The Schoolhouse Theater
Westchester's "Favorite Local Theater"!
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Bram Lewis, Producing Director
Bram was born in July 1953 on a farm in Lebanon, Ohio and educated at The Buckley School in New York City, St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. He was assistant to Ted Mann at Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway, and then assistant to Hugh Southern at the Theatre Development Fund. Besides playing the recurring role of Jocko on One Life to Live for ABC, he also did 45 national network commercials and voiceovers, and then played Freddie on the NBC primetime series Tattingers written by multiple Emmy-award winner Tom Fontana.
During the next ten years, he acted in and directed over 40 dramas, comedies, classics, revivals and world premieres nationally and internationally, from London to New York to L.A. and back again.
He then founded The Phoenix Theatre Company which became one of the most prestigious theatres in America over the next decade. At its inception, during the crash of 1987, the company began with only 250 subscribers, no corporate, foundation, or government support of any kind. Thanks to early and vocal praise from Helen Hayes, the company started selling out. By the end of a decade, in its facility at the Performing Arts Center, SUNY/Purchase, subscriptions topped 10,000- a record unequaled in the county of Westchester then or since.
A short list of Stars who worked for and supported the company include: Alan Arkin, Ellen Burstyn, Billy Crudup, Ruby Dee, George Grizzard, Julie Harris, Rosemary Harris, Helen Hayes, Kevin Kline, Michael Patrick King, Carrie Nye, Jason Robards, and Elaine Stritch. Celebrated directors included John Barton (founder The Royal Shakespeare Company), Liviu Ciulei (founder the Bulandra Theatre of Bucharest), Marcia Milgrom Dodge (President of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers), Jose Quintero (founder of Circle in the Square), and Ellis Rabb (founder of the APA-the first non-profit rep company on Broadway).
The Phoenix Theatre achieved more than 60 glowing notices and reviews from The New York Times, Gannett, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Village Voice as well as a multi- page spread in the nationally syndicated magazine “Theatre Week”. Additionally, Mr. Lewis also created and hosted “In The Wings”, a weekly TV talk show devoted to The Phoenix and to theatre in general. It ran on Westchester cable and aired to over 250,000 households.
Concurrently, Mr. Lewis also taught acting at many conservatories including the American Academy of Musical and Dramatic Arts, The Actor's Space, The T. Schreiber Studios, as well as being an adjunct professor at the State University of New York (SUNY Purchase).
Additionally, he created workshops and master-classes devoted to acting for the Phoenix Theatre, with Alan Arkin (improv), Ellen Burstyn (acting technique), Ruby Dee (Scene Study), Jose Quintero and Jason Robards (O’Neil workshop), and many master- classes with John Barton, Harriet Walter, Kevin Kline, Sam Waterston and others on Playing Shakespeare....which subsequently were produced at The Public Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
For the past seven years, Bram has run The Schoolhouse Theater and Art Center in Croton Falls, New York. Dubbed "The Venerable Schoolhouse Theater" by none other than The New York Times, the Theater is elegantly situated, high on a hill, in an old elementary school and has a charming one-of-a-kind history. It is the oldest professional Theater in Westchester: 38 years and counting. Many gifted folk from World Theater have found a home here. John Barton from The Royal Shakespeare Company, Tony Award Winner Jim Dale, Tony Award Winner Dasha Epstein, Multiple Emmy Award Winner Emily Kingsley (Sesame Street), Legendary Actor/Comedian Robert Klein, and Tony Award Winner Richard Maltby Jr., to name just a few.
Bram’s focus until the Pandemic hit, was on new plays that could test their mettle, new-fired in the safety and security of the Schoolhouse. In other words, we are a place where things begin. In the past four years, three of our productions have moved on to find new life off-Broadway; BH Barry's The Enlightenment of Mr. Mole (The Sheen Center); Stevie Holland and Gary William Friedman's Love, Linda (The Triad), and then our third show to move in as many years, Lois Robbin's L.O.V.E.R (The Griffin Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center).
Two other highly successful productions at the Schoolhouse which have generated discussion for future life downtown are: Gladstone Hollow by Emmy Award winner Dorothy Lyman and The Color of Light by highly acclaimed author and journalist Jesse Kornbluth.
Since the onset of Covid 19, all Theaters have shut their doors across America. In the late Spring of 2020, Bram initiated weekly Zoom readings with New York’s best and brightest Actors for the benefit of subscribers from Croton Falls to St. Louis to L.A and back again. To date, more than 130 plays have been delivered for free from the team of Actors we have baptized as "The Pandemic Players".
Owen Thompson, Artistic Director
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 recently completed its second season under Owen’s leadership. That season included two critically-acclaimed productions directed by Owen: Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys (which recently won seven local BroadwayWorld Awards including Best Play, Best Director and Favorite Local Theater), and Brian Friel’s Faith Healer (starring Victor Slezak), as well as the World Premiere of Barbara Dana’a What Keeps Us Going, starring Karen Ziemba and directed by Austin Pendleton. The Schoolhouse 2023 season included Owen's production of John Logan’s Red (nine BroadwayWorld wins including Best Play and Best Director). Owen looks forward to directing Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses as well as Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense for Schoolhouse’s 40th season in 2025.
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 presented over 100 productions at Ivoryton, helping to save that legendary theater from the wrecking ball, and allowing it to continue to thrive well into the 21st century. Additionally, Owen developed and presented many original works as the Producer of New Plays for Off-Broadway's illustrious TACT (The Actors Company Theatre).
Owen is also an educator and holds two post-graduate degrees in classical dramatic literature. He has taught English and Drama 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 has received the New York Shakespeare Award for Best Podcast, 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.
Owen also founded New York City’s Protean Theatre Company, for whom 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 Critics’ Pick in the New York Times), the Jacobean thriller The Revenger’s Tragedy, an evening of 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
As Producing Director of the River Rep Theatre at the Ivoryton Playhouse, Owen produced or co-produced dozens of productions over the course of two decades, several of which he directed, including a hit revival of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado, for which he received the Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical.
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 Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, John Adams in 1776, and Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV, pt.1 and pt. 2, among others too numerous to name.
Owen lives in the East Village with his brilliant wife Leda Zukowski, a Practice Management Director at New York Life Investments, their rescue cat Harry, and a family of squirrels whom they seem to have inadvertently adopted.