Mark Hawes
Mark was appointed to the Board of Frantic Assembly as Chair in early 2020.
Mark is the Director of The Royal Theatrical Support Trust (RTST) — a charity dedicated to supporting and promoting regional theatres and early-career directors. He performs this lead executive role on a voluntary basis. He is also the longstanding deputy chair of the RTST board of trustees.
In 2016, Mark originated, and has since then managed, the prestigious RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award. Each year, this Award catalyses a career-transformative, first-time opportunity for a director to originate and direct a fully-funded production on the mid-scale at a regional theatre —supported by a production grant from the RTST— and then to take it on a national tour. The Award scheme has propelled the careers of directors – including female directors and directors from the global majority, neurodiverse, d/deaf and LGBT+ communities – and it has enabled regional theatres to stage productions that they might otherwise not have been able to stage.
Mark graduated in Law from King’s College London in 1983, and subsequently pursued a career as a solicitor until retiring from the Law at the end of 2020. He practised for six years as a corporate finance specialist with the "magic circle" international law firm, Freshfields (now Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer) before joining London law firm, Bristows LLP, where he was a Partner for some 25 years. He was head of Bristows' corporate practice for some 14 years, and head of its charities & not-for-profit practice for 10 years. He was recommended multiple times, both as a corporate lawyer and as a charity lawyer, by the annual independent legal directory Legal 500. Matters on which he advised include some of the earliest UK university biopharmaceutical corporate spin-outs; AstraZeneca's first-ever corporate spin-out; an international media joint venture that created the world’s first digital interactive satellite TV platform, ultimately rolled into Sky Digital; major governance reforms of some of the UK’s leading professional and charitable institutions established by Royal Charter, and of a United Nations-backed international non-profit organisation; and governance and transactional matters for medical research, animal welfare, arts and heritage charities.
Mark was long-term head of Bristows' graduate recruitment programme and senior member of the firm's Inclusion Committee, and he co-founded Bristows' LGBT+ network.
During the 2020 lockdown, Mark successfully undertook remotely a unit of a degree in Theatre Studies at Yale University.
In 2024, King’s College London conferred on Mark its Distinguished Alumni Award for Arts & Culture in recognition of his work in UK theatre.