The Frankston Arts Centre is a landmark theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and art gallery

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

 in the outer Melbourne locality of Frankston

Frankston, Victoria

Frankston is a suburb within the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area in Victoria, Australia. It is located 40 km southeast of the state capital Melbourne at the southernmost edge of Greater Melbourne, near the beginnings of the Mornington Peninsula...

 in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. It was opened by then Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

, The Hon. Paul Keating

Paul Keating

Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...

, on 20 May 1995.

The Centre plays host to a number of major performances, including regular shows by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...

 and Victorian Opera

Victorian Opera (Melbourne)

Victorian Opera is an opera company based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The company was founded in 2005 and commenced operations in January 2006 with funding from the Victorian government, and Richard Gill as Artistic Director...

, and is a tour venue for the Melbourne International Film Festival

Melbourne International Film Festival

The Melbourne International Film Festival is an acclaimed annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1951, making it one of the oldest in the World....

, Opera Australia

Opera Australia

Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...

 and a number of national theatre companies.

Facilities

• The Centre houses an 800 seat theatre, boasting the second largest proscenium arch stage in Victoria, a 60-line fly tower and state of the art technical and staging equipment.
• There is also a function centre which can seat up to 500 and which plays host to a range of events - including corporate and community expos, seminars, gala dinner dances and awards ceremonies. The function centre comprises two rooms (which can be opened up to form one large room) with expansive views across Port Phillip Bay.

Cube 37

Cube 37 is the art centre's "creative arts space", and is housed in a purpose-built building adjacent to the Centre. Cube 37 centres around a large, adaptable studio performance space, with flexible seating for up to 200 people, and also houses a wet studio, meeting rooms, a new media suite and two exhibition galleries.

The building was opened by then Prime Minister

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...

, The Hon. John Howard

John Howard

John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....

, on 30 March 2001 as part of the celebrations for the centenary of the Federation of Australia

Federation of Australia

The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation...

.

Cube 37 hosts a renowned New Media program, with digital art displayed throughout the year in the Glass Studio - a large glass-fronted exhibition space with street frontage. Cube 37 also provides much of the Centre's community access with workshops, exhibitions and youth arts projects running throughout the year.