Bio

Mark Ritts is an accomplished writer, producer, and director as well as a successful actor and puppeteer. His industrial clients have included scores of "Fortune 500" companies, for which he has written and mounted major product launches, sales meetings, and other noteworthy events. From 1989 to 1992, he was Creative Director for New York's Aniforms, Inc., a major production house with more than $14 million in annual sales. There, he conceived, wrote, and directed videos, theatrical events, and multimedia presentations for a wide variety of media, industrial and institutional clients.

In early 1993, Mark’s career took a sharp turn, and he found himself in Hollywood wearing a threadbare rat suit and starring as “Lester” on "Beakman's World."  The acclaimed CBS science series for children has been broadcast in 87 countries around the world. He was also the manipulator of "Herb," one of the show's puppet penguins. Beakman’s World has won many awards, including four Emmys, two Cable Aces for "Best Children's Series," and the Jim Henson/Unima-USA Award for Puppetry. The program’s 91 episodes are now in international syndication, and a special episode (written by Mark) was recently taped for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Project. Sony released a one-hour “Best of Beakman’s World” DVD in September, 2004, and the series is now in domestic syndication on weekends on the Fox Network and many other stations virtually everywhere in the United States.

During the same period, Mark was "Kino," the puppet co-host of Storytime, PBS’s 82-episode series for pre-schoolers. For this role, he won an Emmy Award as "Best Series Host." The show itself won a "Best Children's Series" Emmy. Guest story-readers included Tom Selleck, Little Richard, Kirk Douglas, Angela Bassett, Jason Alexander, and Geena Davis. Mark was also one of the show's writers, and he was the producer of A Special Storytime, a prime-time half-hour that kicked off the national debut of the series, starring John Goodman, Charles Dutton, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

In 1998-99, Mark senior-produced, co-wrote and co-directed a “Barney the Dinosaur” special for PBS and the Fox Network. He also produced, directed, and starred in The Can Film Festival, an educational video in distribution to thousands of schools throughout the United States. It won an Anvil Award -- the 'Oscar' of the public relations industry. Next, he co-wrote, produced, and directed a one-hour, prime-time documentary for PBS on microbiology called Creators of the Future. Shot around the world in diverse locations like Chernobyl and Zimbabwe, the program was part of the series, "Intimate Strangers: Unseen Life on Earth."

In 2002, he completed ten short documentary presentations for Bayer Corporation and a major 25-minute high-definition video documentary for Merck & Company on its international drug discovery efforts. More recently, through February of 2007, he wrote and directed episodes of Court TV’s "North Mission Road," a documentary series on case files from the L.A. County Coroner, and "Warm Weather, White Christmas," a one-hour special for Home and Garden Television. 

In 2005, he and collaborator Ted Field completed production of a new DVD on cruising aboard one’s own boat to Catalina Island. Entitled "Cast Off for Catalina", the two-hour video is Mark Ritts Productions’ first wholly-owned retail product and is available from Amazon.com, West Marine, and many other retailers. A sister DVD, "Cast Off for Mexico," was released in early January, 2008.  Mark continues to write and direct for major corporate clients like Novartis, Ortho, Ricoh, and Kodak and just creative directed a major extravaganza for Carlson Worldwide Hotels that was presented before an international audience of 1600 people at Las Vegas's Bellagio Hotel in late February, 2008.

In still another creative realm, Mark is the co-author, with Don Fleming, Ph.D., of "Mom, I Hate You! Children’s Provocative Communication: What It Means and What To Do About It," a parenting book released in April, 2003, by Random House’s Three Rivers Press.

Mark graduated from Harvard with a B.A. degree in English literature and went on to obtain post-graduate credits at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is married to actress Teresa Parente and has two adult sons and an 11-year-old daughter. He is also a licensed private pilot, an accomplished guitarist, and a semi-retired magician.