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.
the GREENROOM with Nik n Mik
Latest Episodes
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...
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 ...