- ABOUT: ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & FOUNDER
Lynn Frances Preston trained full-time professionally in dance in her high school years at The Arts Educational School, Barbican Centre, London. In Australia, she completed a Bachelor of Humanities, majoring in Theatre Studies and attained a Masters of Teaching, Primary through The University of New England. In Melbourne Lynn attended the John Bolton Theatre School for vocational training in physical theatre modalities inspired by the work of Jacques Lecoq.
She trained as a Waldorf educator with the Sydney Steiner College, achieving distinctions across all subjects. Special interest in studies of anthroposophical speech and drama led her to The School of Storytelling, Emerson College, U.K. Further mentorship was undertaken with Nicole Ostini, who trained under Dawn Langman. Lynn additionally trained with many other artists including - Al Wunder (improvised dance), Tess de Quinci (Butoh), Emma Saunders (dance), Julian Louis (physical theatre), Thomas E.S. Kelly (dance), Giovanni Fusetti (clown) and Danielle Micich (dance devising).
As a writer, her first play The Blazing Son was presented by La Mama Theatre, Melbourne, through their Play Reading Season, and was further developed for full performance in La Mama Explorations Season, 2019. Her second work The Land Where One Never Dies was developed through Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) in a residency and showing-to-public process, before being invited to the Melbourne International Puppetry Festival, hosted by Lemony S Puppets & La Mama.
In 2022 Lynn was asked to direct, design and work with students to create a shadow puppetry performance of The Epic of Gilgamesh for primary grade Class 5, Cape Byron Rudolf Steiner School. In this year she was also invited to take part in a Creative Lab Residency at The School of Storytelling, U.K, to develop her next work The Cherry Scrub. Upon returning home she further dramaturgically developed this work to be premiered at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, 2023.
Lynn has led community workshops in Gestural Arts - vocalisations and gestures of Nature: practices for attuning to nature for cultivating a deepening of performance-making capacities relating to place, in the Northern Rivers region, where she has lived raising her family since 2008.
Most recently she has launched a programme for parents and carers of children aged 6-8: The Wizard’s Apothecary – Writing for Wellbeing.