Just outside the limelight
Sydney Morning Herald
March 18, 2006

Rodney Seaborn is the unofficial patron saint of Sydney theatre, writes Jacqui Taffel.

Twenty years ago, actor Penny Cook went "with great trepidation" to a mysterious meeting at a private home. She was a 
director of the Griffin Theatre Company, which at the time was about to lose its home - the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross 
was up for sale. An unknown man had called to request the meeting, at which Cook was astounded to discover that he wanted 
to buy the theatre for Griffin.

"We were a very small company and nobody wanted to know about us," she says.

But Dr Rodney Seaborn had enjoyed plays in the Stables' intimate space and strongly supported the company's dedication to 
presenting Australian plays. And he had always wanted to own three things: a hospital, a hotel and a theatre. He already 
had the first two (Alanbrook private psychiatric hospital at Mosman and the Wattle Hotel on Oxford Street). The Stables 
completed his wish list and is the only one he has held onto.

The purchase prompted Seaborn to set up the Seaborn, Broughton and Walford Foundation, enlisting his cousins Peter Broughton 
and Leslie Walford and a couple of other friends but using mostly his own money. Over the two decades since, the long list 
of theatres and organisations that have benefited from his largesse includes Belvoir Street, the Ensemble, the Bell Shakespeare 
Company, the Sydney Festival, the Australian National Playwrights' Centre, the Blue Mountains Festival, Performing Lines 
and NIDA.

Word of the Stables' saviour spread like wildfire and requests began pouring in from "every Tom, thingy and Harry". But this 
new benefactor was no soft touch (he didn't give the Griffin its theatre but provided it rent-free - the company was, and 
still is, responsible for all other outgoings). Those seeking help had to prove their worth.

One was a young, hungry actor who in 1991 performed at the Stables in The Boys. Rather than waiting for the phone to ring, 
David Wenham wanted to produce, direct and perform a one-man play, Dario Fo's A Tale of the Tiger. When his savings from 
calling bingo and working in a sports shop weren't enough, he made an appointment to see Seaborn. "I was naive - I didn't 
know what I was doing," Wenham says now.

Nervous and not particularly confident of his chances, Wenham ended up chatting with the doctor for more than an hour. 
"He was extremely warm and obviously very intelligent," Wenham says. "He quizzed me about every facet of the production 
I was intending to do."

After studying the young impresario's production budget, Seaborn wrote him a cheque. "That was the little piece of the pie 
that was missing," says Wenham, who ended up taking the play to Berlin. "I can't prove it, but I was quite possibly the 
first person to perform in English after the wall came down, thanks to Dr Seaborn." . . . . . . .