FLLOYD KENNEDY is an Australian actor/writer/director, singer-songwriter and voice/acting coach. She has trained and worked in Australia, UK, USA, Nigeria, New Zealand and Russia. As well as performing in cabaret and satirical revues, she toured folk clubs in England and Scotland, and helped to run the Singers’ Club and the Croydon Come All Ye in London at the height of the folk revival, and the Ceilidh Grill in Tiree, Scotland (she was also the chef).
While based in Scotland, she raised two sons with her husband, writer and folk singer Donneil Kennedy, ran drama workshops for the Port Glasgow Association of Tenants’ Groups, 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, Flloyd returned to her acting career, touring Scotland with Annexe Theatre, Shared Boat, Cahoots and several one-woman plays under the auspices of the Scottish Arts Council. She established 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. Flloyd was invited to join the collaborative ensemble VoiceTheatre NY for “The Homecoming Project”, during their residency at the Columbia (Maryland, USA) Festival 1992, before visiting Russia to train further 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.
On returning to Australia in 1997, Flloyd formed Off The Planet, which performed mask and physical street theatre in national parks, banqueting halls and on street corners. She has directed opera and theatre productions (professional, student and youth theatre), including “Madame Butterfly” for the 4MBS Festival of Classics, and “Brave New World Order” for Dianne Gough Productions. Her 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 play, “The Fall of June Bloom (or What You Will”, received creative development at the Magdalena Brisbane Easter Gathering 2008, and was performed at the ADSA conference in Dunedin, NZ in July 2008, at Performing the World in New York in October 2008, and at the VASTA conference in New York in 2009. In 2010 “June Bloom” received its world premiere at the Geoffrey Rush Drama Studio in Brisbane, Qld, and was subsequently presented in Phoenix, Arizona as part of the Phoenix Fringe Festival 2011.
While in Brisbane her performances included Juliet, in Full Circle Theatre’s “A Tender Thing”, Hannah Kennedy in “Mary Stuart” with Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble and Juliet’s Nurse in “Romeo + Juliet” with THAT Production Co as well as roles in short films and tv commercials.
In 2014 Flloyd gained her PhD in Theatre from the University of Queensland, her research topic being “Shakespeare’s Voice: a Theory of the Voice in Performance”. She returned to the UK in 2015, where she has taught voice at E15 Acting School, Manchester School of Theatre, MGA Academy (Edinburgh), Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Cardiff) and ALRA North. Now based in Liverpool, she provides voice and acting workshops for individuals, and professional, community and corporate organizations through her private studio Being in Voice, as well as contributing to the local performance poetry and singer-songwriter scene. She is artistic director of Thunder’s Mouth Theatre, presenting theatre of poetry, passion and philosophy. Her solo show “Yes! Because…” (part 2 in the June Bloom sequence) has been performed in Australia, USA, England and Scotland.
Her new solo show, a compilation of songs and poems comprising “The View from Over-The-Hill”, will be available to tour as soon as the virus allows.
Aussie-born singer-songwriter-performance poet Flloyd (with 2 Ells) Kennedy may be pushing into her eighth decade but this old lady certainly knows a thing or two. With two ukuleles and a kazoo, her collection of ironic, amusing songs and poems draws on her avalanche of memories from a life uproariously lived and wryly observed, taking comic stabs at the world around her which, quite frankly, seems to have lost the plot.