Mark Hunter has died

Iowa City - A valued member of the Corridor theatre community, Mark Hunter, passed away yesterday at his home in Iowa City.


Readers of this blog perhaps know Mark best from his work as a longtime artistic associate at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, where his directing credits included How I Learned to Drive, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Wit, Proof, and The Goat. For the Riverside Theatre Shakespeare Festival, he has directed productions of Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and The Imaginary Invalid.

Mark was a theatre professor at Cornell College in Mount Vernon since 2002. He earned a doctoral degree in theatre history and criticism from the University of Texas at Austin. He received an M.F.A. in directing from the University of Iowa, and also holds a law degree from Syracuse University. Before undertaking his Ph.D., he taught as an adjunct professor at both the University of Iowa and at Cornell College. At Cornell, he directed Betty's Summer Vacation, Polaroid Stories, Noises Off, Trust, Book of Days, Big Love, Prosperity, and Marat/Sade.

A director with over 70 professional productions to his credit, he was also the founder and for nine years the artistic director of Playmakers Theatre in Tampa, Florida. His stage adaptation of Lee Smith's award-winning novel Fair and Tender Ladies (re-titled Ivy Rowe on stage) received an Off Broadway production and was presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also directed the New York premiere of Keith Huff's A Greater Good.

Remembrances for Mark are being posted here.