A founding partner of Arts Educational Theatre Company of Cleveland, Mark Lynch has devoted over 25 years to designing and implementing innovative, imaginative programming in theatre, dance, and opera, conceived to nurture existing audiences, cultivate new audiences, and captivate young audiences. These programs, consistently recognized for excellence, have contributed to some of the best practices in partnership building with schools and educators. Integrating a diversity of artistic voices and styles, his work is dedicated to introducing and engaging audiences and students to work for the stage that is creative, accessible, entertaining, challenging, and of the highest caliber and achievement.

As Artistic Associate for Education at Florida Stage in Palm Beach, Mr. Lynch created and developed a comprehensive education/outreach initiative, including the issue-oriented Young Voices student performance series; a main stage matinee program reaching more than 1,200 students and teachers each season; Saturday classes; Student Critics; the Young Playwrights Festival; a school partnership program for students with multiple disabilities or exceptionalities; and commissions of two new scripts, one dealing with teen pregnancy and HIV prevention for middle school audiences, the second addressing the Cuban immigration experience. The entire initiative was recognized in 2000 with the Florida State Commissioner of Education’s Business Recognition award. In 2001, Mr. Lynch co-directed the theatre’s main stage production of The Music Lesson, which received three South Florida Critics Association Carbonell awards, including Best Production and Best Direction.

In addition to Arts ETC’s signature work Baggage: On Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs, he also directed Pinnocchio Live!, which was produced in collaboration with Fairmount Theatre of the Deaf. His additional staging credits include Counterfeits for Cleveland Signstage Theatre (formerly FTD); Mozart: The Flute of Heaven and L’Enfants et les Sortileges for Lyric Opera Cleveland; Dido and Aeneas and Patience at The Cleveland Institute of Music; The Very Last Green Thing for Orlando Opera; and the premiere of Opera Cleveland’s An Aesop Odyssey, which toured schools and communities nationally from 1997-2006, as well as staging a new production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the company’s first ever commissioned opera for young audiences. Writing commissions include Inside La Boheme, Inside Hansel and Gretel, and The Magic Flute short-term residency for Opera Cleveland as well as Domino FX, a new theatre-dance piece for young audiences for Palm Beach State College.

In addition to having been a member of the Literary Committee for City Theatre in Miami, his dramaturgical credits include William Mastrosimone’s Bang Bang You’re Dead; Linda Daugherty’s Bless Cricket, Crest Toothpaste, and Tommy Tune; Margaret Larlham’s Tortilla Moon; Akin Babatunde’s We Wear Walls; A Matter of Time by Sandra Dutton; and The Beloved Dearly by Doug Cooney. He is a frequent adjudicator and workshop leader, and has served on the Individual Fellowship panels for the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs and the Ohio Arts Council.

For six seasons, Mr. Lynch coordinated and served as movement/acting instructor and stage director for the Vocal Arts Apprentice Program at Lyric Opera Cleveland, as well as frequently appearing as a dancer with Cleveland Opera. Additionally, he has conducted seminar classes at Cornell University and served as adjunct faculty with the Cleveland Institute of Music. Prior to coming to Ohio in 1982, he spent five seasons as an actor and teacher with The Children’s Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis, conducting over 60 residencies in school districts throughout the country.

The strategies Mr. Lynch has developed in teacher and artist training are based in the belief that collaboration lies at the heart of educational reform. His goal is to assist teachers and artists in developing common vocabularies while demystifying state standards, benchmarks, and assessment as obstacles to effective and enjoyable instruction. He guides the participants into ways of confidently creating and implementing arts-based lessons that simultaneously capture content and reinforce skills-building in engaging, imaginative, experiential ways.

Currently working independently as a consultant, writer, and director, recent collaborations include Ballet Florida, Klein Dance Company, Palm Beach Dramaworks, and Core Ensemble, all located in West Palm Beach. In 2010 he was named as choir director of Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake, Worth, Fla.