Twelfth Night Theatre transformed by a mother and son’s love
By Kate Lockyer
“I’ve let time go… to stay centred, I dismissed time, space, the finite, and I’ve just moved into an infinite world.”
Twelfth Night Theatre owner Gail Wiltshire is grieving her son, Christopher Wiltshire, a barrister who passed away of cancer three years ago.
But within the walls of this community theatre venue in Bowen Hills, he lives on, through his memory and also through his estate, which is funding renovations to the building, including a new bar, freshened interiors and exteriors, and an elevator to help bring the aging building up to accessibility standards.
Sitting in her office at Twelfth Night, teeming with eclectic theatre memorabilia, art and local history tomes, Wiltshire recollected how Christopher would explore the theatre.
“From the time we moved in here, he was always lost. He was either on the roof or under seats… This was his playground,” she said.
Wiltshire said that when young Christopher was asked what he was doing on the roof, he would say, “I love looking at everybody – that’s the world. I’m going to look after the world.”
Built in 1969 and opened by the Deputy Premier of Queenland with the Shakespeare’s quote “I say, there is no darkness but ignorance”, the maze of hallways and hidden rooms that populate this theatre were the perfect playground for a curious child brought up among thespians.
Wiltshire’s offer last year to bequeath the theatre to the Queensland Government to run as a community theatre has not been taken up by any of the major parties.
“Obviously Liberal (LNP), Labor and ‘save the koalas’ (the Greens) were not up to it,” Wiltshire said with her characteristic colloquialism.
“Theatre is about allowing people to feel whatever it is they feel, and you cannot buy that with a government dollar.”
Wiltshire has never been tethered by the realities of trying to invest in the arts in a world where money talks – she isn’t quite sure how far over the million-dollar mark her current renovations have gone.
In 1988, when the theatre came into the possession of the Queensland Government and it was shortsightedly put up for auction, it was Wiltshire who bought it.
“When I was told it was going to be knocked down, put up for auction, I looked at all the suits, I looked at the gold cufflinks… I looked at the gold fountain pens; there was so much gold floating from the elbow down.”
“My thoughts were: ‘you’re a bunch of tossers, put you on a horse and you’ll end up in a lagoon’. So I turned up at the auction…
“I just put my hand in the air, and the hammer went, ‘going once, going twice’, and bang.”
History was made.
Wiltshire’s determination comes from her colonial pioneer forebears.
“I come from the bush in Boonah where there was no frontier, my great-grandparents churned through scrub and bushes… There were no fences, no borders.”
The ethics of community and generosity she learned while working from a young age behind the counter at her grandfather’s general store, where they would often help out those in need, led her to form The Fantastixxx, an integral part of the theatre’s story.
Brought together when Wiltshire and her family opened their home to a group of people in need, The Fantastixxx is a group of people with disabilities who have performed not only at the theatre but on tour throughout Australia.
Downstairs at Twelfth Night is a former club once frequented by reporters, which is now being remodelled to give The Fantastixxx their own accessible theatre space.
While Wiltshire was forging ahead on the frontiers of theatre in the late 80s, Twelfth Night is now somewhat of a last bastion accessible to community theatre companies wanting a real stage in Brisbane’s inner suburbs.
The venue has a proper fly system that can bring theatre magic to life, as Queensland Musical Theatre (QMT) did last year when Mary Poppins floated into the sky with her umbrella.
“This is the only stage that would be sufficient for their very ambitious artistic dimension… (QMT Artistic Director) Deian Ping has got the dream,” Wiltshire said.
She said passionate theatre people like Ping, and Samantha Paterson of Paterson Productions, who directed Thank You For The Music – An ABBA Show at the theatre last month, are the key to the success of community theatre groups.
“If you start to look at the world of the art as something beyond time and place, you are looking at a force that is greater than human ambition and greed,” she said.
For all of September, Twelfth Night Theatre will host cabaret show Gatsby at the Green Light, as part of Brisbane Festival; purchase tickets at brisbanefestival.com.au/events/gatsby-at-the-green-light.
Photo caption: Gail Wiltshire has an immense love for her son Christopher
