Founding & Producing Director

Mark Pinkosh was born in Frankfurt, Germany to a Polish-American father and a Scottish-American mother. The family moved to Kailua, Hawaii when Mark was 7 years old.

Starting in film and television at age 9, Mark did a number of local television commercials in Hawaii and worked as an actor in shows like Hawaii 5-0, Charlie’s Angels, Rockford Files, The Jeffersons and Eight Is Enough. By age 12 he was performing regularly on the stage, and after graduation from High School was awarded the Presidential Scholar In The Arts by President Reagan in 1982. That same year he was flown to Washington D.C. where he was presented with the honor and performed at the Kennedy Center.

In 1984, Mark founded Starving Artists Theatre Company, an international theatre group known for presenting cutting edge drama around the world. As Managing Director and Artistic Director, Mark produced over sixty productions and directed twelve pieces for the company. Their pieces were invited to represent the United States at a number of high profile International Theatre Festivals, including Toronto’s duMaurier International Festival, Dublin’s World Stage Festival, Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival and the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. Their work has transferred to London, Auckland, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Munich, Paris and Seattle.

Awards and Honors: As an adult, Mark was recognized as one of the outstanding stage performers in the United Kingdom. He has been awarded the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actor of the Year. He was awarded the first ever London Stage award for Outstanding Actor at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 and two Po’okela Awards for his stage work in Honolulu.

Some of the British theatres Mark has appeared at include The Traverse Theatre, The Tron, The Arches, The Green Room, Manchester Royal Exchange, Manchester Library Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Finborough Theatre, Drill Hall, BAC, Leicester Haymarket and The Drum Plymouth.

Mark had appeared in a variety of television and film roles. Films include: Fifty First Dates, The Mod Squad, Underclassmen, Man In The Moon, Take Me With You and The Ghosts of Los Angeles. He also appeared on the Radio 4 Monday Night Play, Pacific Dreams.

Television includes: Hawaii Five-O, Magnum, P.I., Jake and the Fatman, In-Laws, I’m With Her, Alias and House of Lies

Writer in Residence

Godfrey Hamilton was born and raised in darkest Essex but moved to London as soon as he could. For some years he worked as a freelance journalist, regularly contributing to magazines as diverse as the NME, Radio Times, TV Times, Company, Ritz, Gay News, and Penthouse, while also moonlighting as a (published) poet and spoken word performer.

He spent several years working as personal assistant to Emmie Tillett, the founder and director of the legendary Ibbs & Tillett agency which managed the careers of, among others, Segovia, Dame Janet Baker, and Shura Cherkassky. He spent several further years in theatre management in London’s West End, which is where he met Mark Pinkosh, who was working in London and who invited Godfrey to his home State of Hawaii to write – and perform – a new show for Mark’s company Starving Artists.

Godfrey has gone on to write more than 20 plays for Starving Artists, including Road Movie and Viper’s Opium, which both won Edinburgh Fringe Firsts. Since its premiere in 1995, Road Movie has been performed in multiple foreign-language productions, was revived at Manchester Library Theatre in 2010 and has recently toured Australia.

Godfrey’s commissioned work includes Pacific Dreams for the BBC, The Mirror & the Mask for Northern California Arts (as both writer and performer in collaboration with Welsh storyteller Daniel Morden), Don’t Forget Me for Paisley Arts, several shows – including Take Me With You – for Central London Arts/ Drill Hall, Tenderness for the Bush theatre, Days of Light and Eat Me (both for QUN/Royal Exchange) and Jake and Cake for Theatre Centre.

An adaptation of Take Me With You was recently filmed by UK director Charles Sharman-Cox, and Godfrey also wrote The Ghosts of Los Angeles, based on two of his plays and directed by Richard Carroll.

Godfrey has recently adapted Road Movie into a screenplay and is working on both a new play for Starving Artists, to tour in 2013/14, and a film script, Goodbye from Eagle Rock.