Mark Larsen

I woke up one morning in Dec 2025 and decided to write a musical using songs I wrote with composer Tom Shaw when I was just 22 years old. The music transports us to San Francisco in 1981 and Armstrong Station, a Western-themed gay bar in the Castro, where a circle of friends finds freedom, connection, and chosen family. Young Howard, a transplanted Minnesota farm boy who writes lyrics while driving a vending-machine route, meets composer Tom through an ad in the Bay Area Reporter. As their creative partnership takes shape, the people and experiences around them become songs.