Malcolm MacDonald is a writer, artist and educator from Southern California. In the early 80's MacDonald worked in New York City in the Modern Dance world as a dancer and designer. During this time he had the great honor of working with such giants as Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, and Murray Louis. In Los Angeles, he created the ballets Fin de Siecle, and A Dream of Consciousness, as well as designing the scenery and writing the voice-over script for DanceCorp's production of The Story of the Nutcracker. He has created scenery, lighting, and/or costumes for numerous productions on both coasts and south of the border. He has also been stage manager, technical director, master carpenter or master electrician for productions large and small.
Fluent in Spanish, MacDonald has worked with many great Latino artists. In Los Angeles he originated the role of The Serpent in the great Mexican director Luis de Tavira's opera version of The Little Prince, and played the role of El Autór in de Tavira's La Vida es Sueño. He created the scenery and costumes for the world premiere of Edít Villareal's R&J directed by José Crúz González. In México he had the great pleasure to connect with such amazing, inspirational artists as Lucía Maya, Jesusa Rodríguez and Astrid Hadad.
As a writer, MacDonald premiered his first performance piece, One Man, in NYC, and this became the basis for his play Wonder of the World which ran at the 2nd Stage Theater in Hollywood. MacDonald was selected to participate in a month-long workshop with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lanford Wilson, where he developed his next play, the beetles. 2nd Stage's artistic director Paul Fagen premiered the beetles, which the L.A. Times called, "...a strange but intriguing specimen, a sort of mash note to the beauty of living dreams, stylistically and expertly accomplished." the beetles was also performed in Chicago and Aspen, and MacDonald's screenplay adaptation was a semi-finalist at the 1997 Austin Film Festival.
As an educator, MacDonald has been a guest director at numerous high schools, including Beverly Hills High. He was Technical Director of L.A. County High School of the Arts for two years, and then moved on to the position of Scene Shop Foreman at California State University Los Angeles. Malcolm and his wife Andrea then decided to live out a dream. They packed up their kids, Chris and Darla, and moved to Guadalajara, Mexico for five years where Malcolm taught art and drama and served as Director of Fine Arts for the American School of Guadalajara. Malcolm holds a BA in Theatre Arts, an MA in Education, and a California multiple subject teaching credential with authorizations to teach Theatre and Visual Arts. Currently, Malcolm works as a traveling visual arts teacher with the Arts Education Branch of the L.A. Unified School District.
In 2004, MacDonald’s most recent play Coyote’s Christmas Carol was awarded 2nd prize in the Marilyn Hall Awards for Youth Theatre. The play has been performed and used by teachers throughout the world, and was published in August 2005 by Playscripts, Inc.