Arts leader Sue Nattrass AO, who worked in the industry professionally for 50 years and influenced many careers, has died, aged 81.

Sue Nattrass

Sue Nattrass

On International Women’s Day in March, Nattrass spoke of blazing a trail in 1963 as she became a stage manager at age 22 at the Union Repertory Theatre Company (later Melbourne Theatre Company), surrounded by men who were in their 40s and older, but “who struggled to accept me for a while”.

This baptism led her to stage manage major musical productions later that year as part of the Tivoli circuit around Australia and New Zealand – a major thrill for the Horsham-born Nattrass, whose commerce degree studies at Melbourne University had been easily led astray by student theatre.

In 1966, Nattrass moved to JC Williamson Theatres, where she also became the first woman in a commercial theatre company to assume the roles of production manager, lighting designer, executive producer and general manager over 17 years.

Joining the Victorian Arts Centre Trust in 1983 and rising to General Manager of the Victorian Arts Centre from 1989 to 1996, Nattrass “was the first woman to ever head up an...