John W. Lowell

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.”

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., and also adapted Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for performance by David Ogden Stiers.

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…”

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.

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

Lowell composed music for Mikhail Kuzmin’s The Dangerous Precaution for Theatre Rhinoceros in 2008.

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.