The Dog Theatre has been born from the overwhelming need for performance artists of the western suburbs to make their art on their home turf and to have the audiences on their side of town engage in that art.

And man, there are a lot of us...
Snuffies have been doing it for years.
The Big West Festival has been born.
The Footscray Community Arts Centre has been maintaining the rage for a long time too. There are so many - individuals and companies.

For so long we have travelled away from the community that we live in, create in, taking with us a wealth of quality performance practice only to come back home to a place without a venue of its own.

And thus an audience without a place to go...

For some time now the arts community of the west have been working to establish Footscray and its surrounding suburbs as a major player in the arts scene in Victoria. The Dog Theatre stands as a testament to that foresight and commitment to the permanent and exciting development of quality arts practice in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

Peta Hanrahan, Artistic Director