»Nicholas Allen  »Eric Lomas »Rudolph Wojta 

   Nicholas Allen was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. After spending part of his childhood in Cologne he went to boarding school in England, including five years at Rugby School. Before going on to Sussex University, he spent six months in Vienna in early 1965, studying singing and earning his keep working in a supermarket. He gained extensive theatrical and musical training both at Rugby and at Sussex. Finding himself unhappy away from Austria, he was back in Vienna by November 1966 and has been there ever since, apart from a short interlude in 1969/70. As well as studying, he started working for ›Vienna’s English Theatre‹ in 1967.

Since then there are few aspects of theatre-work of which he has not had first-hand experience. From 1971 to 1986 he toured all over Austria, creating and organising a schools touring operation that reaches even the most remote villages as well as the large towns. During this time he managed, drove, acted and sang in a total of 26 tours, most of which he directed as well. In his spare time he worked for Austrian Radio as actor, speaker, author and translator and was also area-editor for a major American guide-book to Austria.

>From 1986 to 1989 Nicholas Allen worked as assistant to his mentor: co- founder of ›Vienna’s English Theatre‹, Prof. Dr. Franz Schafranek, O.B.E. He remained responsible for the school touring operation and, in 1989, returned to touring all year round, as well as writing and directing. In 1991 he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and the Arts.

In 1994, there followed three years at the ›British Bookshop‹ in Vienna. Working in the English Language Centre, these years afforded him the unique opportunity to gain insight into and identify with the world of schools, teachers and pupils and proved invaluable when Julia Schafranek welcomed him back to ›Vienna’s English Theatre‹ in 1997 to start up a new Workshop Project in Austrian schools. This project is now in its tenth successful year.

In February 2001 he was awarded Austrian citizenship, shortly after the publication, in two volumes, of plays written for pupils of all ages, in schools of all types, to perform in class and in public. In his efforts to promote crosscurricular theatre-pedagogy in Central Europe, he has become well-known as a teacher-trainer in Austria and southern Germany.

In July 2002, after a year’s preparation, he initiated, together with Rudolph Wojta, a new two-week European theatre-workshop-festival ›Shakespeare in Styria‹ - producing a shortened version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for public performance with 25 young actors, drama students and teachers. The success of this venture has led to its becoming a fixture as the ›European Youth Theatre‹ and is now in its fifth year. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.