Jack L. B. Gohn
Writer, Critic & Playwright


Jack L. B. Gohn
Writer, Critic & Playwright
Though I practiced law for over a third of a century,
I have been a writer from childhood.
And even with a full-time practice, I never really stopped publishing in various papers, magazines and journals. I was bound to reach a point eventually of deciding I wanted to be a writer and nothing else. This website features three things I do now that the point has been reached. I review theater, write plays, and for a decade and a half, wrote a column commenting on law and policy. Common to all these pursuits is a commitment to fact and principles. You can’t run a society or write a play (or about one) well without candor, consistency, and a sense of humaneness and decency. Embodied in these pages is the history of my efforts in each of these pursuits.
Plays by Jack Gohn
I largely write about lawyers, but these are not conventional lawyer dramas. There’s a story of how legal careers begin, another about how they (and others) end. There’s a ghost story. There’s a thriller that does not include a single courtroom scene. And, moving away from my former profession, there’s a play about God – maybe told from God’s perspective, maybe not. And there will be more.
Theater Reviews & Commentary
Most Recent Post

The Bronx is Up – and Dancing to Hip Hop – in CATF’s WELCOME TO FEAR CITY
Welcome to Fear City, premiering at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, shambles along amiably, looking as if it has no more greater object than to be a loose black family dramedy set forty years ago. That is, until it dawns on you that the play’s ambition is to be nothing less than a snapshot of a time and place where a lot of things happened, and one vitally important thing, hip hop, came into being.
Theater Reviews & Commentary
Most Recent Post

The Bronx is Up – and Dancing to Hip Hop – in CATF’s WELCOME TO FEAR CITY
Welcome to Fear City, premiering at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, shambles along amiably, looking as if it has no more greater object than to be a loose black family dramedy set forty years ago. That is, until it dawns on you that the play’s ambition is to be nothing less than a snapshot of a time and place where a lot of things happened, and one vitally important thing, hip hop, came into being.

