Staffing the Hospital

For more than 35 years, Casting Director Mark Teschner ’79 has found the talent to sustain the longest-running active soap opera.

By Tim Stevens ’03

see possibilities/Underneath there’s something there,” Linda Lavin sang in the 1960s musical It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman. One day during its four-month run, a 7-year-old Mark Teschner ’79 was in the audience of the Alvin Theatre, experiencing his first Broadway show. It was then, perhaps even during that very tune, that he first fell in love with performance.

But the words would have far more relevance to his life than just marking the occasion of his first musical. They’d come to define his own superpower, if you will; the one that would take him from Mohegan Avenue in New London to the hustle of local theater to Broadway’s lights and, then, finally, to the front gate of The Prospect Studios in Los Angeles.

Teschner’s exceptional ability to see possibilities led him to the set of General Hospital, television’s longest still-running soap opera, where he has served as casting director for more than 35 years. Renowned for his ability to discover new actors, Teschner is the most honored casting director in the industry with 11 Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Achievement in Casting” and seven Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America.

As we meet in his office at the L.A. studio in early December, it’s clear neither time nor honors have dulled Teschner’s commitment to the job: He’s as active—and enthusiastic—as ever. In front of him sits a tablet loaded with audition tapes he’ll watch after I leave. His Emmy and Artios statues adorn the top of a long wooden credenza against one wall; a set of TVs hang along another, giving us a live feed of the scenes being shot downstairs. What we are watching in real time will be broadcast to fans in about three weeks. As we talk, Teschner occasionally directs my attention to the monitors to share anecdotes and trivia about the actors.

Daily dose of drama: Cameron Mathison and Laura Wright on the set of General Hospital, the longest-running American soap opera currently in production. ©2025 Disney/Christine Bartolucci. All rights reserved.

At one point, Lynn Herring, who plays Lucy Coe—one of the few active General Hospital characters cast before Teschner’s time on the show—is performing in a one-shot in the series’ bar. Teschner points to the screen. “I was at my shoe repair guy. He had a color General Hospital cast photo from 15 years ago and out of the 45 people in the in the photo, only four are still on the show,” he says.

“People say, ‘Isn’t it the same cast?’ But we’re bringing on new characters constantly. You have to keep the show fresh by bringing in new actors and new energy. At the same time, you can’t alienate your core audience who has this tremendous emotional connection to the characters that they’ve been watching for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It’s pretty powerful.”

Finding just the right people to fill those roles and make those powerful connections is Teschner’s specialty.

“It’s so exciting to find that special person who has the star potential, the talent, the charisma to be a character the audience will invest in and want to watch,” he says. “There’s an incredible feeling when you find an actor and it’s their first job, and they blow up on the show and become hugely popular, like Nicholas Chavez (just coming off of Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story).

“But what I really love, what gives me that special feeling, is when you discover somebody and then they bring this show to life. They’re not just great, but they’re great for the role I cast them in.”

It’s so exciting to find that special person who has the star potential, the talent, the charisma to be a character the audience will invest in and want to watch.

— Mark Teschner ’79

Ironically, Teschner almost miscast himself.

Raised in Scarsdale, New York, by “very artsy parents,” he remembers many trips to the big city to catch the ballet or a Broadway or off-Broadway show. “So I had the bug for theater, for the arts, at a very young age,” he says.

At Conn, Teschner took almost all the acting classes offered. “I didn’t major in theater because I didn’t want to take the Russian literature class,” he says with a laugh, adding that he majored in English instead. “But I was immersed in the theater scene, so I knew my thing was theater arts.”

He attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center during his senior year and, inspired by that experience, moved to New York City after graduation intending to become an actor. Soon, though, he realized acting wasn’t his true calling.

“After about two and a half years, I had an epiphany,” Teschner explains. “I loved the idea of being an actor more than actually being an actor. I didn’t feel that passion that you need to be an actor.”

Still, he didn’t want to leave performance entirely. In what he describes as a fluke, he learned of a casting director looking for an assistant and gave it a shot.

It wasn’t always the most glamorous of gigs. His first desk was a piece of wood held up by two sawhorses, for instance. The pay was enough to keep him in New York, but little more than that. And yet, it finally felt right.

“From the first day, I just knew, ‘This is it.’ I found my calling. I’m one of the lucky ones to have found what I love so quickly,” he says.

“It’s funny. I was once one of the youngest casting directors. Now I’m 67 and, well, I’m certainly not the youngest. But that foundation from Connecticut College, from the National Theater Institute, it was important. It helped me understand what good acting was and how to communicate with actors.”

By 1982, Teschner was casting the Broadway debut of Oh! Coward and an early show of Alan Menken, who is perhaps best known as the key composer/conductor of the late ’80s/early ’90s Disney renaissance, providing songs for the films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Pocahontas.

Hollywood came calling for the first time in 1985. The casting director of an ABC weekday soap, Loving, was going on maternity leave, and the show was looking for someone to guide the ship for six months. For Teschner, those six months ended up being four and a half years. When it was over, he had found his new passion.

“I’ve cast hundreds of plays, and they rehearse for four weeks and sometimes they close opening night or you can’t always go see them. I’ve cast movies that you either don’t see or they never get released,” he explains. “But with daytime, you cast an actor. Five days later, you’re actually watching them on the monitor, doing the work. Then, three weeks after that, they’re on the air. You get to see your work immediately. I loved it.”

One of Loving’s producers, Joseph Hardy, became General Hospital’s executive producer in 1989. Hardy reached out to Teschner to see if he’d like to come along for the ride. He’s been there ever since—in the same office, on the fifth floor, just down the hall from the elevator.

Port Charles’ pool, officially known as The Metro Court Pool and Spa, is one of the newest filming sets on General Hospital, debuting in the summer of 2021. As with the other General Hospital locations, it is modular, capable of being set up and broken down rapidly to maximize shooting schedules. © 2025 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC)/Troy Harvey. All rights reserved.

While Teschner’s location hasn’t changed, plenty about the industry has. For one, the daytime arena is a lot less crowded than it used to be. Starting in the late 2000s, networks began to reduce their daytime offerings. Giants of their timeslots like All My Children, Guiding Light and As The World Turns went off the air between 2008 and 2012. After a golden era in the ’80s and early ’90s, daytime soaps no longer commanded the audiences they once did.

“The big hit in daytime was the O.J. Simpson trial,” Teschner says. “Soaps weren’t available to people for almost a year because of it. There was no way for people to catch up, either. No streaming services. So we took a big hit on the audience, and they just never fully came back.”

Ironically, streaming—the single biggest disruptor to network television supremacy in the past decade—has proved something of an unlikely savior for daytime soaps.

“The numbers are nowhere near where they were in the ’80s and ’90s, but that goes for everyone. Shows that would get canceled back then were being seen by so many more people than hit shows now. But for us, streaming has been this great second viewership. It gives people a chance to see it who otherwise might not have a decade ago,” Teschner says. “That includes people who were fans who lost track of us, but also new fans who might have heard the name General Hospital when they were younger but are really just watching us for the first time. It’s also been another way to generate revenue, and that keeps the shows going. It’s not just the ratings on the day of anymore.”

In fact, streaming has proven encouraging enough that the first new daytime soap in some time is set to debut later this year. A joint venture between CBS Studios and the NAACP, Beyond the Gates will feature the first predominantly Black cast since Generations went off the air in 1991.

Teschner says advances in technology have also enhanced his approach to casting.

“Since COVID, there’s been a big shift with actors sending in their auditions, so now we can watch them on our computers, our tablets, in the office, at home,” he says. “And the actors are no longer constrained by having to physically be in L.A. or New York. It allows me to see more actors than I’ve ever been able to before, and that means I’m casting people who might not have even gotten a look before.”

What technology hasn’t changed, Teschner is quick to note, is the importance of storytelling.

Since COVID, there’s been a big shift with actors sending in their auditions ... I’m casting people who might not have even gotten a look before.

— Mark Teschner ’79

“The mission doesn’t change: Emotionally connect with the audience,” he says. “That’s let us do some incredible things. Historically, I think daytime television has told such powerful stories. In the early ’90s, during the AIDS crisis, we had a character with AIDS to show that it was universal, that it wasn’t just a ‘gay disease.’ On that note, daytime television has been at the forefront of telling the stories of gay characters. And just recently, we had a character played by Max Gail who developed Alzheimer’s and died from it on the show. And because of how soaps work, we were able to show that not just in a few episodes, but over three years, so audiences could be a part of that story and see how it affected all the characters.”

The passion that has driven Teschner’s award-winning work for decades is evident as he gives me a tour of General Hospital’s vast set—a long hall with a series of partially walled rooms, each quickly dressed and redressed to represent Port Charles’ living rooms, offices and restaurants. At the end of the hall sits the Nurses’ Station, arguably the most famous and longest-present location in the show. Spider-webbing out from the set are corridors lined by wardrobe, makeup, dressing and green rooms. At each location, he introduces me to actors and to crew alike. To a one, he has quick joke or earnest word of encouragement. It’s obvious just how in his element he is here.

“I never had a master plan,” he confesses. “I was so excited to get the job and move out to the West Coast. Hollywood is where the action is, and the weather’s fantastic. So I never really thought about it beyond, ‘Here I am with this terrific job.’

“Before you know it, it’s 10 years. 15. 20. Now, I’ve spent more than half my life here at General Hospital. As corny as it is, this is my other home. This is also kind of my family. And to reach a point where I’m not just doing a job I love, but I’m being appreciated and acknowledged for it by my peers—that’s just the icing on the cake.”

Em-azing Career: Since the Daytime Emmys started honoring casting in 2001, Mark Teschner ’79 has been nominated 22 times and won the statue a record 11 times. Additionally, he’s scored seven Artios Awards against 23 nominations since 1992. Finally, just this past year, he was inducted into the Daytime Emmy Silver Circle for over 25 years of outstanding service in television.