Adelaide Festival Centre offers guided tours of Festival Theatre that take in the auditorium, commissioned foyer artworks, backstage areas, the underground tunnel to Dunstan Playhouse, and the Riverbank Walk of Fame. Participants receive complimentary tea or coffee at Playhouse Café and entry into a prize draw, with 10% discount on merchandise available after the tour.

There's a particular thrill in seeing a theatre with the lights up and no audience in the seats, and that's exactly what this guided tour of Festival Theatre offers. Adelaide's premier performing arts venue has decades of stories tucked into its architecture, and this tour is built to bring a few of them out into the open.

The walk-through starts in the auditorium itself, where guides share the history and the odd anecdote that doesn't usually make it into a program note. From there, the tour moves into the foyers to look at the commissioned artworks that most patrons walk straight past on their way to their seats. It's worth slowing down for these. Festival Theatre's public spaces were designed with real intention, and the tour gives them the attention they deserve.

Backstage access is the part that will appeal most to anyone who has ever wondered what happens beyond the wings. The tour takes in the stage door and dressing rooms, the unglamorous but essential machinery of live performance. Then there's the historic underground tunnel linking Festival Theatre to Dunstan Playhouse, a genuinely unusual feature and one of the more surprising things Adelaide's Riverbank precinct has to offer.

The tour wraps up along the Riverbank's Walk of Fame, a fitting bookend given how much of Adelaide's performing arts history is tied up in this stretch of the city.

There are a few extras built into the experience. Participants get a complimentary coffee or tea at the Playhouse Café inside Dunstan Playhouse, which is a nice way to sit with everything just seen. There's also entry into a prize draw for one lucky participant, and a 10% discount on merchandise purchased after the tour, a small incentive if you're the sort to pick up a souvenir on the way out.

For anyone with a genuine interest in how Adelaide's arts institutions actually function, day to day, this is a worthwhile hour or two. It's not a deep dive into current programming so much as a look at the bones of the building and the space it holds in the city's cultural life. Given how central Festival Theatre is to the Adelaide arts calendar, that context is more valuable than it might first sound.

No date or ticketing details were confirmed at time of writing, so anyone interested should check directly with Adelaide Festival Centre for the current tour schedule.

Details are correct at the time of publishing. Events can change or be cancelled, so please confirm dates, times and prices with the venue or ticket seller before booking.