Cirrus@Austlit

Richard James Allen is a poet, writer, filmmaker, choreographer and performer. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School, and then the University of Sydney, where he graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Hons).

He has been an editor of Neos Young Writers, and is a former artistic director of Poets Union Inc. He was also the founding director of the Australian Poetry Festival.

In 1985 he began a long-standing creative partnership with Karen Pearlman, with whom he founded the successful New York based performance company That Was Fast. In 1995-1997 he and Pearlman then worked as artistic directors of the Tasmanian dance company Tasdance. In 1997 Allen and Pearlman established Physical TV, an award-winning film and television production company which specialises in realising dance and physical theatre for the screen.

In 2005 Allen won the University of Technology, Sydney, Chancellor’s Award for his Creative Arts PhD thesis ‘Out of the Labyrinth of the Mind’.

Allen is the grandson of the noted World War II Australian military figure Major-General Arthur Samuel 'Tubby' Allen and the son of writer Robert Allen. He is the brother of art historian and critic Christopher Allen.