Mason Rosenthal is a performance maker, director, actor, and teacher raised in Skokie, Illinois.
He is a founding member of the award-winning Philadelphia-based company Lightning Rod Special. LRS' recent work includes The Appointment (NYT' "Best Theater of 2019") and Jenn Kidwell and Scott Sheppard's Underground Railroad Game (2016 Obie Award for "Best New American Theatre Work," selected by NYT in 2017 as one of the “25 Best Plays of the Last 25 Years”). Mason is also a founding member of The Medium Theatre Company.
Mason has taught acting, movement, collaboration, and creation at multiple colleges and universities. He was on faculty at NYU's Atlantic Theater Company Acting School from 2007 to 2011 before moving to Philadelphia to be the Headlong Performance Institute's first teaching fellow. From 2021 to 2023 he was on faculty at Virginia Tech's School of the Performing Arts and a fellow with the Center for Communicating Science as part of a Post-MFA in Applied Performance. In 2023, he was part of a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored Summer Institute on "Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Devised Theatre." He is currently on faculty at University of the Arts' Ira Brind School of Theater Arts.
He holds a BFA in Drama with a minor in Art and Public Policy from New York University and completed his MFA in Performance as Public Practice with The University of Texas at Austin. Mason has studied improvisational dance and embodied anatomy with his teaching mentor George Russell since 2006.
Mason's original work has been supported by The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep as part of their 2019 Summer Residency Lab, by FringeArts as a 2012-2013 LAB fellow, by Haverford College as a Tuttle Creative Resident, and by residencies and grants from Rude Mechs, The June and Steve Wolfson Award for an Evolving Theatre Company, Austin Cultural Arts Division, The Virginia Tech Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Pennsylvania, Roger Williams University, Colgate University, Wyncote Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Network of Ensemble Theaters, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, White Pines Productions, The Orchard Project, and New England Foundation for the Arts.
He is a founding member of the award-winning Philadelphia-based company Lightning Rod Special. LRS' recent work includes The Appointment (NYT' "Best Theater of 2019") and Jenn Kidwell and Scott Sheppard's Underground Railroad Game (2016 Obie Award for "Best New American Theatre Work," selected by NYT in 2017 as one of the “25 Best Plays of the Last 25 Years”). Mason is also a founding member of The Medium Theatre Company.
Mason has taught acting, movement, collaboration, and creation at multiple colleges and universities. He was on faculty at NYU's Atlantic Theater Company Acting School from 2007 to 2011 before moving to Philadelphia to be the Headlong Performance Institute's first teaching fellow. From 2021 to 2023 he was on faculty at Virginia Tech's School of the Performing Arts and a fellow with the Center for Communicating Science as part of a Post-MFA in Applied Performance. In 2023, he was part of a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored Summer Institute on "Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Devised Theatre." He is currently on faculty at University of the Arts' Ira Brind School of Theater Arts.
He holds a BFA in Drama with a minor in Art and Public Policy from New York University and completed his MFA in Performance as Public Practice with The University of Texas at Austin. Mason has studied improvisational dance and embodied anatomy with his teaching mentor George Russell since 2006.
Mason's original work has been supported by The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep as part of their 2019 Summer Residency Lab, by FringeArts as a 2012-2013 LAB fellow, by Haverford College as a Tuttle Creative Resident, and by residencies and grants from Rude Mechs, The June and Steve Wolfson Award for an Evolving Theatre Company, Austin Cultural Arts Division, The Virginia Tech Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Pennsylvania, Roger Williams University, Colgate University, Wyncote Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Network of Ensemble Theaters, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, White Pines Productions, The Orchard Project, and New England Foundation for the Arts.