Craig Mason(VI)
- Actor
Craig Mason is a veteran Broadway actor, singer, writer and director, as well as a lawyer, minister, director of Meals on Wheels, and #SRJC senior programs instructor at Senior Cafe at Petaluma People Services Center.
Craig Mason grew up in a loving church community as the prodigy son of a minister from a small town in the Midwest, and is himself an ordained minister. He graduated with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in philosophy and psychology from Yale University, but instead of becoming a psychologist he pursued his love for acting in New York. His acting career has spanned from solos on Broadway to national tours with titans like Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Richard Chamberlain in revivals of Camelot and The Sound of Music. Despite his love of theater, it was not the career to support a family, when his father died, and Craig returned to earn his JD degree from New York University School of Law, and worked for a law firm in San Francisco throughout his thirties. He learned that corporate law was not in line with his social values, so he quit to be a minister closer to his family in the Midwest. With the passing of his mother, Craig headed back to his beloved Broadway, where he performed throughout his forties.
The overwhelming stress in New York at the coming of the new millennium and the instability of acting life had him wondering if life in Northern California, where he had relatives, would offer the quality of life he had known in his native rural Indiana. He moved to Sebastopol and since then he has acted in San Francisco, the East Bay and the North Bay. He now works as director of Meals on Wheels in Petaluma. He loves the seniors he works with and teaches through an SRJC program, and they inspired the character Firs, an 87-year-old footman and freed serf, which he plays in the Santa Rosa Junior College's Theatre Arts play in "The Cherry Orchard" in 2014. Mason draws inspiration from his complex life and career experience, driven by a passion for social values and a constant search for meaning and depth.
Craig Mason grew up in a loving church community as the prodigy son of a minister from a small town in the Midwest, and is himself an ordained minister. He graduated with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in philosophy and psychology from Yale University, but instead of becoming a psychologist he pursued his love for acting in New York. His acting career has spanned from solos on Broadway to national tours with titans like Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Richard Chamberlain in revivals of Camelot and The Sound of Music. Despite his love of theater, it was not the career to support a family, when his father died, and Craig returned to earn his JD degree from New York University School of Law, and worked for a law firm in San Francisco throughout his thirties. He learned that corporate law was not in line with his social values, so he quit to be a minister closer to his family in the Midwest. With the passing of his mother, Craig headed back to his beloved Broadway, where he performed throughout his forties.
The overwhelming stress in New York at the coming of the new millennium and the instability of acting life had him wondering if life in Northern California, where he had relatives, would offer the quality of life he had known in his native rural Indiana. He moved to Sebastopol and since then he has acted in San Francisco, the East Bay and the North Bay. He now works as director of Meals on Wheels in Petaluma. He loves the seniors he works with and teaches through an SRJC program, and they inspired the character Firs, an 87-year-old footman and freed serf, which he plays in the Santa Rosa Junior College's Theatre Arts play in "The Cherry Orchard" in 2014. Mason draws inspiration from his complex life and career experience, driven by a passion for social values and a constant search for meaning and depth.
