Richard James Allen

Notes

Born in Australia, Richard James Allen has been performing professionally around the world as an actor, dancer and poet for more than 30 years. Trained as an actor in the methods of Constantin Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brooke, Pina Bausch and others, he has a wide dramatic, physical and vocal range. A writer himself, he has a profound respect for language and a rich understanding of the underlying dramatic shape of a scene. An experienced performer for stage and screen, he is creative and at ease with improvisation, fluid and generous in collaboration. A teacher of directing actors at Sydney Film School, he understands the nuances of different styles of acting, and has a precisely honed ability to respond to direction. Once described as being “Australia’s most successful performance poet” (Nyk Sykes, Secretary, Poets Union, Inc.), he has a developed skill at holding an audience and a finely tuned sense of comic timing. Richard also has unique physical capabilities. An advanced yoga teacher and practitioner, with an additional track record as an acclaimed choreographer, he can easily pick up most physical skills, and unites a surprising flexibility and strength, speed and grace in his actions with trained dancer’s ability to take physical direction and understand precise shape and movement sequencing in a short time. He also has a rich singing voice and rich understanding of musicality and rhythm having studied violin and piano and sung in the Sydney Opera House as a child. Richard James Allen is Artistic Director of the internationally acclaimed Physical TV Company in Sydney, and before that was Artistic Director of Tasdance in Launceston and That Was Fast in New York City. In addition to work with these companies, he has performed in films, plays, performance pieces, site specific works, dances and street theatre with numerous other international directors, writers, producers and choreographers. He has played many roles on film and on stage, including a schizophrenic, a monk, a soldier, a madman, a filmmaker, a murderer, a loyal son and a range of fathers, plus two very different kinds of angels. These productions have received critical acclaim in The New York Times and other leading publications, multiple awards and nominations, and been broadcast, screened and performed in 30 countries around the world. His performances have been describes as “extraordinary” (ArtsHub, Sydney), “terrifying” (The Village Voice, NYC), “ferociously watchable” (The Glasgow Herald).