Mark Saltzman began his career in New York, working with Jim Henson and writing for the Muppets. His work on Sesame Street, including sketches and songs like "Caribbean Amphibian", earned him seven Emmy Awards.
However, behind Kermit's back, Mark was secretly writing cabaret shows and musicals that played at various venues in New York City, including Soho Rep, 13th Street Theater, and the Village Gate. One of these shows, A, My Name is Alice, became a long-running revue.
Mark later collaborated with Jerry Herman on the CBS TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus, starring Angela Lansbury, and wrote screenplays for films like The Adventures of Milo and Otis, Three Ninjas Kick Back, and had scripts commissioned by major studios like SONY, Universal, and Disney. His TV movie The Red Sneakers, directed by and starring Gregory Hines, was nominated for a Writers Guild Award.
Mark's musical play The Tin Pan Alley Rag opened at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1997 and received five Los Angeles Ovation Award nominations, including Best Musical. The show went on to play in theaters across the US, including Goodspeed and The Cleveland Playhouse, and had a successful run at New York's Roundabout Theater, where it was nominated for Best Musical by the Outer Critics Circle.
Mark's other notable works include the musical Falling for Make Believe, based on the life of Lorenz Hart, which opened in California in 2013, and the comedy Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollywood, which played at Laguna Playhouse and Chicago's Greenhouse Theater and was optioned for a movie by The Little Film Company. His stage musical Romeo and Bernadette received two Drama Desk Award nominations in 2020 and won awards from the Outer Critics Circle, with a re-opening planned for 2022.
Mark is a graduate of Cornell University's English and theater departments and is currently the president of the Arnold Glassman Fund, a charitable foundation that provides grants for documentaries, mostly about film history and gay issues.
