Actor Extraordinaire!
Mark with President Janice & Tony
We were delighted to hear from Mark Adlow, an Aussie born “Kiwi”, who introduced his life’s work as “large and interesting”.
Mark’s 1st experience of talking to an audience was as an alter boy in his Dad’s church. After that his travels began with moving to India which led him becoming interested in the acting world.
One of his early favourites were Wayne & Shuster, a Canadian comedy duo who hosted a regular comedy show on CBC. He avidly watched them for two years. After returning to Australia, he then moved to NZ in 1969 following the Wahine disaster which he spied when flying in. He then attended St Martins school where he did his 1st performance at age 10 to 150 parishioners.
At this stage his parents decided to send him off to board at Christ’s College where he came under the tutelage of Head of Music which had a strong influence on his development at that time. While scrapping through School Cert he also manged to learn a lot about acting. And, as fate would have it, ended up deciding to join the Navy!
During both his school and the Navy Mark had to manage his fair share of bullying which helped him realise that what hurts you also makes you stronger while at the same time his parents instilled in him the value of “”family”.
The Navy also led to him learning to play the trumpet and how to make cups of tea in record time for large groups. Following an eventual honourable discharge, Mark then worked as encyclopedia salesman for the respectable time of one week and then returned to Australia to join the National Institute of Dramatic Arts.
This surrounded him with an amazing group of actors which was a great learning experience. This included an interesting time working with a lovely woman he was mad about and the opportunity to pass her some soap while she was in a shower which was an experience that stayed with him for some time.
He came to realise how important it was to get along professionally with everyone involved in putting on a show that became especially valuable later in his career when he joined the Court Theatre.
After a raft of varying roles, Mark then – at age 49 – applied for a role at the Council that managed a team of entrepreneurs. This included looking after Classical Sparks which was a real hit.
Other work quickly followed including acting in The Hobbit and a number of varied roles in the Court Theatre including Wind in the Willows being a notable favourite.
At this time, Mark has been involved in his 5oth play focussed on the winding up of people’s lives. He finds this especially poignant and very topical of our live at this time.
“The real vale of live theatre”, noted Mark, “is that it captures and shares who we are in a wide variety of ways.”
In closing , Mark shared that he has no regrets over his 42 years in this industry and considers himself very fortunate to have had such a varied interesting and thoroughly enjoyable career.
We thanked Mark for sharing his fascinating life to date look forward to him continuing in what is obviously a varied, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable life so far.