Establishment and early years (1925-1956) La Boite was founded in 1925, under the direction of British teacher of speech and drama
Barbara Sisley and English literature professor
Jeremiah Joseph Stable. It was known as the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society, and
Rhoda Mary Felgate was a founding member and an early play director. The company is said to be one of the oldest continuously operating theatre companies in Australia, operating under Sisley's direction until her death in a road accident in 1945. Sisley had directed 57 productions for the company, including a number of Australian plays. After Sisley's death, the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society survived from 1946 through to 1956 under Tom Stephens, Alex Foster, Cecil Carson and Gwen MacMinn.
Relocation to Hale Street and the first "La Boite" (1956-1969) Babette Stephens succeeded the position of Council President in 1957, before accepting the first formal title of "Theatre Director" in 1959. A prominent professional Australian actor and director, Stephens helped to create the first permanent theatre for the company when she succeeded in getting the company to purchase four cottages in Sexton Street and Hale Street in
Petrie Terrace. The suggestion was made to convert one of the cottages into a "
theatre-in-the-round" theatre space similar to Hayes Gordon's Ensemble Theatre in
Sydney. In the lead-up to the launch of the theatre's new season in Hale Street in 1967, Brisbane Repertory Theatre adopted the new name "La Boite", The French translation of "the box". La Boite's intimate, 70-seat space attracted a new audiences, as well as a new directors and actors, including Jane Atkins, Eileen Beatson, Ian Thomson,
Barry Otto,
John Stanton and Muriel Watson. designing the new
La Boite Theatre Building (now heritage-listed). Blocksidge established her eventual aim to make La Boite a professional theatre company through the establishment in 1975 of the first professional 'theatre-in-education' team in Queensland, Blaylock programmed innovative, risky, and politically challenging Australian and non-Australian plays. The appointment in mid-1982 of Andrew Ross as artistic director brought La Boite into more professional main-house repertoire. By 1983, the company had lost both state and federal funding. The following years were considered financially trying for La Boite, but a huge effort by the Council and "resident directors" Mike Bridges and Mary Hickson kept the company and theatre afloat. By 1991, the stress of running such a vibrant pro-am theatre company proved too much
Third relocation and present-day (2000 – present) Sean Mee had been one of Brisbane's leading actors for many years and he had started his career at La Boite with the Early Childhood Drama Project in the 1980s. He took the company in new artistic directions. The company left the theatre it owned and moved to the new La Boite Theatre – the Roundhouse Theatre, a larger replica of the second La Boite Theatre. It was built in the Creative Industries Precinct of
Queensland University of Technology's
Kelvin Grove Campus. Mee's Artistic Directorship saw the company both artistically and financially reap the benefits of embracing primarily programming new Queensland works commissioned through La Boite. In 2008, Mee relinquished his position of artistic director. Despite the initial trials with the company, including the
Australia Council cutting funding to the company, David Berthold took up the position of artistic director, and under his leadership the company broadened its scope to include international works in its programming while retaining the company's over-85-year commitment to fostering Queensland and Australian theatre. Berthold's efforts with the company were heralded as having "completely repositioned a Brisbane institution [La Boite]", and garnered several prominent awards, including numerous winnings of the prestigious
Matilda Awards. Berthold's term ended in 2014. ==Personnel==