Finding Myself Onstage : a memoir

Mark Zeller's theatrical journey began in the heyday of the Broadway musical, working with such legendary theatre greats as Abe Burrows, Ether Merman, Lindsay and Crouse, Harold Arlen, Marc Blitzstein, Bobby Lewis and Cheryl Crawford. Like other young Broadway performers of the time , he forayed into light opera (City Center), cabaret (Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit, Paris), and liturgical music (Carnegie Hall) as well as continuing his training with theater luminaries Sanford Meisner and Uta Hagen (acting), Robert Weede and Kristin Linklater (voice), and Hanya Holm (movement).With the rise of the regional theatre movement came the need (and the funding) for actor training which would bridge the technique of American actors from naturalism to the larger-than-life reality of the classics and musical drama. Mr. Zeller became the first Director of Training for Bill Ball's American Conservatory Theatre and subsequently taught at The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Jerome Robbins' American Theatre Laboratory, Ellis Rabb's A.P.A, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, N.Y.U. Tisch and Brooklyn College.The ensuing years found him type cast as a Jewish character actor playing Freud in Freud, Reb Pinkos in Kuni Leml, Zaida in Lies My Father Told Me, Tevye and Lazar Wolf in Fiddler On The Roof, and starring in the title role of the Mitch Leigh/Ted Allen musical, Chu Chem, for which he was nominated by the Outer Critics Circle for Outstanding Performance.Mr. Zeller and his wife Dana Zeller-Alexis founded the 78th Street Theatre Lab where he produced and directed developmental workshops and productions of new plays, revivals and cabaret.