03/01/2025
Writer, director and performer Jack Neary, whose plays have been staged around the world and who has appeared in films such as “Black Mass” and “The Town,” recently donated his professional papers to UMass Lowell.
“You do something, you create a certain amount of work over the course of an artistic life, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have material out there like plays and acting appearances that will withstand the course of time,” Neary says. “It’s here because I did the work, and I wanted to let somebody know.”
Much of Neary’s creative life is informed by his upbringing in Lowell’s Sacred Heart neighborhood. In 1973, he earned an English degree from Lowell State College, one of UMass Lowell’s predecessor institutions, and pursued a career as an actor before turning to playwriting.
His initial effort, “First Night,” originally conceived as a one-act play, became a full-length production staged around the country, including off-Broadway, at the Westside Theater in New York City. The play “Trick or Treat,” which he wrote for Emmy winner Gordon Clapp of “NYPD Blue,” also played off-Broadway in 2019 after a highly successful run at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont.
From baseball to religion, to the common day-to-day of modern lives, subjects explored in Neary's works are often anchored in American culture, and he has mined his hometown experience for gems on stage.
Writer, colleague and fellow UMass Lowell graduate Paul Marion ’76, ’05, founder of Loom Press, praised Neary as “the Neil Simon of Lowell, for the way audiences connect with the humanity in his characters and stories.”