the GREENROOM with Nik n Mik
The Green Room with Nikki & Mik Allen
A safe backstage for people who make things.
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.
Recorded on Kaurna Country of 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 living this 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.
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.
the GREENROOM with Nik n Mik
Latest Episodes
GR_EP 15_A familiar fork in the creative road
Well, here we are again.Nik and Mik have found themselves at that familiar creative junction: something new has started to take shape, which means excitement, possibility, logistics, money, doubt, overthinking, and at least one conver...
GR_Ep14 😳 We broke our abstinence... we're getting creative again
We promised ourselves a year off making shows.We nearly made it. 😂Mik's got an agent again. Self-tapes are flying in. Nikki's been quietly nursing an idea involving life drawing, poetry and a bit of bohemian mischief.And no...
GR_Ep 13 Belonging
This week we riff on access, privilege, and belonging in theatre, contrasting their politically charged mentors (apartheid-era rebel theatre and protest-hardened acting teachers) with today’s glossy, well-resourced private school productions an...
GR_Ep12_Feasting on Performance in Melbourne
Melbourne Theatre Double: Speakeasy Vaudeville + Eddie Izzard’s HamletMik and Nik head to Melbourne for a theatre double: a gritty, intimate vaudeville night at Speakeasy Theatre Melbourne and Eddie Izzard’s one-person Hamlet. They rave...
GR_Ep 11_Connection & Resistance: Intimate Theatre Amid AI
Nik and Mik reflect on how a cash-strapped project pushed them into “parlor theatre”: tiny, intimate shows (often in private homes) historically tied to taboo, political, and community communication. They unpack what changes when the audience i...