1. Richard "Kid" Strange was born on in January 1951 and is an English actor, writer, musician, and curator, who was the founder and front man of mid-1970s protopunk art rock band Doctors of Madness.
23 Facts About Richard Strange
1. 2.
Richard Strange disbanded the band in 1978, after Dave Vanian of the Damned briefly joined him on vocals.
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Richard Strange has produced records by Way of the West, Tom Robinson and the Nightingales album Pigs on Purpose.
4.
Richard Strange toured Japan in 2005 and 2007 with multi-instrumentalist David Coulter and the Japanese band Sister Paul, playing a selection of Doctors of Madness songs.
5.
In 2013, Richard Strange was invited by Gail Zappa to narrate the British Premiere of Frank Zappa's opera 200 Motels at The Royal Festival Hall London.
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Richard Strange sang the baritone role of Rance, and the performance, featuring the 90-piece BBC Concert Orchestra, plus 40 voice choir, 8 piece jazz band, and 5 piece rock band, was accorded a 20-minute standing ovation by the sold-out audience.
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Two weeks later, Richard Strange was part of Hal Willner's evening of the music of Nino Rota at London's Barbican Hall, singing a duet with himself in Italian, from Fellini's Casanova.
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In 2014, Richard Strange curated, wrote, directed and performed in a collaborative operatic project with the composer Gavin Bryars, based on the life and work of the writer William Burroughs, which premiered in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in October 2014.
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In 2019, Richard Strange returned to the studio to record the first new Doctors of Madness album in 41 years.
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Richard Strange founded the multidisciplinary Cabaret Futura club in Soho in 1980, which he reopened after a 30-year hiatus in 2010.
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In November 2011, Richard Strange was invited by the Tate Gallery to curate an evening as a response to the exhibition "John Martin and The Apocalypse".
12.
Richard Strange was part of an immersive operatic collaboration with the composer Gavin Bryars called "Language Is A Virus From Outer Space", based on the life and works of the American writer William S Burroughs, which received its world premiere at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on 11 October 2014.
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Richard Strange has worked as an actor since 1984, appearing on stage, in films and on television.
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Richard Strange can be seen in the Harmony Korine film Mister Lonely, playing the part of Abraham Lincoln, and in the film Inkheart, with Helen Mirren and Paul Bettany.
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Richard Strange can be seen in the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 under the directorship of David Yates.
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Richard Strange has been in TV programmes Men Behaving Badly, Trial and Retribution, The Bill, Footballers Wives and Lovejoy.
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Between 1989 and 1990 Richard Strange toured the world with a production of Hamlet, directed by Yuri Lyubimov.
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Richard Strange played a gravedigger, one of the players and the ghost.
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Between 1995 and 1997 Richard Strange played a butler in more than 50 episodes of the German primetime TV show "Gottschalks Haus-Party" and fought WWE's The Undertaker in one episode.
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Richard Strange's collaborations include work with Sam Taylor Wood for the banner XV Seconds that covered the facade of the London department store Selfridges for 6 months in 2000.
21.
In March 2011 Richard Strange was invited by the New Moves International Festival of Live Art to curate a weekend of events and to premiere a new performance work, I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, which he devised with the photographer and academic Kelly Dearsley.
22.
Richard Strange is a guest lecturer teaching "Creativity in Context" at Tileyard in London, and is an occasional lecturer at the London College of Fashion, Buckinghamshire New University, Hong Kong Design Institute and University of Southern California.
23.
Richard Strange was recently named a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and in 2012 was Creator in Residence at the Hong Kong Design Institute.