Happenstance Theater is a professional company committed to creating and producing original theater pieces that rely on the exquisite skill of the performers. With the simplest means we create a visual and accessible theatrical experience. We seek to elevate the moment when the performers and the audience meet, to lift their encounter beyond the daily and the pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. We bring humor, strive for beauty, investigate mysteries, and share generously. Meaning is often found by happenstance.

WHO we are:

Mark Jaster/Artistic co-director

The Washington Post called Mark Jaster a “clown extraordinaire and one of the most graceful performers you will ever see on a stage.” The Baltimore Sun called him “immensely gifted.” Audiences of all ages and backgrounds have enjoyed his kinetic humor, playful interaction, musical wit and inventive imagination. His skills in mime were developed in training with 20th-century masters Marcel Marceau and his teacher, E. Decroux, along with careful observation of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harpo Marx. Jaster served as teaching assistant to Mr. Marceau in a series of seminars in Michigan, and he teaches frequently in Artist residencies, theatres, and dance programs. In his solo performances, Piccolo’s Trunk, A Fool Named ‘O’, and The Maestro, Mark combines live music on unusual instruments and non-instruments, (like the pipe and tabor and the bowed saw), outrageous acrobatics, (like a dive through an impossibly small wooden hoop), and hyper-advanced communication skills with an honest, gentle humor that has obliterated many a skeptic’s hesitations over Mime. In January, ’07, he created a new show with his wife and partner, Sabrina Mandell, The Seven Ages of Mime, for an extended, sold-out run at the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, MD. The Washington Post’s review said, “Jaster’s sturdy body, like Chaplin’s and like Marcel Marceau’s…is a jeweler’s tool, adroit and precise…each athletic movement is exquisitely controlled…” In addition to annual appearances as Herr Drosselmeyer in the Maryland Youth Ballet’s Nutcracker, frequent performances with the Washington Revels, and many years as a featured stage act at The Maryland Renaissance Festival, he also collaborates regularly with world-class musicians like Piffaro, Celtic Harper Sue Richards, Hesperus, and the late, great jazz bassist, Keter Betts. Mark is a proud member of The Big Apple Circus’ Clown Care Program, performing at the Children’s National Medical Center and Johns Hopkins University Hospital. www.markjaster.com

Sabrina Mandell/co-artistic director

From sailing tall ships to painting in oils, Sabrina has played many roles. While living in South Carolina, she wrote, produced, and performed a solo street performance, Poetry for the People: Sabrina VentDeLaMer and her Amazing Game of Chance, for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. She has since performed it at farmer’s markets, in public squares, and for various events in the United States, Canada and Paris. She has also performed original poetry at the National Poetry Slam Championship and numerous other spoken word events, and has self-published a collaborative chapbook of poetry, “Whalebone Ladies”. Since moving to the DC area Ms. Mandell has understudied for the Shakespeare Theater’s Cyrano, is partner to A Fool Named “O” at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, has performed as Andromache in Trojan Women at the Source Theatre and played several comic roles in the Taffety Punk Theatre Co., all-female Romeo & Juliet at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop; Sabrina is co-director of Happenstance Theater. With her partner Mark Jaster, she has written, produced and performed Prufbox based on the TS Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” which premiered at the Capital Fringe Festival in July 2006 and was remounted at both the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, as part of their Joseph Cornell exhibits; together she and Mr. Jaster have also created The Seven Ages of Mime for the Round House Theater, Low Tide Hotel which was voted Best Comedy of the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival and was selected as a Best Bet by the Washington City Paper, and Manifesto! which was a 2008 Capital Fringe hit and just got back form a run at the New York Clown Theatre Festival at The Brick in Brooklyn, NY. Sabrina also performs regularly with the Big Apple Circus’ Clown Care Program in DC and Baltimore.

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Featured in WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE

Check out the “SPOTLIGHT” section of the November 2007 issue of WASHINGTONIAN magazine! Available HERE online

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REVIEWS…

CLICK HERE to read a review of Cabaret CooCoo which won Best Comedy of the 2009 Capital Fringe Festival.

CLICK HERE to read our review in the Charleston City Paper after opening night and CLICK HERE to read about us in the Spoleto Buzz blog by John Stoehr.

Check out THIS REVIEW of MANIFESTO! from the Washington City Paper’s Fringe & Purge Blog

“Seven Ages of Mime: A Gentle Nod to the Greats” -by Nelson Pressley – Washington Post

“The Ancient Art of Silence is Still Golden” -by Michael B. Toscano – Washington Post

A Curtain Up DC Review of The Seven Ages of Mime -by Rich See

Washingtonian Magazine article

“…For a really satisfying cultural riff, however, you’d have had to take in LOW TIDE HOTEL, an enchantingly whimsical montage of maritime-themed songs and literary excerpts performed three times last weekend. Cast members Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell and Scott Sedar lent mystery and humor to a script that sampled songs such as “Moby Dick” and even the Police’s “Message in a Bottle.” The retro visual aesthetic — straw boaters, a hatbox, a tray of saltwater taffy — dovetailed beautifully with Jaster’s foley-artist-style sound effects, which included “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” played on a musical saw.” – Celia Wren,WashingtonPost

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