Mark Mason

Mark Mason is a Chicago playwright and director. Mark graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University in 2007 with a degree in playwriting, after which DePaul selected his play Hurrah for the Next Who Dies, a film noir-inspired true crime tragedy about the murder of Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle, as their 2008 New Playwrights Series production, where it was directed by former ATC Artistic Director Damon Kiely and nominated for the David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award. Two of Mark's plays have been produced in short play festivals by The Inconvenience: Make Your Visit as Inconspicuous as Possible, as part of their Post-Traumatic Festival in September 2009, and then Intangible Assets (Some Overtime Required) in their STRAPPED Festival of New Plays in March 2010, both pieces directed by Inconvenience Artistic Director Chris Chmelik. Elsewhere, in October 2010, Redtwist Theatre produced Mark's play Dracula: A Tragedy, a new adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic horror novel and this past February, A Perfect Shade of Skyline Gray, Mark's epic melodrama about a little-known incident in the life of Robert F. Kennedy, was part of New Leaf Theatre's last Treehouse Reading Series, where it was directed by Signal Ensemble Co-Artistic Director Ronan Marra. As a director, Mark most recently helmed a staged reading of Laura Nessler's play Negative Splits at Chicago Dramatists, and in April 2012, his play Rest for the Weary Spirit (co-written with Ellen Chambers) received its world premiere in a production directed by J.P. Rapozo at the Archway Studio/Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

In January 2013, Chicago's InFusion Theatre Company presented the world premiere of Mark's play Allotment Annie, a dark comedy about sex, money and murder in small-town America during World War II. Starring Kate Black-Spence, Beau Forbes, C.J. Langdon, Carl Lindberg, Mallory Nees, and Amy Katherine Rapp, Allotment Annie was directed by Bridgette Harney and premiered on January 5th. Up next will be Muse on A Tuesday Morning, directed by Shane Kenyon and part of The Artistic Home Ensemble's 12th Annual Cut to the Chase Festival.