Ed Burnside

Biography

Ed is the former co-Artistic Director of Dorset Corset Theatre Company, working closely with renowned South West playwright Helen Davis, for whom he has co-created Persuasion, Far From The Madding Crowd, Northanger Abbey, Under The Greenwood Tree, Frankenstein: The Year Without a Summer and most recently, Cosi fan tutte. As a company, they are associate artists at Bridport Arts Centre and The Arc Theatre in Trowbridge as well as being the resident producing company at the Shelley Theatre in Boscombe, Bournemouth. The company has toured across the south extensively over the last nine years and are project funded by Arts Council England as well as various local authorities and charitable trusts. He also has a close working relationship with renowned international children’s theatre company, Big Wooden Horse: for the company: Night Before Christmas (Brighton Dome and artsdepot), Pigeon Party (National and North American Tour), The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (artsdepot and North American Tour), The Way Back Home (Theatre Royal Winchester and tour), and Stuck (The Point Eastleigh and tour). More recently Ed directed the first revival of Linda Wilkinson’s play with music Diamond at Brighton Dome. In Brighton, he continues to work closely with New Writing South, directing research and development for playwrights in the South; credits include The Puppy That Ate Christmas and Smouldering. Ed wrote and directed the integrated audio description for Starting Line for Paralympics London 2012 (Accentuate and CandoCo): the project was performed to a very large audience in Aylesbury to celebrate the history of Stoke Mandeville Hospital and set a benchmark in accessible arts. He also was the director of Le Gateau Chocolat (Menier Chocolate Factory, Assembly Edinburgh, Sydney Opera House, Adelaide, Melbourne, New Zealand and Wroclaw, Poland). Ed has also directed Ferneham Hall, Fareham’s pantomimes Cinderella and Jack and The Beanstalk for Jordan Productions and will restage Cinderella this Christmas in Redditch. Alongside his professional directing career, Ed holds an associate lectureship in Musical Theatre at University of Chichester, where he works closely with orchestrator and musical director Julian Kelly. For the University, he has directed Cabaret (Regis Centre). He is also a guest director at Trinity College of Music and is the academic contextual studies lecturer at Urdang, London. Ed recently directed a new version of Maltby and Shire’s Closer Than Ever (with special permission from the authors), Stephen Sondheim’s Marry Me A Little and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (Old Market, Hove). He returns to Matlby and Shire with a production of Starting Here, Starting Now this autumn. In 2013, he was commissioned to create a new work for Homotopia Festival called Black (Le Gateau Chocolat). The show played the Unity Theatre in Liverpool as part of their 10th anniversary season and subsequently transferred to the SOHO Theatre for a run last June. The Arts Council recently invested further funds for development and the work returns to Liverpool with a 12 piece orchestra. 
Ed trained originally as an actor. Acting credits include: Power (National Theatre), Iphigenia at Aulis (Oxford Playhouse), The Tempest and Macbeth (Large Scale National Tours), Cinderella (London), The Iron Eyelashes (Croydon, Dublin, Ipswich) as well as dancing for Jane Campion in Bright Star, playing a dancing dad in a campaign for Samsung and reciting Homeric Greek at King’s Place (Poet in the City, London). He won a Fringe First for Jekyll and a Spotlight Award for Best Newcomers to the Acting Profession.

Research Interest

Musical Theatre