Whether purpose built or incorporated within town and community halls, theatrical stages have long played a vital role in communities. Hosting performances, speeches and various society and club events, these theatrical spaces often featured curtains, banners and backdrops. Some of these were elaborate and ornate and reflective of a community’s cultural aspirations. Others were humbler and more functional, emerging from a make-do effort to improve a social space. These curtains, banners and backdrops capture the identity and aspirations of the people who commissioned or made them and continue to embody their collective memory.
Join us for a panel discussion with experts who will speak about their research and involvement in the interpretation and conservation of five historically significant stage curtains, banners and backdrops from regional Victoria. Each with its own unique story, these important examples of our community heritage include the 1897 Bullumwaal Mechanics Hall stage curtain from Gippsland, a 1914 calico advertising banner from Ballarat’s Her Majesty’s Theatre, the 1916 Clunes Town Hall painted backdrop and proscenium, and the Birregurra and Deans Marsh Hall Curtains made by members of the Country Women’s Association in the 1930s and 1940s.
Chair:
Deborah Tout-Smith, Senior Curator, Home & Community Museum’s Victoria
Panel:
Peter Freund, Cultural historian
Sherryn Vardy, Conservator
Richard Mackay-Scollay, Curator, Clunes Museum
A Ballarat Heritage Festival event presented by the Eureka Centre Ballarat.
Image: Deans Marsh Country Women's Association, ‘Curtain - Deans Marsh’ 1939-1948 (detail), hessian bags: embroidered, sewn together and backed, Museums Victoria Collections, SH 920880.
