National Resource for Theater, Arts, and Arts Education.
2025 Master Teacher - Marsha Mason
“I am thrilled to accept the opportunity to spend a week at Ten Chimneys working on a particular project that is close to my heart. I believe THE CHERRY ORCHARD lends itself as a backdrop to a contemporary play about all of the social, land, class, and political issues we are currently facing, and I look forward to working with the actors creating scenes through improvisation that illuminate those concerns.”
—Marsha Mason, 2025 LFFP Master Teacher
Marsha Mason, actress and theater director has been nominated four times for Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Cinderella Liberty, The Goodbye Girl with Richard Dreyfus, Chapter Two and Only When I Laugh. The first two won her Golden Globe Awards.
She had an extensive career on stage appearing in such plays as Cactus Flower, The Deer Park, Richard III, The Prisoner of Second Avenue (for which she also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album), The Night of the Iguana, Steel Magnolias, and Lost in Yonkers among many others. She recently and briefly stepped in for Mia Farrow who had COVID-19 in The Roommate. In addition to the movies for which she was nominated for Academy Awards, Marsha appeared on the big screen in Blume in Love, The Cheap Detective, Max Dugan Returns, Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood, and more. On television, she received an Emmy nomination for her reoccurring role in Frasier, and also, among others, appeared in Love of Life, Seinfeld, One Life to Live, Lipstick Jungle, Army Wives, The Middle, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, and the Netflix series Grace and Frankie.
As a director, Marsha helmed productions of Chapter Two, Steel Magnolias, the first female version of An Act of God, The Man Who Came to Dinner plus more.
Marsha was married to playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon for many years. They met when she was cast in his play, The Good Doctor, which was a musical comedy and series of short plays based on works of Russian writer Anton Chekov. Neil wrote a number of plays and movies Marsha starred in, including well-known The Goodbye Girl.
Marsha attended Webster University, receiving a Doctor of Fine Arts in Speech and Drama. She became a race car driver after discussing racing with Paul Newman and raced for seven years. When living in New Mexico, she had a farm that grew organic herbs which were regionally sold wholesale. She also began a wellness company called “Resting in the River”. Marsha is a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation.
Master Teachers 2009-2024
Every year, Ten Chimneys selects and collaborates with a Master Teacher for the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program – a luminary stage actor whose talent, generosity, ability to teach, and dedication to mentoring are deeply admired by stage actors and the entire theater community. The Master Teacher for each year is a key collaborator in the program, working with Ten Chimneys staff to develop the curriculum, content, and focus of the artistic elements of the experience. During the first two years of the program, the top regional theater actors in the U.S. spent the artistic portion of their Ten Chimneys immersion delving into Shakespeare – with the late actress Lynn Redgrave in 2009 and renowned Shakespearean Barry Edelstein in 2010. In 2011, they explored Chekhov with the late actress Olympia Dukakis, and in 2012, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellows focused on American musical theater with Broadway legend Joel Grey. The 2013 program explored spontaneity on stage and was led by American icon, Alan Alda, and in 2014 the Fellows studied works related to the Lunts’ and their illustrious friends with David Hyde Pierce. In 2015 we welcomed Phylicia Rashad who led the class in roles that were “against type” and differentiated from the characters they typically were cast in. The 2016 program was led by Jason Alexander and focused on the physicalization of choice – the powerful collaboration of mind and body in building a performance. Our 2017 Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Class with Master Teacher Alfred Molina focused on developing fresh ways into character work through text analysis and casting against type. 2018’s Fellows led by Stephen McKinley Henderson concentrated on fortifying each actor with justified reality; reflecting that they are coming from an experience to an experience, to do something immediate, important, and compelling. In 2019 and 2022, Tyne Daly used poetry as a medium to focus on renewable energy. In 2023, Director Jerry Zaks worked with the actors on comedic timing. Stephen McKinley Henderson returned in 2024 to share his expertise with our Fellows on “acting against type.” Sadly, the Fellowship did not occur in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”