The Ohio Northern University Department of Theatre Arts will be presenting a series of “Acting for the Camera”workshops for ONU students, taught by Malcolm Raeburn Read, professional actor and senior lecturer at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, in the Freed Center for the Performing Arts throughout the week of Feb. 15-20.
In addition to his hands on acting workshops, Read will hold a symposium about his career as a British actor on Thursday, Feb. 18 at 11 a.m. in room 131 of the Freed Center, to which all are welcome.
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 that had a brief recording career in the ’80s and still performs occasionally.
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.