About the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road & Lexi Sekuless Productions
The Mill Theatre at Dairy Road is Canberra’s newest theatre, an intimate 67 seat greybox studio at the Dairy Road precinct. This venue opened in November 2022 and was built by the Molonglo Group with the technical fit out by Elite Event Technology. The technical fit out is what turned a cool room into a theatre and Elite Event Technology is the ongoing and major partner. It is the first private enterprise theatre of its kind in the ACT and is run by Lexi Sekuless Productions. The Theatre is an ambitious venture committed to a professional theatre practice and growth of the professional theatre industry in the ACT. Here you can expect quality, professionalism and an experience like nothing you can get on your laptop at home.
About Dairy Road
Dairy Road is a neighbourhood slowly developing on a 14-hectare site in Canberra’s East Lake. It sits next to Canberra’s industrial suburb of Fyshwick and the human-made nature reserve, the Jerrabomberra Wetlands. Currently the site is made up of warehouses, some office buildings and vehicle yards and has become home to printers, brewers, distillers, roasters, startups, indoor recreation, health providers and commercial producers. A number of gardens and pockets of open public spaces have replaced asphalt and concrete.
Dairy Road is being developed by Molonglo, with a long-term vision for an interconnected and diverse neighbourhood that emerges over the next 10 years. A productive refuge where many often-separated parts work together as one ecosystem. Here, light industry, working, living, recreation, retail and entertainment will be undertaken in a restored landscape.
The Players
Attached to the theatre is an ensemble of professional Canberra creatives called the Dairy Road Players. They are a mix of Canberra creatives, along with several interstate Canberra lovers, committed to a professional practice for the ACT theatre industry. They work together at regular drop-ins, with parts in productions offered directly to Players. This is not a cosy club. Creatives who share the same values are welcome to join by attending the drop-ins.
There may not be a huge number of professional theatre makers in the ACT (and many keep moving out of town!) but those who are here should be celebrated and promoted. This is not about being better than any others. It is not about vertical comparisons. It is about the positive exploration of technique, and the positive promotion and horizontal growth of the industry in Canberra. There is room for all of us.
Drop-ins and capacity development
No one is actually interested in five minutes in the room with sweat running down your back and a snooty casting director enjoying having power over you. Traditional auditions are flawed. A major characteristic of the new Theatre is that we do things differently. The drop-ins, for example, act as a replacement process for our productions. They enable an open door policy and also multiple chances to get it wonderfully wrong.
Support and soft infrastructure via the shadow-emerge-mentoree process is another way we hope to grow the industry through new and different approaches. Key productions, for example, have a call out for new directors to shadow the experienced director. This will be followed by a chance to then direct under your mentor.
Every element of the Theatre from casting to play selections is tailored towards breaking new ground for Canberra creatives, and for their audiences.