Jason Loewith

When I joined Round House Theatre as Producing Artistic Director, Jason Loewith wrote a Welcome Mat article about me. I’m thrilled to now return the favor as Jason takes over at Olney Theatre Center this week! 

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jason through the National New Play Network for the last five years. I was Secretary of the Board when we hired Jason, then Vice President and President. During that time, NNPN underwent a seismic shift, due in large part to Jason’s vision, his outstanding leadership abilities, and his passion for new plays and playwrights.



If you’ve seen his Obie-award winning musical The Adding Machine or any of the shows that he’s directed in recent years at Studio, Everyman or Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE, you know that Jason is an amazingly accomplished artist. He’s also one hell of an Artistic Director. His seasons at Chicago’s Next Theatre Company, where he served as Artistic Director from 2002-2008, were twice awarded the After Dark Award for Outstanding Season – no small feat in the crowded Chicago market.

 Through his work at NNPN, Jason has also developed relationships with many of the country’s leading playwrights. He has championed the work of Quiara Alegria Hudes, Steve Yockey, Aditi Kapil, Alison Moore, A. Ray Pamatmat, Eric Coble, and Carson Kreitzer, all of whom (along with many others) have participated in NNPN programs during Jason’s tenure. He’s also recently established an international partnership with Theatre Australia through which he’s gotten to know many of their leading playwrights. I’m sure Jason will bring all of these relationships with him to Olney. It will be exciting for all of us to see how Jason introduces his aesthetic and his many amazing artistic collaborators to the Olney audience.



Even more important than his artistic taste, however, is his strategic planning ability. I’m confident that his expertise in this area is going to be the thing that Olney’s board and staff recognize right away. While I was President of NNPN, Jason and I had the difficult task of leading the board through a five-year strategic planning process. Creating a strategic plan is always difficult, but doing it with a room full of Artistic Directors and Managing Directors, all of whom think their approach to strategic planning is the best one, is mind-numbingly hard. Yet Jason managed to do it with ease. He guided us while simultaneously building consensus – an incredibly difficult task. I predict that while we’re all going to marvel at his art, it’s this skill, his expertise as a visionary, planner and consensus-builder, that will benefit Olney the most.

 Playwrights, directors, actors and theatre managers throughout the country will be paying attention to Montgomery County, eager to see what Jason does. We should all be very excited!

Ryan Rilette is the Producing Artistic Director of Round House Theatre.

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