Mark McKerracher

College Friend

“I have a little musical warm-up tape that I got while at SMC. And to this day, I use it before each show.”

On any night, before the first booming notes from the orchestra, before the curtain rises and before the awesome stage of Les Miserables materializes in the floodlights, you will find one of two possible Mark McKerrachers hulking in the shadows, waiting to portray the immortal Jean Valjean. “Some nights it’s ‘Oh! This is so glorious!’” he says. “And other nights it’s ‘Oh god! I’ll never make it through!’” But for nearly three years now Mark has made it through. And, on an otherwise severely suffering New York Broadway, Les Miz continues to play to packed houses.

But Mark’s path to the top began, like it does for all actors, with honing his skills in a small theater. He traces his beginnings to SMC. “Most of my musicals were done on that campus,” he says. “I remember the fried egg sandwiches, shooting the breeze with friends and all the great, crazy wild shows we did. Those were great years.”

Mark left theater at one point to study psychology. But he found that the “roar of the greasepaint” his mother Sylvia had introduced him to was irresistible. “I just had to get back into theater,” he says. “And doing Evita at SMC, I met my wife. Actually, four couples from that show were married,” he says, laughing. “So you see, those night classes at SMC are very important!”

Mark describes the role of Jean Valjean as “the most musically demanding role there is, the hardest thing I’ll ever sing.” He feels incredibly fulfilled as an artist but says, “I want students to know that they’ll be falling back on their memories of SMC most of their lives. Those are the happiest years. And when I look back, SMC was the last ‘dreamstop’ for me before arriving in the serious world.”

Back