Theatre Royal, Ballarat

The Theatre Royal, Ballarat was a theatre in Ballarat, Victoria. It was the first permanent theatre built in Inland Australia. When the theatre opened in 1858, it was the finest structure in the gold-rich town, and possibly the grandest and most up-to-date theatre in Victoria, outside Melbourne. A series of lessees and managers attracted well-known theatrical companies and artists to its stage, but one by one left disillusioned and none the richer, its periods of inactivity after each entrepreneur growing longer and longer. It declined irretrievably in the 1870s, according to one report due to an infestation of fleas which defied eradication, and piece by piece became a commercial establishment. Historian Ailsa Brackley du Bois attributed the theatre's decline to local activists of the temperance movement who viewed the culture surrounding the theatre as encouraging immoral behavior.