Mark Cabus
MARK CABUS is the Founding Artistic Director of Green Room Projects and Naked Stages in Nashville as well as AD for the Valhalla Shakespeare Project in Woodbury, TN. He is a former member and graduate of the National Shakespeare Company and Conservatory in New York City. With over 36 years in show business, Mark is an accomplished actor/writer/director/producer/teacher and has worked in film, television and theater; he’s performed Off Broadway as well as regionally.
A skilled, classically trained actor, Mark has appeared in nearly two dozen Shakespeare productions in the US and England and has appeared locally with the Tennessee Repertory Theater, Mockingbird Theater and the Nashville Shakespeare Festival numerous times. Mark’s film credits range from THE CLIENT and HBO’s AGAINST THE WALL to the locally produced cult movie musical, EXISTO. In 2005, he distinguished himself as a member of an international theater company performing the historic world premiere of DAS TREFFEN, a trans-Atlantic multi-media performance art piece, along side artists from Germany’s Theater Magdeburg. As a recipient of the 2001 Ruth Sweet Acting Scholarship for Continuing Education, he attended, in conjunction with programs at Julliard and UCLA, the British American Drama Academy at Oxford University, where he studied with John Barton, Fiona Shaw, Alan Rickman, and others of England’s theatrical elite. Mark is the Tennessee Arts Commission/Ingram Industries Individual Artist Fellow for 1992.
Mark’s critically-acclaimed solo adaptation of the holiday classic, CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, is seen every year by more than 3000 Middle Tennessee students. He’s written and directed adaptations of A WRINKLE IN TIME (Nashville Children’s Theater) and A DOLL’S HOUSE (Mockingbird Theater and the Nashville Shakespeare Festival). His plays, H5X5, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s HENRY V performed by five actors, and ANIMAL FARM were commissioned by Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Education department and the Humanities Outreach Tennessee program. ANIMAL FARM won Mark the 2004 Tennessee Williams Fellowship for Playwrighting from the University of the South. He most recently wrote and directed THE CHALK CIRCLE, an adaptation of Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” for the 2007 Governor’s School for the Arts. He and his screenwriting partner, director Will Akers, have three short films to their credit: HOMECOMING (2005 Nashville Film Festival), BREATHE (2006 Nashville Film Festival), and SCARE ME (2007).
In 1999, he established the Nashville performance company, Green Room, and assumed its artistic directorship. In 2003, Mark incorporated the company with Executive Director Jennifer Jewell as Green Room Projects and quickly established it as one of Nashville’s progressive professional theater companies. Recently, he assumed artistic directorship of the Valhalla Shakespeare Project in Woodbury, TN. This affiliation creates a unique collaboration between the two theaters and allows for co-produced performances in both communities. Starting this October, Green Room Projects begins its residence at Belmont University’s new Theater Arts Center and will produce its first full season.
Mark has distinguished himself around the Southeast as an educator of merit. In 1986, he established SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT FEAR, a practical classical training course for professional actors. He is a regular teacher/director for Nashville’s Stageworks, a performing arts camp for high school and middle school students. In 2003, Mark joined the TPAC Education ArtSmart Teaching Artist faculty. He leads seminars and workshops for the
Since January 2004, Mark and the teaching artists of Green Room Projects have taught at the Alternative Learning Center of Williamson County, a high school/middle school for “at-risk teens.” There, Mark established and developed THE FORUM, an interactive issue-based arts curriculum. An innovative approach to teaching teens using applied fine arts techniques, THE FORUM offers its students both voice and choice in their lives and in their schools. In March 2005, Green Room Projects created PROJECT 1317, an after-school arts program underwritten by TPAC Education, the Predators’ Foundation, and the Community Foundation and is offered free to benevolent organizations serving to “at-risk” teenagers. Mark became a full-time TA at the Alternative Learning Center in August 2006.
