Mark Nassar
Mark Nassar is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, producer, and pioneer of immersive theater, best known as the co-creator of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, the long-running Off-Broadway comedy in which he originated the role of Tony. His career has spanned theater, film, writing, and producing, with a particular affinity for performances that collapse the distance between audience and story.
Nassar conceived The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot after encountering the history of the 1966 uprising at San Francisco’s Tenderloin Museum. Drawing on his decades of experience in immersive theater, he developed the story as a site-specific theatrical experience that brings audiences into the world of Compton’s Cafeteria and the transgender women, drag queens, hustlers, police officers, and neighborhood characters who inhabited the Tenderloin at the time. Rather than simply recounting the riot as history, the production invites audiences to experience the people, tensions, and community that surrounded a pivotal—and for many years largely forgotten—moment in San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ history.