Thunder’s Mouth Theatre Artistic Director is Australian director, actor, writer, singer-songwriter, performance poet and voice/acting coach Flloyd Kennedy, presently based in the UK. She has previously trained and worked in the UK, USA, Nigeria, New Zealand, Russia and Australia with some of the world’s most renowned theatre practitioners.
Flloyd first came to the UK in the late 1960s, took part in the British Folk Revival and over the next 30 odd years she performed street theatre, cabaret and fringe theatre, was lead vocalist with The Black Diamonds Havana Band (trad jazz) and Chorde en Bleu (modern jazz). After three years as deputy wardrobe mistress for the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, she returned to performing, touring Scotland with Annexe Theatre, Shared Boat, Cahoots and several one-woman plays under the auspices of the Scottish Arts Council. She helped establish Performance Exchange, coordinating workshops and inter-disciplinary skills training for theatre practitioners in Scotland, and was founding Artistic Director of Golden Age Theatre (Glasgow), directing and performing in classic and contemporary plays, touring to festivals, theatres, schools and community halls (with workshops) around Scotland from 1991 to 1996.
In 1992 Flloyd was invited to join the collaborative ensemble VoiceTheatre NY during their residency at the Columbia (Maryland, USA) Festival, before visiting Russia to train with the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg. She established the Voice Studies elements of the Acting Courses at Langside College, and Coatbridge College, and taught Verse Speaking at the RSAMD.
Upon returning to Australia in 1997, Flloyd directed opera and theatre productions (professional, student and youth theatre), including Madame Butterfly for the 4MBS Festival of Fine Music, A Life in the Theatre for Trocadero Productions and Brave New World Order for Dianne Gough Productions. She regularly performed with independent theatre and film companies, her roles including Elizabeth Boleyn in Crossbow Theatre’s production of Anne of the Thousand Days, Mme de Roussilion in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Lola in the award winning short film, Lola the Magnificent. In 2012 Flloyd returned to the States to tour with Across The Pond (Seattle) as the Fish in Man Catches Fish, and in May 2013 appeared as Juliet at the Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, in Full Circle Theatre’s production of Ben Power’s A Tender Thing, and in QSE’s Mary Stuart as Hannah. In 2014 she played Juliet’s Nurse in THAT Production Co’s Romeo + Juliet.
As a writer, Flloyd’s musical play Blame it on Your Mother was first performed in Scotland by The Wicked Ladies, then by The Girls at the Empire Church Theatre, Toowoomba. Her adaptation of David Malouf’s novel, An Imaginary Life, was produced by Vena Cava in Brisbane, 1999. The Fall of June Bloom (or What You Will), premiered in Brisbane in November 2010 with Thunder’s Mouth Theatre, before touring to Phoenix Arizona in March, April 2011.
In 2014 her doctorate was awarded by the University of Queensland; the thesis is entitled “Shakespeare’s Voice: A Theory of the Voice in Performance”.
Flloyd returned to the UK in 2015 to teach voice for 10 months at E15 Acting School (Southend) deputising for the Head of Voice; in 2016 taught at the MGA Acting Academy in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since moving to Liverpool, she has taught at Manchester School of Theatre, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and ALRA North. She has also performed in local feature and short film productions, and is a regular at local and online open mic spoken word and music events.
During lockdown, Flloyd has published two volumes of poetry: Sunsets & Kites: scatterings of light in poems, songs and essays and Home is Where I Hang My Pot: poetry fierce and gentle, from somewhere over the hill. Both available from Amazon. She is now writing and broadcasting the weekly podcast series of vignettes “Am I Old Yet?“, as well as performing several of the characters.
She continues to provide private and group coaching online in voice, speech, accents, acting and clown via her private practice Being in Voice.