[2] He was educated at Hawksburn State School (closed 1993), and after leaving found employment as a dentist's assistant.
Fowler got a start in theatre with Gregan McMahon's amateur company 1911–1914, playing alongside medical student F. Kingsley Norris in various dramas, notably as Foldal in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman.
He played Billy Bearup in a touring production of On Our Selection and back at King's Theatre in The Squaw Man on 22 April 1916.
He was living with his mother at 94 Hotham Street, East St Kilda, Victoria when he enlisted with the First AIF in April 1916, and served as a private in France, returning to Australia in 1919.
Meanwhile he assembled an independent amateur company, who performed Darnley's comedy Facing the Music from 8 January 1921 at The Playhouse.
[12] A dramatic group was formed within the organisation which, led by Fowler, presented several dramas, one at the clubroom above[13] or adjacent[14] the Palace Theatre overlooking Bourke Street, and another at The Playhouse.
For four years they kept up a heavy schedule of challenging productions, mostly on the minuscule Queen's Hall stage, to generally warm praise from critics.
In 1929 they turned professional, with Fowler and Dudley Riddick (who had been with the company several years) as joint directors, and business manager Laurence Walter, as The Art Theatre Players,[16] and that February opened in Hobart.
[2] In 1910 Fowler wrote a play about Robert Clive, which he sent to Gerard Coventry, a producer for J. C. Williamson's, which was not accepted, nor was his second, a dramatization of The Count of Monte Cristo.