Owen Thompson
Director | Artistic Director | Educator
The play stays sovereign.
My work begins with the text and extends through actors, designers, and audiences toward a shared act of discovery. Whether classical or contemporary, comic or tragic, I seek to reveal the living heart of a play and make it immediate, human, and electric.
Owen Thompson is a New York–based director whose work centers on plays driven by language, moral conflict, and ensemble rigor. He is the Artistic Director of The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, New York—the oldest professional Equity theater in Westchester County—where he is currently in his fourth season of leadership.
Under Owen’s artistic direction, Schoolhouse has entered a period of renewed ambition and visibility. Recent productions include Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys, Brian Friel’s Faith Healer (starring Victor Slezak), John Logan’s Red, and Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which Owen received the 2025 BroadwayWorld Award for Best Director. His work at Schoolhouse has been recognized with multiple BroadwayWorld Awards across several seasons, including Best Play, Best Director, and Favorite Local Theater three years running.
In the current season, Owen will direct Noël Coward's Private Lives and James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter.
Beyond Schoolhouse, Owen’s directing work has been seen widely in New York City and at regional theaters across the United States. He served as Artistic Director of New York City’s Protean Theatre Company, and spent several years as Producing Director of the River Rep Theatre Company at the historic Ivoryton Playhouse in Connecticut.
An educator as well as an artist, Owen holds two postgraduate degrees in classical dramatic literature and has taught English and Drama at Fordham University, Marymount Manhattan College, CUNY, and within the New York City public school system.
