalstatistix will instead support the yet-to-be-announced lineup to mount their work in venues around the country over the next 12 months.
“Ultimately, that’s a silver lining,” she says. “Experimental artists are very adaptable and flexible, everyone has understood that it’s a situation outside of our control and is eager to make the new parameters work.”
‘No good time of the year’
Waterside is the latest performing arts venue to be sidelined by essential maintenance. The closure of the Migration Museum in July to undertake “critical, structural and conservation works” prompted burgeoning Fringe venue hub the Courtyard of Curiosities – based in the courtyard of the former 19th-century Destitute Asylum – to announce it would take a “fallow year” in 2027.
“With the Migration Museum temporarily unavailable while it undergoes conservation work, this planned pause will give us time to develop a strong, sustainable plan for the venue’s future,” venue organisers said in a statement in August.
The decision also affects three popular spaces at the neighbouring State Library of South Australia, with the Courtyard of Curiosities team also running shows in the library’s Mortlock Chamber, Circulating Library and Hetzel Theatre.
The State Library of South Australia has confirmed to InReview that those spaces will not be part of the 2027 Adelaide Fringe season.
Over in Hindmarsh, Holden Street Theatres also announced in September it would pause all performances in the two main spaces of its heritage-listed – and similarly state government-owned – All Saints Anglican Church, built in 1850.
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At the time, a rigging system mounted to one of the building’s walls had come loose, forcing the closure while engineers and heritage architects investigated.
While Holden Street continued to host poetry readings in its front bar, its November production of Conor McPherson’s Olivier Award-winning The Weir – due to open this week – was cancelled, along with a number of other independent productions from local companies.
“We chose to shut down completely for the safety of audiences and artists, and to enable the work to be efficiently carried out,” Holden Street Theatres founder and artistic director Martha Lott tells InReview. “It is a pity it happened now, but there’s no good time of the year.”
Lott says such unexpected and often complex maintenance issues – and a broader need to make older buildings compliant and accessible to modern standards – complicate a traditional compact between arts organisations and “beautiful old buildings”.
“These buildings are built in the 1800s, and they need a lot of love,” Lott says of Holden Street’s situation. She says that when she first walked into the building decades ago, “the place was filled with rat poo, needles and rubbish.”
“It used to be that we maintain the building, and pay a low rent in return,” she explains. “Our landlords, the Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing put a lot of money into maintenance, and they haven’t massively put the rent up. But they don’t have the money in their budget to renovate the buildings, so we have to work with them to make it happen.”
Happily for Holden Street, InReview can confirm it is on track to reopen by the end of the year, and is currently working on its 2027 Adelaide Fringe program.
“It’s been a big undertaking, a big project, but we needed to put our heads down and do it,” she says.
‘Getting audiences to fill the venues we have’
Despite the disruption, Lott says the bigger issue facing local artists isn’t the occasional venue closure: it’s filling seats in the ones still operating
“The financial costs of producing theatre, the reluctance of using venues that are out of the city centre, and the increase in living costs meaning getting audiences to fill the venues we have is an ongoing challenge,” she says.
Down at the Port, it’s still unclear when Waterside will be back up and running – but Greer Holmes and the Vitals team are committed to returning.
“Artist-run spaces, studios and arts organisations often inhabit older spaces that creative communities find very endearing,” Greer Holmes reflects. “They are filled with history, charm, stories, and personality that gets embedded into the bricks and mortar.
“It’s to be expected that it needs some work, and the reality of that is that work in a heritage building takes time.
“When we do reopen the doors, it will be done with a massive celebration to welcome people back to the improved venue.”
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