By Claire Corrigan
MARK Irwin was feeling the effects of four months of non-stop singing when he sat down to talk to Topic last Friday.
The accomplished singer and actor has just spent the past several months on the road touring with the renowned 12 Tenors, captivating audiences across Europe with their mesmerising melodies.
Despite his sore throat, Mark is more than happy to chat away about his time with the Tenors as well as talk about how he got his start in acting and singing.
The Clonmore native started the same place as many a potential star, Mullingar Arts Centre, when he was cast in a production of Les Miserable with The Student Players at 14 years old, going on to perform in ‘Westside Story’, ‘Fame’ and several other shows.
Prior to that, Mark joined the Cathedral Boys choir at just seven, and also received private singing lessons from Dervilla Conlon-Maloney.
“I was in the Cathedral Choristers for ten years and I did some classical training with Dervilla for much of that time,” he recalled.
Having caught the acting bug, Mark continued to perform in various productions, with Sean Lynch and Angie Lynch as his mentors, up until he left to go to London in 2011.
While toying with the idea of applying for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, he found he was unsure of whether he wanted to continue along the classical music route. “I loved being on stage and acting. One night I Googled musical theatre colleges in London and the first one that came up was the London School of Musical Theatre (LSMT).”
On a whim, he filled out an application, which he promptly forgot about until, two weeks later, he received an email asking him to come to London for an audition, which his parents encouraged him to attend.
The audition was on a Sunday and Mark travelled over and back on the same day, making sure to have the two songs requested prepared. “I sang ‘Your Song’ by Elton John, the Moulin Rouge version, and I also had to give a mini-interview.”
ANDREW LLOYD
WEBBER
Two weeks later, Mark got a phone call saying that he had been awarded a place at the college. However he was crestfallen when he realised he would be unable to afford the cost of the course – a startling €13,500 for the year. “That was without adding in the costs of accommodation and everything else that goes along with living in London.”
However as faith would have it, it was the same year that, for the very first time, LSMT was offering one student a place through the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholarship, and Mark was among only four budding actors that were chosen to go before a panel, which included David Grindrod, a famous casting director. “I had no idea who he was but the three other people certainly were fretting.”
Mark sang the same songs he had performed in the previous audition. Afterwards he was asked by the panel what the scholarship meant to him, to which he replied that he simply could not afford to attend the college without it and felt it would be a shame to miss such a great opportunity. “Two days later I got a phone call saying I had been accepted for the full scholarship.”
THE COMMITMENTS
After completing the intensive one year course, Mark signed up with an agent and was cast in a small production called ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ in Shoreditch Church, which ran for two weeks.
Over the next number of months, Mark succeeded in getting down to the final two choices for parts in ‘Les Miserables’, ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Joseph’, but failed to secure that final callback. “I was running out of money, so I moved home for about two months. I just auditioned for ‘The Commitments’, which I didn’t get, so I got a job in Mullingar.”
However not long after returning home, Mark was thrilled to learn that he had been cast in the ‘swing’ set for ‘The Commitments’, meaning he would play multiple roles throughout the musical. “I was so fed up of getting knocked back, so I rang my sister before I went back for the audition and she just said ‘Go for it’. I got the job on a Friday and started the following Monday. I did just under two years with the show. It was great craic and also because I was a swing, I didn’t have to do the same thing every night, which kept it alive for me. I played one of the principal leads as a cover at least twenty times and my friends and family came over to see me.”
12 TENORS
After the obligatory dry spell that is part and parcel of life as a performer, Mark was selected to do a four month tour with The 12 Tenors. “I got called in to do an audition for the 12 Tenors which I’ve just finished. I did the audition in October and started in November and just finished on Monday, 27 March. We did ten days rehearsals, travelled to four different countries (Germany, Luxemburg, Belgium and Austria); we travelled 31,000km on a bus. We did 99 shows and stayed in 47 hotels and spent 409 hours on the bus,” he laughed.
CHARITY CONCERT
It’s clear Mark has an abundance of drive and ambition, a necessity in such an unforgiving industry – last week he took part in an intensive three hour workshop audition at the Abbey Theatre for a new screenplay, and this week he is traveling to London, where he will do two auditions in the same day.
If you would like to see Mark in action, he will be performing at the Mullingar Arts Centre along with a number of special guests as part of a charity concert in aid of funding for an MRI scanner for Mullingar Hospital on the 16 and 17 of June.
Tickets will be available at Mullingar Arts Centre.
