The Ohio Northern University Department of Theatre Arts welcomes Malcolm Raeburn Read, professional actor and senior lecturer at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, as a visiting guest lecturer from Feb. 16-26.
Read will be at ONU as part of an exchange agreement with the University of Salford and will teach “Acting for the Camera,” which he will do in a series of six sessions. Read also will hold more informal sessions with ONU students and visit a variety of classes during his stay.
Read joined the University of Salford in 1999 after previously combining posts as visiting lecturer and director at Edge Hill University and Arden School of Theatre with work as a writer, director and performer. He began his career as an actor/teacher in theatre-in-education at Spring Street Theatre Hull in 1974 before becoming a founding member of Broadside Mobile Workers’ Theatre and then joining Red Ladder Theatre. Since 1978, he has been lead singer and lyricist with Agony Column, a new wave rock band with a brief recording career in the ’80s that still performs occasionally.
Read’s writing for theatre includes commissions for Dr Fosters Theatre, M6 Theatre Company; Interplay Community Theatre; an oratorio libretto, music by Christopher Fox, for York Soundpool; “Empire of the Dead,” an opera libretto, music by Christopher Fox (Banff Music Festival, Canada); an adaptation of “The Government Inspector” for Edge Hill University; and lyrics and other material for the many comedies created and performed by the award-winning Lip Service Theatre Company from 1985 to the present.
Read’s performance work includes repertory theatre, theatre-in-education, community theatre, street theatre and improvised comedy. He has played many television roles since “Brideshead Revisited” and “The Jewel In The Crown” in the 1980s and has been heard in many featured roles in BBC radio drama. Read was a founding member of the comedy improvisation troupe Comedy Express, whose members have gone on to have careers in television scriptwriting, industrial training and theatre as well as academia. His abiding interest in comedy led him to take a lead role in writing the new Comedy Practices pathway.
