His off-Broadway comedy 'Nixon's Nixon' imagined a meeting between the president and Henry Kissinger on the eve of Nixon's resignation in 1974.
, an imagining of a meeting between an inebriated Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the eve of the president’s 1974 resignation, debuted off-Broadway in 1995 and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award., which captured the drama of the political infighting that threatened the election of Thomas Jefferson as the third U.S. president.
James Russell Lees was born in Salt Lake City on May 8, 1957. His father, Jay, was a theater director and college professor. He left Salt Lake City as a teenager to study computer engineering at Boston University, then got his master’s in computer engineering from Stanford University and, back at BU, his master’s in playwriting.
Lees also co-founded the TheatreWorks/West production company in Salt Lake City, where he wrote and directed for the stage, and served as director of French-language plays at the University of Utah. Survivors include his his wife, Lisa; daughters Charlotte and Madeleine; siblings Mindy, Becky and Jay; brother-in-law Stan; and sister-in-law Julie.