Mark Jackson

Some directorial projects include Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Mark’s play, The Forest War, and his adaptation of Goethe’s Faust Pt1, all at Shotgun Players; Yes, Yes to Moscow at Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany) and the San Francisco International Arts Festival; Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and Mark’s adaptation of Don Juan at San Francisco State University; American $uicide, adapted by Mark from Erdman’s The Suicide, for Encore Theatre Company; Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Oscar Wilde’s Salome at Aurora Theatre Company; and both Michel Marc Bouchard’s The Orphan Muses and Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle for the American Conservatory Theater MFA Program. The Death of Meyerhold, written and directed by Mark at Shotgun Players in 2003, was subsequently produced by The Studio Theatre (Washington DC) in 2005. Mark’s backstage farce, BANG, originally produced by Art Street in 1999, was produced by The Play Café at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In June 2003, Mark was the resident playwright of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Honorary Fellowship. He is a 2004 German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which took him to Berlin, Germany, for the 04/05 season to work with Mime Centrum Berlin, a practical research center for physical theater. Mark was named “Best Director” by the East Bay Express in 2009 and 2004, “Best Theatrical Auteur” by the SF Weekly in 2007, and one of the “Top 100 Bay Area Artists” by San Francisco Magazine in 2002. Other awards and honors include two Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards, three SFBG Upstage/Downstage Awards, two Theater Bay Area CA$H Grants, and a Magic Theater / Z Space New Works Initiative commission. Mark's writing has benefited three times from the generosity of the Tournesol Project, a granting program for the development of new work.

Mark graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University, where he was awarded the Theatre Arts Department Award for Outstanding Achievement in Directing. He has studied extensively with the Saratoga International Theater Institute, as well as Master Biomechanics instructor Gennadi Bogdanov. Mark has led workshops for actors at theaters and schools, and served on the faculties of Universities, in both California and Berlin, Germany, and was a Conservatory Associate at the American Conservatory Theater from 1999 to 2004. In addition to his work as a director and playwright, he continues to teach theater courses on a freelance basis at San Francisco State University, the American Conservatory Theater, and other organizations.