My name is Colin Speer Crowley; I am an award-winning playwright-lyricist from Westport, CT with a wide number of theatrical and lyrical works to my credit. My “official” background is in history, political science, international relations, and security studies – but my heart has always been most invested in the theatrical arts.
Over the past ten years, I have steadily grown my playwriting career and written twelve straight plays, three musicals, a rock opera, and a few screenplays. (This does not include work I do not believe is suitable for public eyes.) My straight plays have been winners or finalists in over 50 playwriting contests since 2012 and have been performed in Washington, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Colorado, Texas, and Pennsylvania. I am especially proud of the fact that a few plays of mine have been presented Off-Off-Broadway in New York City (2013 and 2014) and in London’s West End (2012). My screenplays have similarly received distinctions in national and international screenwriting contests and songs to which I’ve written the lyrics have been performed in musical revues in the United Kingdom. I even stepped into the producer’s role in 2012 and founded a not-for-profit theatrical group in Connecticut – Speerhead Theatricals, Inc. – of which I proudly served as President. I am an equally proud member of the Dramatists Guild, The Lambs in New York City (the oldest professional theatrical society in the United States), the New Play Exchange, The Playwrights’ Center, and also Phi Beta Kappa.
As for “what makes me tick,” I love theater because theater is both uniquely democratic and oligarchic. Theater is oligarchic to the extent that it lacks the mass appeal of Hollywood and therefore tends to be specialized in its target audience. This restriction helps to make theater unique and also helps to maintain certain artistic standards. Theater is democratic in that it is easily accessible to people in their communities and something which everyone can widely experience. Not everyone can be in a movie, even a small-budget movie, but anyone can audition for a local play and be on the stage. I also love theater because theater has limitations that force artists to be more creative than they normally would have to be in more generous circumstances. In screenwriting, for instance, you can write a movie script without any regard for the number of characters or the number of locations or the extravaganza associated with the special effects. In theater, however, presuming you want your work to be produced (!), you have to be conscious of the people you use and the space you use – often for purely economic reasons. The positive result of this limitation is that it forces artists to squeeze every ounce they can out of a character or a set or a scene – and, in all that, you find a depth to theatrical creativity that is unique vis-à-vis other art forms.
In regards to my theatrical development, I am very proud of the fact that I have learned my art organically, having never taken a playwriting class in my life (or any theatrical course, for that matter) and having very little desire to do so. I learned theater by a combination of osmosis and absorption (ie: I read and watched plays) so I discovered my artistic voice in silent isolation without commentary from a living, breathing artist. I also came, hat in hand, to the arts by a life route that was not solely focused on theater, so my life perspectives tend to be unique vis-à-vis many other artists. I have, additionally, entered the theatrical world without the benefit of faculty or peer connections, which many other writers access during their educational experience, and without a life coach who handed me, from day one, a compass inevitably pointed towards Manhattan. I therefore developed my artistry in a very solitary, personal, introverted way and, from that experience, I have formed a very well-honed, strong, and unique artistic voice. As a result, I feel there is a great deal I can contribute to the theatrical world, with God’s support first and a producer’s support second.
In my “real” life, far from the theater scene, I am a customer experience executive, currently serving as CX Advisor at the technology company Freshworks and recently serving as the SVP, Head of Customer Experience for the financial wellness company Albert. Before that, I served for six years as the inaugural VP of Customer Experience at the healthy meal company Freshly, where I built their world-class customer support organization from the ground-up, leading it from one person to 350 people. Previous to Freshly, I served as AVP of Consumer Transactions at the e-commerce giant TicketNetwork and, before that, worked in various think-tanks in Washington, DC. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Political Science from Northwestern (2006) and a Master’s Degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University (2007).
On a more personal life, I was born in Massachusetts, but now live in Westport, CT with my beautiful wife, Dianne, and my three children: step-daughter Chloe and little sons Callen and Canaan.
Please do please enjoy navigating through my site and examining my theatrical work and progress – which, on both accounts, I trust will only continue to grow and grow over time!