Mackay's long standing community theatre company will collaborate with CQUniversity this year as they look to ignite the flame of local arts in the region.

Late last year the Kucom Theatre Company sold its renowned theatre, which was transformed from a Queenslander house on Shakespeare Street into a humble theatre in the 1970s, leaving them without rehearsal or production space following their last performance in 2011.

CQUniversity Mackay's Conservatorium of Music offered a hand to help the company in the interim.

"When we learnt that Kucom Theatre was going to lose their space, we offered them the use of our Conservatorium theatre and technical assistance," CQUniversity's Dean of the School of Creative and Performing Arts Professor Matthew Marshall said.

"We saw this as a fantastic collaboration venture and it would be great to do more work with Kucom Theatre in the future."

Prof Marshall said it was also beneficial for students to be involved in community theatre and to be able to work with a range of different performers in the region who they may not have necessarily have been in contact with before.  

"Kucom Theatre also provides placements in their production for CQUniversity's Bachelor of Theatre students - both on stage and in the technical theatre components of the production season - enabling our students to apply and practice the skills and knowledge gained in their studies in a public forum," he said.

"We envisage that we will have some students working backstage during the production and, if successful in auditions, there may even be students onstage."

The Kucom Theatre will use CQUniversity's Conservatorium of Music theatre for their major production this year. Kucom Theatre's treasurer Maureen Coleman said over the last few decades, the theatre company had seen a slow decrease of its member base but refused to see local theatre as a dying art.

"We would normally do up to four major productions a year but our member base has depleted and with the loss of our theatre, we have cut back to one major production and a youth performance for this year," she said.

"We hope to be able to present at least three productions a year in future again."

Ms Coleman said the move to the CQUniversity Conservatorium theatre was part of a renewed approach by Kucom to collaborate with other groups in Mackay.

"While we pride ourselves on being our own identity, we are now trying to focus on community partnerships."

"We are also working with Film & Arts Mackay at CQUniversity to screen the movie Giant at their monthly film night in August, as a pre-promotion to our major production."

Kucom's major production ‘Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean' will take place from Wednesday 5 to Saturday 8 September this year with rehearsals already taking place.

The Kucom Theatre Company will celebrate its 65^th anniversary next month.

For more information visit http://www.kucom.org.au/.