PATRICK BARLOW
(PLAYWRIGHT)

Mark began his acting career at high school in Adelaide, taught by his then drama teacher, now internationally acclaimed theatre director, Gale Edwards. He was a founding member of Gale’s company “Energy Connection”. Mark then trained at NIDA, graduating 1984 and since then has worked extensively in theatre, film and television in both
Sydney and Melbourne. Film credits include One Such Night, Forty Five Dollars an Hour, Bullseye, Burke and Wills and Break and Enter which won the AFI in 1999 for Best Short Film.
Mark’s television credits include Blue Heelers, Stingers, Round the Twist IV, Dogwoman 2, The Last of the Ryans, State Coroner, Law of the Land, Phoneix II, A Country Practice, Flying Doctors, The Last Resort, Perhaps Love, Vietnam, Home and Away, Neighbours, MDA and All Saints.
Theatre credits for Sydney Theatre Company include: Embers, Festen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Blithe Spirit, Private Lives, All My Sons, Romeo and Juliet, Dance of Death and The White Devil which toured to New York. For Melbourne Theatre Company: Blithe Spirit, The Duchess of Malfi, The Tempest, Private Lives, Julius Caesar and My Father’s Father.
Mark has also performed with many other companies including Playbox (touring Japan and Korea in King Lear), Chambermade Opera, Hothouse, Castlemaine Festival, Hildegarde, Chameleon Theatre Company, The State Theatre Company of South Australia, Company B, Bell Shakespeare Company, La Mama, Burning House, Melbourne Workers Theatre, O’Punksky’s, Marian Street, Nimrod Theatre Company, The Comedy Theatre in Melbourne (Noises Off) and danced with Meryl Tankard's Australian Dance Theatre (Nuti and Kikimora). Mark’s most recent appearance on stage was in The Kid for Griffin Theatre Company.

MARIA AITKEN
(DIRECTOR)

Maria Aitken's work as an actress includes Blithe Spirit, Bedroom Farce and Larkinland at the Royal National Theatre. At the Royal Shakespeare Company she has played in Travesties, Waste and The Happiest Days of Your Life. Her West End leading roles include Humble Boy (Gielgud), Slyvia (Apollo), Hay Fever (Albery), Other People’s Money (Lyric), The Vortex (Garrick), The Women (Old Vic), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Ambassadors), Design For Living (Globe, now Gielgud), Private Lives (Duchess) and A Little Night Music (Adelphi).

Maria's many television appearances include Love On A Branch, The Good Guys, Quiet As A Nun, Poor
Little Rich Girls, Shelley, Ripping Yarns, Bedroom Farce. She wrote and presented the documentary Great River Journeys (An Amazon Adventure) and had two series of her own BBC chat show Private Lives. She co-produced and appeared in the BBC series of master classes Acting. Films include Asylum, Jinnah, Fierce Creatives, The Grotesque, The Fool, A Fish Called Wanda, Melba and Mary Queen Of Scots.
As a director in America and the UK, her work includes Japes (Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbour), Man And A Boy (tour and Duchess Theatre), Easy Virtue (Chichester), Vita And Virginia (Sphinx Theatre Company), Lady Bracknell’s Confinement (Vineyard Theatre, New York), The School For Scandal (Theatr Clwyd), As You Like It (Regent's Park), The Mystery Of Irma Vep (Leicester Haymarket and Ambassadors), Are You Sitting Comfortably (Watford Palace), The Rivals (Court Theatre, Chicago), After The Ball Was Over (Old Vic), Private Lives (Oxford Playhouse) and Happy Family (Duke of York's). Recently she has directed several plays and classic serials for BBC radio, including Nabokov's Laughter In The Dark (which won the prestigious Sony Prize) and her own adaptation of Ivy Compton Burnett's novel Mother And Son.
She is a visiting teacher at the British American Drama Academy, the National Theatre Studio, The London Actors' Centre, the Juilliard School in NY, the Yale School of Drama, the graduate acting programme at The Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, the NY Actors' Center and the Academy of Classical Acting in Washington DC.
She is the author of two books: A Girdle Round The Earth and Style: Acting In High Comedy.
She lives in New York and London with her husband, the novelist Patrick McGrath. Her son is the actor Jack Davenport.