The Little Theatre in Williamstown, A History 1946- 2021

On the evening of 23 May, 1946, nine thespian residents of Williamstown gathered at that City's Mechanics' Institute and formed the Williamstown Little Theatre Movement. Their immediate aim was to bring to the bayside suburb groups of good standing to provide plays, ballet and music of some cultural value. Ultimately, they hoped to 'encourage the actual production of drama in Williamstown'.

This book tells the story of how, over the subsequent seventy-five years, the Movement established that Thursday evening, now the Williamstown Little Theatre Incorporated, (hereafter referred to as WLT), pursued and largely successfully achieved those aims. The book's primary purpose is to record and, in the context of the Theatre's seventy-fifth anniversary in 2021, celebrate the achievement of the men and women responsible for its growth and development into one of the leading non-professional theatres in Melbourne.

The book extends, updates, and as necessary, revises A Small Intimate Theatre of our Very Own, my history of the first fifty years of the theatre published in 1998. The primary source material for this book, as with the earlier version, remains the extensive archives of WLT held at the theatre's premises at 2-4 Albert Street, Williamstown. Since the original work was published, successive committees of the Theatre, especially in the context of preparing for celebrations of the Theatre's sixtieth and seventieth anniversaries in 2006 and 2016 respectively, have made major efforts to make those archives even more complete and comprehensive than they were in the mid-1990s. As a result, new material relating to the period back to 1946 has been unearthed, some of which casts additional light on the Theatre's story, requiring amplification or modification of the original work.