My name is Mark Larson and I grew up in Minnesota, lived in New York and Argentina, and I am a theater artist and musician, a filmmaker and educator in California. 

My work is artisanal, never corporate and my creative goals are utopian by nature. I am drawn to presenting works that show the world as it is today.

I began by directing a variety of theater productions for art galleries, abandoned buildings and regional theaters in Minneapolis, New York and California. Working as an independent theater producer since 1973, my notable productions include Pompeii Day/Elvis In Berlin (1978), Untitled (1984), Song of Songs (1988), Prometheus Bound (1997) Hamlet (1999) and The Rich Boy (2001). Under the auspices of the Mission Santa Clara at Santa Clara University, choreographer Kristin Kusanovich and I wrote and produced a series of contemporary liturgical dramas - The Book of Ruth (2004), The Book of Job (2005), The Poem Noche Oscura by San Juan de la Cruz (2007), The Life of Clare of Assisi (2008). Our “Six Psalms", premiered at the Mission in May of 2013 was performed at Marquette University in November of 2014. 

A new theater group, ALMA LOOP, created in 2016, performs in private homes and on street corners in San Jose, California. Productions I have co-ordinated include Motel Chronicles by Sam Shepard, This Property is Condemned by Tennessee Williams, Every Afternoon by Gertrude Stein, My Life Had Stood by Emily Dickinson and Eurydice by HD were performed to audiences throughout the city. In 2021, a production of Vieja Tierra/Old Earth by Samuel Beckett was produced on the streets of San Jose through an ABIERTO grant from the City of San Jose.

The musical work I create is experimental. Two unique musical compositions - Chambers by the great American composer Alvin Lucier and Boundary Music by legendary Fluxus composer Mieko Shiomi - were realized with the composer's permission in Minnesota and California in 2016 and 2017. My text-score piece entitled "What Have We Here" was premiered at the 2019 FLUXUS tour by newCELF in Wales and was chosen to be a part of the “A Year of Deep Listening” celebrating the legacy of composer Pauline Oliveros in 2022. In October of 2022, the composition "Raw Loops" I created for the choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones dance "Babble: First impressions of the white man" (1983) was performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

My most recent festival film "Front Lawn" (2011), a collaboration with the actor Tim Fullerton, was seen at the 2012 Vaasa Wildlife Film Festival in Finland.  

In the spring of 2012, I began a collaboration with photographer Sheeva Sabati to create a series of story and photo broadsides describing life at the intersection of Story Road and King Road in San Jose. These broadsides, published in Spanish and English and Vietnamese editions, are posted on lampposts along Story Road the first week of every month. 

For twenty-two years I have presented over 500 motion pictures and lectured on topics in film history at Hartnell College, Santa Clara University, De Anza College and Stanford University. I have curated film series for the Santa Clara and San Jose Public Libraries. In the summer of 2013, film history courses for the Cupertino Library Foundation began and which continue today with great enthusiasm. 

A life-long passion for silent film has brought me several times to La Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy and I am a proud member of DOMITOR, the International Society for the Study of Silent Film.