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Mark Jackson is an award-winning playwright, director, and performer. He was Artistic Director of Art Street Theatre, San Francisco, from 1995 to 2004, during which time he wrote, directed and performed in numerous productions for the company. Mark’s work has also been seen at Aurora Theatre Company, Encore Theatre Company, EXIT Theatre, Potrzebie Dance Project, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Shotgun Players, Z Space, and The Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), among others; as well as internationally at Arts International Festival IV (Japan), Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK), and Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany). His plays have been developed at American Conservatory Theater, Capital Stage, EXIT Theatre, Playwrights Foundation, Magic Theatre, and Z Space. In 2010 Mark was invited to be a company member of The Shotgun Players. |
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Some recent directorial projects include The Companion Piece at Z Space; Mark’s plays God’s Plot and The Forest War, his adaptations of both Schiller’s Mary Stuart and Goethe’s Faust Pt1, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, all at Shotgun Players; Yes, Yes to Moscow at Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany) and the San Francisco International Arts Festival; Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Oscar Wilde’s Salome at Aurora Theatre Company; and Mark’s play, American $uicide, for Encore Theatre Company. Mark has also directed a number of productions as a guest artist of both the American Conservatory Theater MFA Program and San Francisco State University.
Mark has been a resident playwright of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Honorary Fellowship. He is a German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which took him to Berlin, Germany, to work with Mime Centrum Berlin, a practical research center for physical theater. Mark was named “Best Director” by the East Bay Express in 2009 and 2004, “Best Theatrical Auteur” by the SF Weekly in 2007, and one of the “Top 100 Bay Area Artists” by San Francisco Magazine in 2002. Other awards and honors include the Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award, a Magic Theater / Z Space New Works Initiative commission, two Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards, three SFBG Upstage/Downstage Awards, and two Theater Bay Area CA$H Grants. Mark’s writing has benefited numerous 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, University of San Francisco, the American Conservatory Theater, and other organizations.
I strive to create clear, dynamic storytelling images that are as specific as they are open to possibility. I’m drawn to theater that can only happen in the theater, and performances that are at once truthful and theatrical. I believe that for theater to be useful it must encourage people – to be more daring, have more compassion, laugh more honestly, pay more attention, ask more and better questions, and to be ready, awake, and open to what can and might be.
My influences in this regard are varied, but include Meyerhold, Stanislavski, Ariane Mnouchkine and Théâtre du Soleil, SITI Company, Steven Berkoff, Robert Lepage, David Lynch, contemporary German theater, architecture, modern dance, Kabuki, Shakespeare, the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour, American films from the 1920s to 40s, and fourteen summers of making plays with forty kids out in the woods at the Sugarloaf Fine Arts Camp.
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God's Plot
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Wallflower |
Metamorphosis
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The Companion Piece |
Mary Stuart |
Juliet |
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Faust Pt1 |
Miss Julie |
Macbeth |
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Machinal |
Don Juan |
Yes, Yes to Moscow |
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American $uicide |
The Forest War
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Salome |
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The Caucasion Chalk Circle |
The Death of Meyerhold |
Io Princess of Argos |
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| • San Jose Mercury News on God’s Plot, December 2011: | |
| “Playwright/director Mark Jackson has made his name as a first-class theatrical provocateur. Gutsy showmanship, brainy literary instincts and laser-sharp satire mark his canon, from The Death of Meyerhold and American $uicide to Faust Pt1 and Metamorphosis. God's Plot, in its world premiere at Shotgun Players, is no exception… Jackson's portrait of life in the colony is gripping… This provocative piece grapples with a tangle of issues, from the love of spectacle that dominates both theater and religion and narcissism of the artist to the price paid for heroism in a cowardly time. But perhaps the most potent theme is the long and storied history of protest in this country… The palpable sense of patriotism generated in the play's closing moments leaves a lump in your throat.” | |
| • Chad Jones of Theaterdogs.net on Metamorphosis, June 2011: | |
| “Director Mark Jackson is something of a name brand in the Bay Area. You know his shows are going to be original, compelling and rigorously produced. He’s a writer/director (occasionally actor) whose work you simply do not miss… Jackson’s Metamorphosis is as unsettling as it is poignant, as beautifully performed as it is fun to watch… Jackson’s cast is so sharp, so precise and so electrifying… This is ultimately quite a sad tale, but Jackson and his crew deliver it with such energy and such discipline that it’s also suffused with the joy of performing something so bold and juicy.” | |
| • Joe Mader of Scene 2 on The Companion Piece, February 2011: | |
| “One of the most intriguing productions of 2011. …In its quirky rhythms, audacious inventiveness, and masterful stagecraft, there are flashes of true brilliance. …It’s difficult to convey the amount of beauty, humor, and skill in these routines, with their misleading sense of haphazardness. It’s clear how much care has been lavished on what we’re seeing. While on one level the narrative seems disjointed and scattered, as mercurial as a person’s moods, on another we see how finely wrought it is, how much work and intelligence went into making it that way. Even in moments of stillness, there’s no awkwardness in the staging, no wavering of the audience’s focus… What Jackson and his colleagues accomplish with The Companion Piece is so rich, so daring…” | |
| • Sam Hurwitt of www.theidiolect.com, from a review of Mary Stuart, October 2010: | |
| “As acclaimed as he is for original works such as Shotgun Players’ The Death of Meyerhold and The Forest War, what’s particularly fascinating about writer-director Mark Jackson’s work is his treatment of classic texts, from inventive stagings of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for Shotgun and Strindberg’s Miss Julie at Aurora to dizzying choreography-oriented deconstructions such as JULIET at San Francisco State University and his Three Sisters riff Yes, Yes to Moscow at the San Francisco International Arts Festival. Somewhere in between are his adaptations, which bear the unmistakable mark of his strong visual and highly stylized approach while remaining much more of a conversation with the original work than a reinvention of it.”
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| • New York Times feature article by Chloe Veltman, March 2010: | |
| “Jackson’s 2008 productions of Don Juan and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal remain among the highlights of my theatergoing career.”
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| • San Jose Mercury News on Faust Pt1, May 2009: | |
| “This Shotgun Players world premiere showcases Jackson's breathtaking range of gifts. One of the Bay Area's most consistently inventive stage auteurs, Jackson is often hailed for his highly stylized fusion of expressionist techniques with balletic movement as well as his boundless sense of ambition. Here he co-directs, writes and stars… It’s a two-hour theatrical adventure that's as intellectually rigorous as it is bold and hot-blooded.” | |
| • American Theatre magazine, feature article, April 2009: | |
| “The director, playwright, educator and actor is that rare kind of theatre artist who constantly strives to defy expectations.” Download a PDF of the full article here! |
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| • www.chloeveltman.com on Machinal, October 2008: | |
| “Treadwell's brutal-satirical view of a life lived according to the rules of "the machine" and the destructive effects of that life on a young woman, assault the theatre-goer with a primordial snarl in Mark Jackson's stomach-clenching, gob-smacking, eye-opening production… The director manages to take what many would consider to be an intimidating play and turns it into something scary, intimate and irresistible… I came away from the theatre with my head spinning… Intelligent, emotionally disturbing and fresh...” | |
| • San Francisco Chronicle on Yes, Yes to Moscow, May 2008: | |
| “In their wry, allusive, funny and surprisingly touching Yes, Yes to Moscow, Mark Jackson and his international collaborators use dance, reiterated passages from Three Sisters, song, clinical inquiry and sharply focused acting to probe the sisters' futures within their eternal present… It's a strangely absorbing piece that leaves an afterglow.” | |
| • KQED's Spark, episode featuring my work on American $uicide and The Forest War, May 2007: | |
| Click on this link to go to the KQED Spark
website and view the video: http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/spark/profile.jsp?essid=16480 |
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| • San Francisco Magazine, feature article, December 2006: | |
| “Even in a region with many excellent
directors, Jackson’s smart, intensely physical work stands
out. His plays are notable for their electricity and the elegant
intelligence of his writing and staging; Jackson draws out the best
in his collaborators and then forges their contributions into a coherent
and affecting whole.” Download a PDF of the full article here! |
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| • San Francisco Bay Guardian on The Forest War, December 2006: | |
| “The Shakespearean plotline comes refracted startlingly, Akira Kurosawa–style, through a highly stylized lens — a fairly stunning mise-en-scène that astutely combines elements of Kabuki and Noh theater into a visual banquet with a palpitating dramatic energy behind it, all operating with a precise economy of movement, gesture, and sign… Jackson directs his actors beautifully, extracting performances that breathe individually and expansively inside the productively strict choreography and caricature demanded.” | |
| • San Francisco Chronicle on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, September 2006: | |
| “Mark Jackson's staging of Wilde's fairly rarely seen Salome, the Aurora Theatre's season opener, is a riveting experiment in creative tension between artistic, emotional and spiritual/fleshly extremes. Fierce and funny, as broadly caricatured as it is densely poetic, the show that opened Thursday inverts and subverts expectations to infuse uncommon life into a difficult text…” | |
| • Washington Post on The Death of Meyerhold, January 2005: | |
| “Mark Jackson's The Death of Meyerhold is a play on the march, a bristling, witty phalanx of old Russian poses advancing, at its best, with the force of a tank… It’s fast and funny… Anything is possible in this show… The Death of Meyerhold has more than its share of ambition and brio. The writing is expansive and sophisticated, with humor that keeps pompousness at bay.” | |
Published in 2010 by EXIT Press, this is the first collection of Mark’s plays. The volume includes American $uicide, BANG!, Brave, The Death of Meyerhold, Faust Pt1, The Forest War, I Am Hamlet, little extremes, Messenger #1 and R&J, with notes by the author and a Foreword by critic Rob Avila. Available at Amazon and from other reputable booksellers.
"TEN PLAYS is a testament to the tenacity of vision… What these plays have in common is an audacious commitment to the illimitable possibilities of live theater.” – San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 2010 article on the Year in Literature.
Read about TEN PLAYS and EXIT Press in American Theater magazine's March 2011 issue: |
| In 2000, Art Street Theatre published Mark’s chronicle of the company’s first five years of work. The 300-page paperback included production photos, scripts, and essays detailing several Art Street projects from 1995 to 1999. This limited edition book is now out of print. |
| • Photos (click image) |
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• Summaries of plays – including production histories, cast requirements, running times, etcetera.
The list also includes some as-of-yet unproduced plays.
Here are the first twenty pages of several of my scripts. For full copies of any script, or to inquire about other titles not listed here, just email me with your request. For a complete list of plays available for production, download the Summaries PDF above.
•Megan’s
Baby (2005)
•Don
Juan (2004)
•The
Inspector (2003)
•The
Death of Meyerhold (2003)
•I
Am Hamlet (2002)
•Io
Princess of Argos (2001)
•Messenger
#1 (2000)
•Megan
and the Magic Compass (1999)
•BANG
(1999)
•Brave
(1998)
•Little
Extremes (1995)