For anyone reading, Walter Briggs is one of the best people I know in or out of Chicago theatre: he's always there to help out, as he did  by stepping in and playing a part for a week in Hurrah for the Next Who Dies rehearsals during a cast member's emergency trip so many years ago, and then some time later, after the founding of now-famed artistic syndicate The Inconvenience, he co-directed and assistant-directed the two short plays of mine that The Inconvenience produced in their Festivals, some of the best theatre experiences I've ever had, due in no small way to Walter's skill, talent, and humor. He later commissioned me to write a play about the 1919 Chicago race riots, a subject that has long fascinated both of us,  and directed a staged reading of that piece, titled Riot Call, for the Inconvenience's Fresh Meat Reading Series.  There are few people that I trust and admire as much as Walter Briggs, and he's one of the most acclaimed actors in Chicago, for reasons that will be evident to anyone who's ever seen him onstage, in plays ranging from The Glass Menagerie and Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses to The Earl, Hit the Wall  and the current Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.

Walter's newborn son Elliot died this past Sunday. Please visit this memorial page and consider donating, to help this great man and great friend cover some of the accrued costs.


Thank you.

-Mark Mason

Hey, this is Mark Mason here, and I'm going to try to update this as much as I can with various thoughts, reviews of old movies and ideas. Forgive me some of my technical inexperience in all things online, and I'll be back soon. Thanks!