Tim Bray Theatre Company’s final curtain call as founder battles rare cancer

The struggling arts sector faces another blow with the closure of Tim Bray’s children’s theatre company as he undergoes chemotherapy treatment for a rare form of cancer. Children’s theatre champion Tim Bray , whose shows have entertained royalty and hundreds of thousands of children over the past three decades, is battling incurable cancer and has announced his company will be closed. The final curtain will fall after a three-week season of The Santa Claus Show ‘24 , which opens on Sunday at the PumpHouse Theatre in Takapuna, the company’s historic home venue on the shore of Lake Pupuke.

Bray, 60, recently began chemotherapy treatment for desmoplastic small, round cell sarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer more commonly seen in children and young adults. In a statement released today, he said efforts had failed to find a successor to run the Tim Bray Theatre Company, a registered charitable trust..