Allen Laverty – Company Member Profile

Originally I trained as actor at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba (just west of Brisbane) and have always had an interest in physical theatre, circus and acro-balance in my work. I love how these skills support my acting craft and also provide me with a great way to train my body. I only came to acting when I was about 30 years old. Prior to that I’d worked as a carer for people with disabilities and also taught job-skills to folks who’d been long-term unemployed. 
 
I moved down to Melbourne in 2010 and joined Melbourne Playback the following year. I was interested in the chance to hear real stories from people and to use theatre as a way to perform these stories back to the audiences who told them.  This month I’m running some introductory acro-balance workshops with our Company as part of our weekly warm ups and training. It’s been great to share some of my circus, acro-balance and physical theatre skills with everyone and we’re currently having fun (and overcoming some fears…) whilst we play with what it takes to ‘base’ someone, find out how to become a ‘flyer’, learn who has the responsibility in a lift, discover how to support and really trust one another and identify what sort of strength (physical and mental!) that we need to do the balances. 
 
Not only are these important ideas for actors, but also they are great metaphors for any group or team to think about in daily work. It’s exciting to see how circus and acro-balance can mix with the Playback form to give us a broader physical language to work with. Now, we’re integrating these skills into our performances to create images and poetry in our story-telling and we’ve already had some beautiful results. 
Allen Laverty

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