His off-Broadway comedy 'Nixon's Nixon' imagined a gathering between the president and Henry Kissinger on the eve of Nixon's resignation in 1974.
Russell Lees, a playwright and longtime Ubisoft writer-director recognized for his work on the Murderer’s Creed online game franchise, died Tuesday of a coronary heart assault in Montreal, his pal Paul Dworin introduced. He was 64.
Lees broke into the gaming business within the mid-Nineties and wrote and directed the 1995 PC horror journey The Darkish Eye, a digital adaptation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
He joined Montreal-based Ubisoft in 2009 and through his 13 years there penned narratives, scripts and sub-stories for quite a few titles within the Murderer’s Creed, Far Cry and Watch Canines franchises.
“We misplaced a pricey pal and sensible colleague this week,” Ubisoft narrative director Darby McDevitt wrote Thursday on Twitter. “All who labored with him will attest to his persistence, his generosity, his ardour and his brilliant spirit.”
Lees’ comedy Nixon’s Nixon, an imagining of a gathering 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.
He additionally wrote Monticel’, which captured the drama of the political infighting that threatened the election of Thomas Jefferson because the third U.S. president.
James Russell Lees was born in Salt Lake Metropolis on Could 8, 1957. His father, Jay, was a theater director and faculty professor.
He left Salt Lake Metropolis as an adolescent to review pc engineering at Boston College, then acquired his grasp’s in pc engineering from Stanford College and, again at BU, his grasp’s in playwriting.
Lees additionally co-founded the TheatreWorks/West manufacturing firm in Salt Lake Metropolis, the place he wrote and directed for the stage, and served as director of French-language performs on the College of Utah.
Survivors embody his his spouse, Lisa; daughters Charlotte and Madeleine; siblings Mindy, Becky and Jay; brother-in-law Stan; and sister-in-law Julie.