Mark Clayton Southers is an award-winning playwright, photographer, scenic designer, theatrical producer and stage director. He is the founder and producing artistic director of the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company where he’s produced over 140 full-length and one-act plays, including August Wilson’s complete ten-play Pittsburgh Century Cycle.

Not long after Mark attended a master class in playwriting conducted by August Wilson at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in South Africa, he attended the Edward Albee Theatre Festival in Valdez, Alaska, where he did seated readings with August Wilson of all of his plays. These encounters encouraged Mark to take up playwriting and devote more time to theatre arts. In 2003, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company was born, producing August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which received critical acclaim and high praise from the playwright himself.

Mark’s play, Ma Noah, was the recipient of the 2004 Theodore Ward prize at Columbia College, Chicago. His poem play, Angry Black Man Poetry, had a successful run at Teatr Śląski in Katowice, Poland in 2009.

A few of his directing credits include: Paul Robeson for the Griot Ensemble Theatre Company; Dutchman for Bricolage Production Company; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Radio Golf for American Stage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida; Gem of the Ocean for Human Race Theatre in Dayton, Ohio, receiving a Best Director nod by the Dayton Metro News; Passing Strange for North Short Stage in Columbus, Ohio. And for the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company Mark has directed Dorothy Six, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, which was named one of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s top ten plays of the decade, Seven Guitars, VALU-MART, Jitney (which was voted one of the Post-Gazette’s top ten best plays of 2010), and Gem of the Ocean.

Mark is a four-time recipient of the AACTA Onyx award for Best Director.

WEBSITES:

• Mark Clayton Southers
• Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company

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