the GREENROOM with Nik n Mik
The Green Room with Nikki & Mik Allen
A safe backstage for people who make things.
Recorded on Kaurna Country on the Adelaide Plains, The Green Room is where married duo Nikki Allen and Dr Michael (Mik) Allen clock off from the show and talk about what a creative life is actually like.
Between them, they’ve racked up around 80 years in the arts – acting, directing, teaching, dramaturgy, festivals, research, community work, youth arts, and a frankly ridiculous number of side-hustles and near-burnouts. They’ve tried to leave the industry more than once. It keeps dragging them back.
This isn’t a promo feed or a highlight reel. It’s the green room:
the staff room of theatre, where performers and makers swap stories, vent, compare scars, talk craft, politics, survival, and the quiet moments where the real lessons sink in.
Expect:
- honest, unpolished conversations
- ADHD rambling and PhD-level overthinking
- stories from tin sheds to multi-million dollar festivals
- and the odd coughing fit or existential crisis left in the edit
If you’re an artist, teacher, creative, cultural worker, or just a human who loves what art does to people, pull up a chair. This is your backstage.
Episodes
10 episodes
GR_Ep10_a retrospective... of sorts
For their 10th episode, Mik and Nick skip the heavy theory and do a quirky retrospective of standout performing-arts memories: Mik’s terrifying year-7 Peter Pan audition that became his first taste of ensemble belonging; youth dance-theatre dou...
GR Ep 9_ An Actor Prepares but is an actor prepared
Mik and Nik (a long-married theatre couple with decades in the industry and in teaching) unpack a big question: actors learn how to prepare—so are they prepared for the mental, physical, and emotional toll of the work? They reflect on training ...
To work or to work?
What happens when a lifelong creative and anthropologist walks into an office job? Nikki interviews Mik on the shift from theatre/film life into local government community development through a library service — and the weirdness of being seen ...
GREEN ROOM_Ep 7 Nurturing Talent in Theatre Education
In episode seven of The Green Room, Mik and Nik chat about how they fell into teaching and what they’ve learned across 30+ years in performing arts. They contrast different teaching models (institutions, holiday workshops, agency-style courses,...
Training; at the Centre for the Performing Arts (Adelaide)
Mik and Nik reminisce about their training home: Adelaide’s old Centre for the Performing Arts (CPA) on Grote Street, a boutique TAFE acting school set inside a converted teacher’s college with its own theatre. They outline its history while no...
Living the Creative Life... together
In this episode of the Green Room, Mik and Nik sit down on a scorching Adelaide day to discuss their thirty-year journey as a married couple in the performing arts industry. They recount the highs and lows of balancing their personal lives, car...
Censorship & other harsh realities
In this episode, Michael and Nikki, a long-term married couple working in the Australian performing arts industry, discuss censorship and its impact on creativity and management within the arts sector. They reference recent events surrounding t...
Audiences...continued
In this episode of 'The Green Room with Mik and Nik, dive deep into the shifts in audience behaviour post-COVID. They discuss the challenges performers and theatre workers face in re-engaging with audiences who have lost social play skills and ...
