A working repertory theatre is a dynamic entity with its various specialised zones operating collaboratively to mount theatrical seasons curated for an expectant public. Back in the mid-1980s, New Zealand’s Minister for the Arts paid a daytime visit to one such playhouse, Auckland’s Mercury Theatre, where he expressed surprise at its hustle and bustle. This reiterated a common misconception that company theatres come alive only at night with the staged performance. Yet, since then, these working regional theatres of Aotearoa New Zealand — with in-house administrators, directors, designers, performers, technicians and specialist craftspeople — are increasingly rare. The majority of available venues tend to lie dormant during the day unless shows are being installed with requisite technical and dress rehearsals.

The Mercury abruptly closed its doors one evening in 1992, when security guards were sent by liquidators to tell a gathering audience in the foyer and performers preparing in the dressing rooms to leave the building. Since then, company theatres have struggled financially and dwindled, with Dunedin’s Fortune Theatre forced to close the doors of its converted stone church in 2018 after 44 years of operation. This leaves only one home-based professional theatre in the country with all production facilities housed under one roof: The Court Theatre in Ōtautahi Christchurch. So, the inauguration of the city’s new playhouse on the corner of Colombo and Gloucester Streets, which coincided with the 2025 Open Christchurch festival (2–4 May), enabled a public celebration shared by more than 2000 people touring through the many spaces that enable staged productions — from rehearsals to marketing, design, fabrication and installation — towards a celebratory opening night. And, since the show must go on, last-minute completions to the construction itself were still under way as the launch of building and season cohered with the ‘open house’. Because, in the theatre, ‘house’ refers to venue, auditorium and audience, this seems fitting as behind-the-scenes workings were made public. But a visit here reveals more than a house; it’s a purpose-built home.

Named after the Royal Court Theatre in London, Christchurch’s The Court Theatre was established in 1971, with its first five years spent operating in the Canterbury Council’s Stone Chamber, Durham Street Art Gallery and the Orange Hall before occupying Lecture D of the former Canterbury College, which was transformed into The Arts Centre complex — Te Matatiki Toi Ora — in 1976. This occupancy of Benjamin Mountfort’s Gothic Revival architecture lasted until the 2011 earthquakes sent the company to its temporary ‘Shed’ in Addington, a former grain store economically adapted by Fulton Ross Team Architects into a 400-seat venue. The charm of its raw, light-industrial style, utilising shipping containers and portacabins, was belied by lack of insulation and waterproofing issues endured by long-suffering staff. But here they are, 14 years later, with an impressive bespoke venue featuring the energetics of a fully functioning, thoughtfully orchestrated venue.

This new iteration of The Court Theatre, designed by London-based firm Haworth Tompkins with Athfield Architects, is an exemplar of what a theatre could and should be in a country that rarely spends enough care or cash on public architecture for the performing arts. Commissioning the British architectural firm was an inspired and ambitious move, emerging from the company’s extensive research into what makes successful theatre architecture. This was undertaken by The Court’s artistic lead, Ross Gumbley, who turned to ‘Mother England’. A list of successful venues — the Bridge Theatre (2017) and Young Vic (2006) in London, The Egg (2005) in Bath, Bristol Old Vic (2018) and Liverpool’s 2014 Stirling Prize winner, Everyman Theatre (2013) — all led to Haworth Tompkins. In 2019, Steve Tompkins was named the most influential figure in British theatre on The Stage 100 list for that year; the list cites the studio’s “hand in re-imagining many of the UK’s most prestigious theatres, transforming the audience experience and the British theatre landscape”. Having visited these theatres myself, I believe that their success lies in creating a relaxed familiarity, especially within vertically layered auditoria and lounge-like foyers. The inviting front-of-house atmosphere — not unlike a local pub — is further enhanced by reducing emphasis on the stage door, thereby encouraging theatre staff, performers and public to interact, linger together and enjoy the environs that form an inviting community living room, to be occupied throughout the day and well into the night. 

Roger Watts has taken up the mantle from a retiring Tompkins, and the resulting collaboration with the Athfield team seems extremely successful. Housing two auditoria — a 365-seat multilevel playhouse and a 180-seat studio — the building also accommodates administration, production and technical support spaces for costume-making, props-crafting and set-construction, as well as rehearsal space and an education studio that opens onto a rear courtyard. With balconies and windows affording views into these various spaces, the venue deliberately ‘stages’ itself as a vibrant and creative ecosystem. Making use of New Zealand-sourced materials and natural light, the venue’s hybrid structure integrates steel with a mass timber superstructure, its zigzagging assembly a defining feature of post-earthquake Christchurch, while two air towers form chimneys for passive ventilation aided by clerestory windows.

The auditorium’s three-level courtyard format — a galleried shoebox form dating back to 16th-century London and championed by British theatre consultant Iain Mackintosh as “papering the walls with people” — is undeniably intimate, with an added quirk of the first few rows wrapping a thrust-like forestage, which is bound to confront spectator proxemics in the very front and challenge scenographers that tend to defer to a framed proscenium format: something I experienced firsthand on the opening night from the cranked position of a raised stool. I did miss Haworth Tompkins’ signature flexibility in which seating slopes can vary to accommodate flat-floor or raised stage and even be cleared to form an open arena. This often relies on costly retractable seating, a floor pit and extra storage, although the section suggests that such future adaptation is possible. Nevertheless, The Court Theatre promulgates an end-stage literary form of theatre, championed by its long-standing director Elric Hooper, who presided for more than two decades (1979–2000), establishing “three main thrusts” for the company’s seasons — “the classic, the contemporary and the indigenous”. Here, the indigenous refers to work principally coming out of Pākehā culture as New Zealand text-based plays. Although the city’s post-earthquake developments are encouraged to recognise pre-colonial history and previously repressed cultural narratives, and the rare occurrence of a new theatre seems a missed opportunity to adapt the British archetype to a more Polynesian model of Whare Tapere or Fale Fa’afiafia, The Court Theatre’s architecture is as Anglocentric as the city it calls home. Yet, it’s heartening to know that externally produced shows, such as the queer Pasifika Black F*ggot, and wāhinetanga Kōpū, were included within the first season. Black F*ggot was presented in the welcoming Wakefield Family Front Room — with shuttered windows openable to the street, an upper audience level wrapping three sides and seats of varying heights designed to free the space of raised bleachers. This elegant room successfully replaces Addington’s black box theatre, which was rather crudely named ‘The Pub Charity Studio’, summing up the high dependency of our national arts funding on gaming and lotteries. A greater governmental commitment to the arts could restore Aotearoa New Zealand’s lost regional theatre companies with resident artists and artisans that enrich productions, while moving us towards developing performing arts architecture more specific to our post-colonial Pacific condition.

Architecture, like theatre, is a collaborative art form and the success of both depends on dynamic relationships, creative risk and experimentation. The Court Theatre’s compelling design demonstrates successful cooperation between highly specialised professionals acting in concert with one another. This is recognised in the extensive list of project designers, consultants and constructors who — operating as an ensemble — established an architecture that makes visible theatre’s many ‘players’ beyond those who conventionally take centre stage.