Mark Penzak is a performer and playwright. His style features innovative sets and puppets combined with traditional techniques of playwriting, storytelling and characterisation. That mixture is intended to take the audience on a theatrical voyage – that transports them into an imaginative world. Sometimes the voyage is pure comedy or adventure but at other times the exploration is thematic or allegorical. His children’s productions have toured festivals and schools around Australia and overseas. In 2019 he was commissioned by Australian Children's Theatre Foundation to write Tōrō & Rose which will be toured by RAV in June 2021. His most recent production, created with Andrée Cozens, is a cabaret response to Bach’s Coffee Cantata from 1735.

With Such As They Are, Mark works with Eliza-Jane Gilchrist to create a form of storytelling that isn’t reliant on the spoken word but communicates through a choreographed sequence of symbolic elements. These can include puppetry, animations or construction of locations designed to liberate feelings that can’t be said with words. Our most recent production is Once and For All in Natimuk cemetery which explored our mortality and our relationship with the dead.