"One of
London's best kept musical as well as comedy cabaret secrets"
Mark Shenton in The Stage
"One of the most brilliant
talents working in the musical theatre and cabaret in this country."
Matti Aijala, Musical Stages.co.uk
Welcome to Mark Bunyan's
still
chaotic website.
News: I'll be performing at
Paul L
Martin's
CABARET CONFIDENTIAL
on Thursday May 14th.
7.30 pm.
The
Basement, Leicester Square Theatre,
6 Leicester Place,
London WC2H
7BX.
(Other two acts yet to be
announced.)
is now available on
YOUTUBE!!!!!!!
Click the following link to see
huge chunks of
me in cabaret, including BILLY, THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION, DO YOURSELF
IN, THE VEGETARIAN SONG, ALONE WITH YOU and ONLY ME
as well as both the
February and November 2006 casts of ACHILLES IN HEELS strutting their
stuff
Click HERE to
go there
(that means clicking the word "here")
or stay here and read
on:
Or you might prefer to go to my MySpace Music page in which
case
click HERE
Mark Bunyan was born in Bristol, England in 1949. He studied English at St
Andrews University and in the subsequent period of unemployment did various odd jobs for
two years. He eventually entered the film industry in 1973 (in a sales and
clerical capacity) but by 1978 had discovered a talent for writing witty lyrics,
to his own music, and had his first solo cabaret gig at the late, probably
unlamented, Country Cousin in October of that year. He has been an out gay
cabaret performer since 1978 and
there are not many
people on the planet who can say that.
His cabaret act has
been seen all over the UK, including the Edinburgh, Harrogate, Dulwich and Crouch End Festivals and numerous West End
and Fringe Theatres in London. His work has quite often been heard on BBC Radio
but was probably first heard on the Internet in December 1995 when Freedom FM
broadcast him to the world. Mark has also performed in Sweden, Norway and
Finland, and in the USA in both New York and San Francisco. In 1994 he
performed for the gay societies in Tallinn,
Estonia and Riga,
Latvia, both beautiful cities which he would recommend anyone and everyone to
visit. In 1996, at the invitation of EuroPride, he performed four shows in Copenhagen.
Reviews world-wide
have likened him to Tom
Lehrer, Noel Coward,
Cole Porter and even Fred Astaire and
the Beatles. Most recently "a sort of gay Joyce Grenfell "
(South London Press.) and "a gay Victoria Wood" (Freedom FM)
On April 1st 1995
he had the honour of being canonised
as "St Mark of the Musical Tendency" by the London Chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for his services to Gay
Liberation in the UK.
In July 1999, after
the success of the revival of CHICAGO and the brilliant Broadway musical version
of E. L. Doctorow's RAGTIME, he
ended a period of disillusion with the directions that musical theatre appeared
to be taking and produced a showcase of his work entitled SODS AND ODDMENTS. As
a result of enthusiasm for this project, in October 1999 he managed to gain
entrance to the prestigious Mercury Workshop, now reborn as Mercury Musical Developments..
Through Mercury, he has workshopped six pieces with students from the Royal Academy Of Music’s musical theatre
course. One of these pieces, KEEPING MUM was showcased at Greenwich Theatre in May 2002 as
part of their third Musical Futures season.
(Mercury was also involved in Mark’s TRUE ROMANCES
being given a full rehearsed reading as part of the first Musical Futures
season in May 2000.)
ACHILLES IN
HEELS was a finalist for Stages 2004 in Chicago then
opened in February 2006 to enthusiastic and packed houses at the Landor
Theatre and, in a revised version, played a further run at the Landor in
November 2006. Please see the website (www.achillesinheels.com) for further details.
TELLING TALES was given a
rehearsed reading in the spring of 2005.
A new
work THE DREAM OF DR
MINOR was given two workshops at the Royal
Academy of Music in January and February 2005
and again in January and February of 2006. Selections from the work were also
heard at The Writing Block in April 2005. A demo was produced
in October 2007 with a new song following in early 2008. This number, AND
I THINK OF YOU, was featured in the Mercury Showcase during the
ICA's ACCIDENTAL FESTIVAL in May 2008. It's currently under consideration by ... well
Somebody.
BEING COLONEL BARKER, (from
Rose Collis' biography COLONEL BARKER'S MONSTROUS REGIMENT) was
workshopped at the Royal Academy of Music in the spring terms of 2007 and
2008.
I'm currently working on yet another
project with Mercury's Extreme Lab. This will be workshopped at the
Royal Academy of Music in March.
In 2001, Mark
re-entered the cabaret arena with two very successful shows at Leighton House, the
second of which was attended by (amongst others) Ned Sherrin who invited him
onto Radio Four’s Loose
Ends later that year and that despite the fact that he didn’t have
anything to plug. Mr Sherrin
generously introduced him as
“one of the great comedians at the piano.”
Since then, the
cabaret work has increased with gigs at Wimbledon Studio Theatre, Pirate Jenny’s at the Vortex in Stoke
Newington, Jermyn Street Theatre, the
Landor in Clapham, the Rosemary
Branch in Islington and further afield at the Abbey Theatre in St Albans and
Oxford Town Hall. The Rosemary
Branch season was featured as part of “Critics Choice” in Time Out and
received a glowing review from Mark Shenton in The Stage, which you can read by clicking
here.
Mark is directed by
the multi-talented Joanna Brookes.
As well as cabaret,
his writing has taken him into various other fields. You find him a stool and
he will fall between it.
His other
successful writing includes:
a
musical
another
musical
another
musical
a straight play
a
novel about the life of Marilyn Monroe after August 5th 1962. Published by
Brazen Books 1989.
a
thriller set on Key West. Published as the first ever commercially available
daily email serial in July 1998. (I
could have told Stephen King it wouldn’t work…)
Other works in
progress include PANTHEON, a collection of spooky stories set on Greek Islands,
and FLYING THE FLAG, an original
screenplay.
If you want to
contact Mark please do so at website @ markbunyan.com. (This link is no longer clickable as Mark
has no need of the free computers, TVs and DVD players offered to anyone with a
web address readable by spam-bots.
Nor indeed is he in need of the copious supplies of Viagra, diet pills
and non-prescription drugs equally freely offered. And even his penis is of adequate length. Thank you.)