Playwright, Director and Actor Jack Neary Donates Papers to UMass Lowell

10/07/2024

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” – donated his professional papers to his alma mater, UMass Lowell.

The Center for Lowell History at UMass Lowell, which is part of the university’s library, now includes the Jack Neary Collection, a raft of published plays, draft scripts, notes, short stories, articles, playbills, press clippings, reviews and correspondence from his many projects. 

“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 said of the donation. “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 his 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, 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.” 

“This is an important donation because Jack Neary has long portrayed the city of Lowell in his plays; it’s also important to highlight collections donated by alumni of the university who were born and bred in Lowell. The collection is a great addition to the archives for UMass Lowell English and theatre arts students to explore,” said Public Services and Special Collections Archivist for the Center for Lowell History Carisa Kolias. 

Among his acting credits, Neary has appeared on television in “Spenser: For Hire,” “Law and Order,” and “Brotherhood,” and in the Ben Affleck film “The Town,” as well as alongside Johnny Depp in “Black Mass.”

For much of his career, Neary wrote and directed plays in regional theater across New England. Most recently, he staged the award-winning “The Stands,” at Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The curtain will rise on his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” at the Players’ Ring Theatre in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Thursday, Oct. 31. 

Neary founded two theater companies as their producer and artistic director: New Century Theatre, which ran for 27 years at Smith College, and the Greater Lowell Music Theatre, in residence at UMass Lowell from 2012 through 2015. Co-founded by fellow UMass Lowell alumnus Leon Grande, along with Phyllis Long George, the latter company produced four summers of full-scale musicals and concerts. He served as the producer and artistic director of Mount Holyoke College Summer Theatre between from 1983 to 1985, and again in 1998 to 1999.

Researchers exploring theater arts, English, creative writing, and related fields who are interested in viewing and using the collection are encouraged to make an appointment with the center via an email to archives@uml.edu. 

Located in the Mogan Cultural Center at 40 French St., Lowell, the center contains both archives and special collections dedicated to the preservation of Greater Lowell and UMass Lowell history. Collections support research in a range of topics, including the people, cultures, businesses, and natural and built environments of Lowell.

With materials dating to before Lowell’s founding, and spanning to the present day, the archives include photographs, newspapers, letters, journals, records, maps, atlases, oral history interviews and more. Documents speak to historical events and innovations developed in Lowell and cover a range of subject areas, including American and cultural studies, education, environmental history, history of engineering and technology, ethnicity, gender studies, immigration, literature, music, religion, social movements, theater arts, and women’s history among other topics. 

Media contacts: Emily Gowdey-Backus, director of media relations and Nancy Cicco, assistant director of media relations.