John J. Caswell Jr.

Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, John J. Caswell Jr. graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College in 2020. He went on to attend The Juilliard School as a fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program. In an interview about his time at Hunter, Caswell said, “Pursuing my MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College was a no-brainer. It was incredibly affordable, right in the heart of New York City, and offered me access to a variety of teachers and mentors working in theatre right now. The evening class schedule gave me plenty of time during the day to both write and remain employed. Most importantly, the program was flexible enough to allow me to live a well-rounded life outside of my academic endeavors, something I consider crucial to my writing practice.”

Caswell has created new work with his nonprofit performance group, Progressive Theatre Workshop, primarily making devised plays using in-process text on queer themes. New works as a playwright include Man Cave (2022), and Wet Brain (2023)—winner of the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award—which premiered Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in a co-production with MCC Theater. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Wet Brain and Caswell were featured in an article published in Vogue magazine. Caswell has been the recipient of the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Rita and Burton Goldberg Playwriting Prize, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award at the Vineyard Theatre, and a MacDowell Fellowship.