Wollongong's longest running amateur theatre company is being remembered in 2022 for giving opportunities to people to explore the arts, who might not have found a way anywhere else.

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"Workshop was the starting point, the sort of nursery, and people went on from there," said Bill Dalley.

"The main thing is it has provided a starting point for 70 years, people who were never otherwise going to get up on the stage could have a go."

The former barrister began his amateur acting career in the late 1980s as a way to step into someone else's shoes.

"It was the chance to be somebody different, you tend to get typecast as a lawyer," Mr Dalley said.

"You could be somebody evil, someone who is hopeless who is bumbling, someone who is trying but not succeeding. There's all sorts of possibilities you can try out when you get inside the skin of a character."

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The company formed in 1952 after around 60 people met at the Mangerton Community Hall, interested in forming a play reading group.

For 21 years WWT productions were mostly performed at the Wollongong Town Hall Annex, before moving to its current space on Gipps Road in Gwynneville in 1973.

"The dressing rooms were an old lean-to and for many years, casts would battle the bird lice (and birds) for dressing room space," according to long-standing WWT member Juliet Scrine.

Various works were completed over the decades to bring the theatre to where it is today, such as new dressing rooms, a new foyer and bathrooms, plus new seating.

Mrs Scrine began her Wollongong acting career when she and her partner moved from a regional town to the city in the 1980s.

The Scrine family has been involved with WWT in various capacities over the years, with the matriarch describing the WWT family as inclusive, non-judgemental and supportive.

"I have come in and out ... but it's the people who have captured my heart," she said.

"The friendships I've developed over the years - most of my best friends I met at Workshop."

Some famous faces who took to the WWT stage early in their careers include the late Robyn Slater, Van Badham, Anthony Warlow and Steve Jacobs.

The Gwynneville theatre also seems to have the heart of a ghost who's bunkered down in the space, with cast and crew often reporting props and scripts morning, shaped of people in the bio box, lights going on when they shouldn't.

The Mercury understand the ghost has never hurt anyone, but Mrs Scrine did call it "a very cheeky ghost".

If you have a fond memory from watching a play or being part of one at the Wollongong Workshop Theatre, please tell us in the comments below.

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