Malcolm Raeburn
+44 (0)161 295 6039
Malcolm joined the University in 1999 after previously combining posts as visiting lecturer and director at Edge Hill and Arden School of Theatre with work as a writer and performer.
After graduating from Leeds University in 1974 with an honours degree in English and Philosophy he began his career as an actor/teacher in Theatre-In-Education at Spring Street Theatre Hull before becoming a founding member of Broadside Mobile Workers' Theatre, performing agit-prop plays on building sites, at demonstrations and shop-stewards' meetings. Malcolm moved North with Red Ladder Theatre, to whose shows Strike While The Iron Is Hot (a.k.a. A Woman's Work Is Never Done) and the NHS satire It Makes You Sick he contributed songs as well as being co-writer/deviser.
In 1978 he co-founded Agony Column, a Leeds-based post-punk pop band playing music with uncanny pre-echoes of the Kaiser Chiefs and Pigeon Detectives. In the Eighties he combined work as a jobbing actor with writing commissions. Theatre work at Salisbury Playhouse, Library Theatre, Manchester, Derby Playhouse, Soho Poly, Sheffield Crucible, York Theatre Royal, Leeds Playhouse, the Duke's Lancaster and the Young Vic was interspersed with featured television roles in Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel In The Crown, Inspector Morse, the Steve Coogan comedies Coogan's Run and Four Fights, Two Weddings and A Funeral, Prime Suspect, Coronation Street, The Bill, Midsomer Murders and many others, as well as major roles in numerous BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 dramas.
Original play commissions include Away From It All - written for Dr Fosters Theatre; Quick Change for M6 Theatre Company; Change Partners for Interplay Community Theatre; Homicide Suite - an oratorio libretto, music by Christopher Fox, for York Soundpool, Empire of the Dead, opera libretto, music by Christopher Fox (Banff Music Festival, Canada), as well as 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.
In 2003 Malcolm graduated with an MA (with Distinction) in Scriptwriting for TV and Radio.
Malcolm is the Programme Leader for the BA in Media and Performance. Having been Director of Admissions for the School he is now Admissions Coordinator for Performance Division. He also coordinates the graduating students' Performers' Showcase, which has increasingly raised the University's profile in the arts and entertainment industries as a source of outstanding talent. Having spent much of his career performing in television and radio, unsurprisingly his teaching mostly centres on acting for the camera and microphone, though he has taught and is passionate about pop music and popular culture, theatre acting, comedy and theatre and writing and devising. He has directed a great number of college and university productions and has recently directed his first short film, She Shoots, She Scores! - a comedy about the effect on a young couple of the England football team's dismal performance in the last World Cup.
His research interests are wide-ranging, including the representation of science in theatre, theatre as a political tool and the art of comedy improvisation - Malcolm was a founding member of the leading comedy improvisation troupe Comedy Express. He is currently engaged in helping to develop a new programme to build on the Division's already considerable involvement with comedy and performance.
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