MARK SAM ROSENTHAL is a Baton Rouge native living in New York. The solo show he wrote and performs, Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, had a nine-week off-Broadway run at New York’s SoHo Playhouse in winter 2009 and a summer run that same year at the Art House Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Blanche premiered at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival, where it won the Village Voice Audience Award and an overall festival award for Outstanding Solo Show. Mark Sam has studied and performed improv comedy with the Upright Citizens Brigade and acting with the Atlantic Theatre Company and the Barrow Group. He is a storyteller about town, and he performs weekly at the People's Improv Theater with the house improv team Someday the Cake. Other writing and performing credits include his first solo show Love Mercy (the PIT), Menage a Trailer (Chicago's Factory Theater), Beyond the Valley of the Switchblade Pussycats (UCBT), and The Indigo Girls vs. George W. Bush (The Cutting Room). Mark Sam works as a writer/producer for Comedy Central.