Excellence in theatre and playwriting
Mark Lucas attended Caboolture State High School from 1979 to 1984, having decided to repeat his Senior year to improve his tertiary entrance score. He received an academic award in Year 8, and played in cricket, volleyball and rugby league teams. Even at school, a particular interest was theatre, and he had supporting roles in Bye Bye Birdie in 1982, where he played Randolph McAfee, in Guys and Dolls in 1983, playing Benny Southstreet, and in South Pacific in 1984, as Captain George Brackett. Whilst he was in Year 10, Mark wrote a weekly comic strip, Ed Jucation, which was published in the Near North Coast News.
In 1985, after leaving school, Mark became involved in community theatre where he has taken on the roles of actor, director, playwright, adjudicator and mentor. He sees theatre, and his plays, as giving audiences the opportunity to travel to destinations they may not have considered, to laugh at, cry with, and taste the desperation of, the scenes being played out before them.
In 1992, Mark wrote his first one-act script, a psychological thriller, Roulette. In 1994, he and his wife, Shirley, also a past student of Caboolture State High School, formed the Excalibur Theatre Company to bring Mark's plays, which range from contemporary dramas to farcical comedies to Gothic thrillers, to a wider public. The company showcases its work on the southeast Queensland drama festival circuit and, in 2009, Mark performed the extraordinary feat of winning the Best Actor Award at all nine festivals with his one act play, Provocateur. This play won 26 awards in all. Mark's work has been published, and performed by theatre companies throughout Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Mark has a very successful career in human resources and his understanding of humanity in all its facets is reflected in his playwriting.