RECENT NEWS AND PROJECTS:
With my wife and co-star Alison J. Murphy
The East Lynne Theater Co. (ELTC) in scenic Cape May, NJ has been a home base for many years. I was very excited to return once again, to direct their 2026 production of HAVING OUR SAY, at their new home, The Clemans Theater for the Arts at the Allen A.M.E. A wonderful experience and production, starring Richarda Abrams and Sharon Hope.
2025 theater projects included directing KEN LUDWIG’S DEAR JACK, DEAR LOUISE at ELTC, along with my latest radio-style play (as playwright, director and co-star), SHERLOCK HOLMES: SCANDALS!
Another recent production was its precursor, the radio-style DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, based on two Conan Doyle stories. I did a fun podcast interview with our Holmes actor, Joseph Travers, for the Discover Jersey Arts Podcast.
My wife Alison J. Murphy and I performed our show ZELDA & SCOTT: A LIFE AFFAIR at the Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama in 2022. This is an exciting new play based on the lives of Mr. & Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald, using their own rich and brilliant correspondence, which has also played successfully in New Jersey and as a benefit performance in NYC.
In October 2023 we starred in A.R. Gurney’s LOVE LETTERS at East Lynne; part of a six week run with a different cast of real-life couples each week.
We also performed my two-hander adaptation of Molnar’s classic comedy THE GUARDSMAN AND THE ACTRESS in March 2023, and Aaron Posner’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut stories, WHO AM I THIS TIME? AND OTHER CONUNDRUMS OF LOVE in 2022, at ELTC.
Our other theater project, LUNT AND FONTANNE: The Celestials of Broadway, is a retrospective of the incredible lives and careers of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the premier theatrical duo of the 20th Century. Under the guidance of director Owen Thompson, we have had three productions: two in New York City (including the New York International Fringe Festival) and one at the Classic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas.
Trying to keep up with Zorro (Jed Peterson) in the ELTC production of ZORRO!
We have also been busy with other projects. The summer of 2017 at ELTC brought performances of Eugene O’Neill‘s nostalgic comedy AH, WILDERNESS!, and Mark also performed in recent productions of THE RAINMAKER, BIOGRAPHY and ZORRO!.
My corporate training work, primarily with the Leadership-Masters company, has included innovative leadership events based on the stories of subjects such as polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth I, and (recently) Mohandas K. Gandhi, for such clients as State Farm, 3M, GE, Booz Allen and Boeing. That work recently brought me to Puerto Rico (on a job for the Coca-Cola company), as well as an unexpected but exciting sojourn to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Our Nelson Mandela leadership piece was booked by an NGO working in East Africa, and our Leadership-Masters team greatly enjoyed the wonderful people and beauty of the Indian Ocean, as well as the important work being done by our client, Open Society. Other great trips were to Penang, Malaysia, in a corporate training gig for the Dell Computer company, and a 2018 sojourn to Copenhagen, Denmark, for Novo Nordisk, where we had two presentations, including The Shackleton Experience.
All the best,
– Mark