LOCAL Greens pollie Lynn MacLaren is planning to lobby her party colleagues to support the establshment of a performing arts centre in Fremantle.

The south metro Greens MP is calling for a theatre to try to put an end to the exodus of arts organisations.

She also wants the WA government to put aside funding in this year’s budget for an arts facility.

“Fremantle’s own Harbour Theatre is being moved out of rented theatre space for the second time in three years, with nowhere to go,” she says.

Fremantle nearly lost the WA Circus School last year when negotiations over its lease at the old Customs House in Phillimore Street were looking shaky. Dance groups hire the Sullivan Hall, an unlined asbestos shed with no air-conditioning, owned by the education department.”

If you throw in Deckchair Theatre and the precarious future of the Fly By Night Club because of funding, it paints a bleak picture.

Ms MacLaren says Fremantle, once proud of its status as a centre of the arts, has no decent venues that can host theatre, dance and song.

Buildings that could host the arts, like the old Beacon Theatre and old Energy Museum, are boarded up.

“The old aircraft hangar was converted temporarily to the Fly By Night Club as a music venue in the mid-1980s and it is still the largest performance venue in the city,” she says.

“Theatre and circus companies need long-term accommodation with sufficient building height for lighting, sets and aerial work.”

by BRENDAN FOSTER