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 noting how little of this is documented online.

They describe CPA as a rough-and-ready, constantly producing “factory” shared with dance, costume/design, and tech students, where everyone learned practical skills and did public performances year-round. The acting department’s spine was David Kendall’s Laban/Yat Malmgren-based movement psychology, supported by Jen Havelberg’s movement training, and Linklater voice work—designed to create employable, hard-working actors. Alongside the Hogwarts-like chaos (car-park experiments, endless rehearsals, blunt progress panels, staff-and-student pub culture), Nik contrasts the grim, tightly controlled dance program with the more alive acting culture, and recounts switching courses after being told she was meant to be an actor. They shout out key staff like Peter Dunn, Paul Pearce and Chris Iley, mention notable grads (including Nathan O’Keefe, Renato Mussino, Kate Cheel), and end by joking that the CPA barely even had a “green room.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama_Centre_London

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yat_Malmgren

Acting the metaphor: the Laban–Malmgren system of movement psychology and character analysis

A Mik Allen Concepts production

www.mikallenconcepts.com