Downstage Theatre will raise its curtains again later this year.
The 50-year-old theatre company announced last September it would close after Creative New Zealand didn’t renew its funding.
But Downstage Theatre Trust board member David Underwood said a new board had enabled the theatre to continue.
“The aim of the committee is to enable it to continue and not be put into liquidation,” he said.
“Fifty years of leading theatre projects is not going to go down the drain.”
All creditors had been paid and the Hannah Playhouse Trust was making interim arrangements for the continuing use of the premises.
The building is leased to the Capital E National Theatre for Children for 2014, but would not be in use all year, Underwood said.
“They [Capital E] hope for other entities to come to an agreement with them about other uses for the theatre.”
The Downstage Theatre Trust board was seeking funding from sponsors and planned to put on a show later this year.
“I’m sure it will happen, but how and when I have no idea.”
Underwood was a founding member and former chairman of the Downstage Theatre Trust board. He is also a trustee of Hannah Playhouse.
The other Downstage board members are Graham Atkinson, Diane Jordan and David Carnegie.
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– The Wellingtonian
