Theatre Tales: A Mark Allen Mystery

At one time, Mark Allen was considered by some as a Portland Theatre Impresario. With popular dinner theatres in both Portland Oregon and Vancouver BC, he was one of the few producers in the Portland Metropolitan area at the time who claimed to pay his actors (I use the termed “pay” very loosely as I worked for him a year and can only recall one or two instances of ever receiving a paycheck). He appeared as a Woody Allen-type comic Schimel in hundreds of local commercials, hosted several radio shows in the fifties and was one of the first theatre companies to perform in the historic Coaster Theatre in Cannon Beach, Oregon. 
 
It was the early seventies and as a young actor, thirsting to prove my talent and mettle after a fresh jettison from a local community college theatre department, I auditioned and took my first acting job with Mark Allen and his dinner theatre company. The play was Norman is That You, a sort of gay, road show episode of Plaza Suite and was happy to call myself a paid working actor, I signed a contract for a six-month run in Vancouver BC. The show starred George Ross (Dr. Zoom from the KPTV kids cartoon show), me and a chap named Ed, (sorry can’t remember the last name) who, as I remember was sort of a cross between Baby Huey from the cartoons and Charles Nelson Riley. 
 
Being completely naive, I agreed to payment solely based on a percentage of the house. Let’s just say the during the entire run, the house won. Repeatedly. From the boards, the dinner tables always looked full and happy. Come payday, always at the end of the month, I was informed that the expense of running the show was conveniently getting in the way of a decent payoff. But to me, I was happy to be actor, happy to be away from home in a bordering foreign country, and happy to believe I was being paid actual money to learn my craft.
 
I believe the show ran in Portland a month or before I would complete my contract with the Neil Simon play God’s Favorite. A lesser-known work, the comedy was a modern retelling of Job that played on Broadway with Charles Nelson Riley. Having made my imagined millions, I made my exit from the theatre company and never looked back. 
 
 
The last I heard of Mark Allen was a story circulating in a Portland’s Willamette Week (a popular news weekly), regarding Mark, a wife and an irate husband and a baseball bat or a gun.  I am foggy on the particulars but as I remember ended up with Mark receiving a few bruises or stitches. Since then I have met others who have worked with Mark, my co-creator of Wild Space A Go Go, Kurt Misar, being chief among them.
 
When you search the web and Portland history, there are very few items regarding this Portland legend and local Max Bialystok. Mark Allen passed away in 2015.
 
Mark passed away in 2015