Playwright Jon Lipsky, Farewell
Bryan Marquard of the Boston Globe remembers playwright Jon Lipsky, a longtime activist in the Boston theater community. Lowell area people may recall that he wrote “Maggie’s Riff” for Merrimack Repertory Theatre, an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s novel “Maggie Cassidy,” which is set mostly in the city and at Lowell High School. Read the appreciation here, and get the Globe if you want more.
Jon Lipsky was a driving force at the MRT during David Kent’s tenure as producing artistic director in the 1990s. Besides Maggie’s Riff, he wrote the heartbreakingly beautiful Survivor: A Cambodian Odyssey, which went on to be produced at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, following its successful MRT run. Kent also produced his mind-boggling Living in Exile, the play Lipsky considered his favorite, according to the Globe piece. He was brilliant, friendly and always accessible. A great loss to the Boston theater community, but a life well-lived and generous to all. May be rest in peace.