John W. Lowell

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John W. Lowell
Born (1962-09-09) September 9, 1962 (age 62)
Smithtown, New York
Occupation playwright

John W. Lowell is an American playwright. He lives in the West Village in New York City. [1]

Contents

Education

Lowell earned a B.A. in history from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Additionally, he studied musical theory with Mark DeVoto and musical composition with T.J. Anderson.

Playwright

The Letters

The Letters is Lowell's most frequently performed work. Exploring themes of censorship, torture, office politics, "...the playwright has said that an inspiration for his play was the impeachment... of President Bill Clinton. The government’s intrusion into private lives infuriated Lowell. In 2004, the U.S.’s torture of prisoners and later, Edward Snowden’s revelations, continued to fuel the subtext of political commentary in the drama. The Letters explores how governments manipulate the truth and use fear and mistrust as psychological controls." [2]

The play is a fictional account of the efforts by the Soviets to censor and suppress the private papers of composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Productions

The Letters was premiered in Los Angeles by the Andak Stage Company on March 14, 2009, and has received subsequent productions by the Writers' Theatre (Glencoe, IL), the Aurora Theatre Company (Berkeley, CA), the Cardinal Stage Company (Bloomington, IN), and MetroStage (Alexandria VA), among others. [3]

Critical reception

A Time review of a 2012 Writers' Theatre production in Chicago said, "[The Letters] conveys a sense of abstract menace reminiscent of Pinter or Mamet Yet the menace has a specific source, and the play has a concrete sense of time and place... a nearly perfect evening of theater..." [4]

Other dramatic works

Other theatrical projects and activities

Lowell composed music for Mikhail Kuzmin's The Dangerous Precaution for Theatre Rhinoceros in 2008. [8]

Lowell worked as a dramaturg on Frank Loesser’s Señor Discretion Himself , premiered at Arena Stage and Pleasures And Palaces for which he reconstructed the script and score, [9] and also adapted Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol for performance by David Ogden Stiers. [10]

He has also been an archivist, historian, editor, rehearsal pianist, musical director, house manager, and Broadway music copyist. He also spent five years employing his musical and literary skills working for both Frank Loesser Enterprises and Jule Styne Enterprises, as well as being was head of materials at Music Theatre International and was the first materials' manager of Theatrical Rights Worldwide.

And under the editorship of Dr. Fred Hammond, Lowell did the first complete typesetting of Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Il Pompeo .

Awards

Autumn Canticle was nominated for a 2004 G.L.A.A.D. Media Award in the Music & Theater category for Outstanding Play in Los Angeles. [11]

He was also nominated Best Playwright by both the 2009 Los Angeles Stage Alliance's Ovation Award [12] and the 2010 Garland award [13] both for the Andak Stage production of The Letters.

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References

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