Malcolm Tulip

Malcolm Tulip has worked for three decades as a freelance actor, director, writer and teacher, performing in festivals and tours of the United Kingdom, Europe (I Gelati Theatre Co.) and the U.S. (Theatre Grottesco) Although he was committed to being an actor from his early teens, inspired by the combined disciplines of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes he studied Modern Dance and Art at undergraduate school in London. His interest in fusing physicality with his previous dramatic experience then led him to the École Jacques Lecoq: Mime, Movement & Theatre, where he studied with the world-renowned teacher Jacques Lecoq.

As an actor and director Tulip attempts to combine the strategies of the choreographer, the sculptor, the architect, the gymnast, the anthropologist and the clown to the disciplines of the writer, the philosopher, and the psychologist. He is a keen observer of movement both in the human animal and in all its manifestations in the natural world. Tulip also engages these approaches in his work as a solo performer primarily as a modern clown.

Tulip also uses his training in the creation of original work. In 1990 he founded Prospero Theatre Co., writing, directing and performing in eight new works including Asylum/ Asylum, a play with no text, Eine Soirée en la Metamortue de Enrique Miasmo, a play in invented language and most recently The Day Everything Went Wrong, a clown play. A central aspect of Tulip’s work with Prospero Theatre Co. has been the collaborations with composer Frank Pahl and visual artists from multiple disciplines provoking a greater leap into the unknown.

Tulip brings his perspective to his work in the traditional theatre world. He is an Associate Artist and mainstay of the Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, where he has performed and directed for over twenty years grappling with a wide dramatic repertoire, from Pinter’s The Caretaker to Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, from Amadeus to I Am My Own Wife

In the Department of Theatre & Drama, Tulip serves as Head of the Directing Concentration, teaches Movement, Acting, Clown and Directing, and directs a mainstage production each year.