Owen is so proud to be leading our ‘little theater on a hill’ with his true brother Bram Lewis and is dedicated to bringing the absolute finest theatrical experiences here to Croton Falls. Schoolhouse is in its second season under Owen’s leadership and recently enjoyed the biggest box-office hit in our company’s history: the World Premiere of Barbara Dana’s delightful comedy What Keeps Us Going, starring Tony Award-winner Karen Ziemba and directed by the iconic Austin Pendleton, followed by revivals of two of the greatest plays of the Twentieth Century: Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys (winner of 7 BroadwayWorld Rockland/Westchester Awards including including Best Play, Best Director, Best Performer, Best Supporting Performer, Best Ensemble, Best Sound Design, and Favorite Local Theatre). and Brian Friel’s Faith Healer (starring Victor Slezak), both directed by Owen. Our 2023 season included a celebrated revival of John Logan’s Red (also directed by Owen) which won nine Rockland/Westchester BroadwayWorld Awards including Best Play, Best Director, and Favorite Local Theater. Our 2023 season also included productions of Joan Ross Sorkin's (mis)Understanding Mammy: the Hattie McDaniel Story starring Tina Fabrique and directed by Seret Scott and James Sheldon's 3-Way Stop, directed by Owen. www.owenthompsondirector.com  

 

Owen's theatrical productions have been seen all over New York City and in regional theaters across America. He served as the Artistic Director of NYC’s acclaimed Protean Theatre Company, whose productions were lauded by the New York Times, The New York Post's Clive Barnes, TimeOut New York, the Village Voice, BackStage Magazine, and several other prestigious publications. He also spent many years as Producing Director of The River Rep at the historic Ivoryton Playhouse in Essex, Connecticut. River Rep was a revitalizing force in professional Connecticut theater and helped to save that legendary theater from the wrecking ball, allowing it to continue to thrive well into the 21st century. Additionally, Owen developed and presented many original works as literary manager and producer of new plays for Off-Broadway's illustrious TACT (The Actors Company Theatre). 

 

Owen is also an educator with two post-graduate degrees in classical dramatic literature and has taught in several institutions of higher learning, including Fordham University, Marymount Manhattan College, and CUNY’s New York City College of Technology as well as in the New York City Public School system. 

 

In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, Owen co-created the popular Shakespeare podcast, The Bardcast: "It's Shakespeare, You Dick!" with the brilliant Lisa Ann Goldsmith, which they continue to host. The Bardcast received the New York Shakespeare Award for Best Podcast of 2021 and has thousands of listeners around the world. It can be heard on every major platform and at www.thebardcastyoudick.com

 

Owen grew up in a theatrical family as the child of Broadway actors Joan Shepard and Evan Thompson, and at the age of nineteen he founded The Facemakers, an avant-garde theater company that flourished in the downtown NYC arts scene of the 1980s. The Facemakers produced several celebrated shows including a notorious revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest starring the iconic Quentin Crisp as Lady Bracknell. 

 

As Producing Director of the River Rep Theatre Company, Owen produced or co-produced more than one hundred productions over the course of two decades, several of which he directed, including a smash hit revival of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, for which he received the Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical. 

 

As Artistic Director of New York City’s Protean Theatre Company, he produced and directed numerous productions including the critically acclaimed American Premiere of the previously lost Restoration Comedy The London Cuckolds (which was chosen as a Critic's Pick by the New York Times), the Jacobean thriller The Revenger’s Tragedy, an evening of three Shavian one-acts called George Bernard Shaw’s Fictitious History, Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Molière’s outrageous farce The Doctor in Spite of Himself, for which he also wrote a much-praised modern adaptation

 

In addition to directing, Owen has also produced many successful revivals in New York City, including the American Premiere of Christopher Hampton's When Did You Last See My Mother?,  Joseph Stein’s Enter Laughing, Clark Gestner’s You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, Bock & Harnick’s She Loves Me, and a long list of plays by George Bernard Shaw including Great Catherine, The Man of Destiny, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Overruled, and Arms and the Man. He also produced several plays receiving their first New York appearances for The Actors Company Theatre.

 

Although he no longer appears onstage (unless asked very nicely), Owen enjoyed a lengthy career as an actor, performing major roles in dozens of productions in New York City and in regional theaters across America, playing in everything from Shakespeare to contemporary drama to musical comedy. Over a long span of time, his favorite roles have included both Jack and Algy in The Importance of Being Earnest, John Adams in 1776, and Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Pt.1 and 2, among others too numerous to name.

 

Owen lives in Manhattan with his beautiful and brilliant wife Leda Zukowski, their rescue cat Harry, and a family of squirrels whom they seem to have inadvertently adopted.