User:Womanonthemoon/Womanonthemoon

Tony Stowers was born in Darlington, County Durham, England on the 9th August 1963.

In 1983 he wrote and directed a play called “The Waiting Room”, a parody of the family unit under Thatcher’s Britain, which featured a young Mark Gatiss. Four months later he directed, wrote and appeared in “A Sense of Insecurity” at Darlington Arts Centre, a two-hander about the insecurity of friendships in youth. From 1981 – 85 he wrote, published (Other Voices - Leicester University 1983) and performed “ranting” poetry and appeared alongside the likes of Seething Wells, Nick Toczek and Attila the Stockbroker (Dovecot Arts Centre, Stockton 1984). Accepted by Central School of Speech and Drama in London on the acting course, he shared his three years with actors such as James Nesbitt, James Purefoy, Sarah Stewart, Arkie Whiteley, Carol Starks, Jason Isaacs, Kerry Peers, Jared Harris, Peter Darling, Mark Anstee, Emma Hewitt and Jason Morrell (see CSSD Archives 1985-88) to name but a few, whilst in the years above and below him were the likes of Chris Eccleston, Rufus Sewell, Stephen Tompkinson, Anna Mackmin and Graham Norton.

Immediately picked up by the late Kate Feast Agency in June 1988, he almost instantly reacted against the “star-maker system” and for the following 7 years travelled around Europe, working anonymous jobs, including selling advertising space. He managed to write and perform his second one-man show “London Cousins” in 1989 and 1990 in Stoke Newington (Rose & Crown, 1990) and Battersea (The Creperie, 1990), a tale of three migrants to London from different parts of the UK.

Disenchanted with London, he returned to Darlington in 1995 and co-founded The Northern Line and wrote a play for children called “Harry’s Dream”. Helping primary school kids to combat bullying, this simple show was first performed in February 1997 and then about 300 times more to 175 (mostly) schools in and around the North of England to approximately 40,000 children. In October he wrote and directed “My Brother Jake”, a play about drug awareness for teenagers performed to 50 secondary schools (part-funded by Durham County Council's Zoe Channing, Lifeline Lancs and Middlesbrough Council). Six months later this was followed by “Scars” - commissioned by Durham County Council, “Scars” was a study of vandalism. In January 1999 he wrote and directed “The Key”, commissioned by Darlington Borough Council, about drug awareness for primary schools. June ‘99 he wrote, toured and performed “Colours”, a play about racism for approx. 50 primary schools as his reaction to the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry. In September 1999 he wrote “Cyrano”, an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Steve Martin’s “Roxanne” and toured it with funding from Northern Arts. In November 1999 he workshop-ped “A Town Called X” at Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, (funded by Norern arts) a play looking at homophobia in the North East and inspired by the real-life murder of gay man Mark Shepherd in the USA some months before.

Following a year living in France in 2001-2002, he returned to the North East and in 2003 created Associated Professional Artists. He performed “Monsieur Gaston” interactive French show for primary schools 101 times. In January and June 2003 he also wrote and performed “Space Jockey”, his third one-man show based on his experiences selling advertising space in London in the early 90’s. In August 2004 he performed 24 consecutive nights at The Etcetera Theatre in London, attracting positive reviews from Time Out, The Stage (Space Jockey/The Guardian/The Stage) and The Guardian. One month later, Tony directed his self-penned “One of the Lads”, his reaction to the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 that was performed only once to an invited audience (Northern Arts, April '04). In February and March 2005 he held six workshops over as many weeks with readings of some of his unperformed plays, such as “Le Petoman”, “Gauguin” and “The Next Life”, bringing together over 30 actors from the now-defunct Actor's Centre North East in what become known as “The Creamcake Sessions” as the standard payment for involvement was a cream cake. In September 2005 he worked with Newcastle film-maker Jackie Scollen on the “Dear Bob” books by Middlesbrough author Bert Ward (Mudfog Publishing). Tony’s role was to direct the vocal delivery of local actress Helen Speed in the role of May Gill and the film was seen by approximately 15,000 in a mini-cinema at the Dorman Museum. In February ‘06 he created “Shopping with Shakespeare” (see examples on www.youtube.com) and in March ‘06 re-wrote and re-directed “X” (which was originally performed at Live Theatre in November 1999 as “A Town Called X”) at The End, a gay bar in Newcastle, for 13 nights, with David Hannah and Terry Betts (for review see The Metro, March 2006)

He moved to Angers, France in July 2006. In 2008 he wrote and directed “Confessions of a rock n roll star” in French, about the jaded memories of a man whose life didn’t turn out exactly as he hoped. In August 2009 he will perform his fourth self-penned one-man show “Gauguin’s Ghost” at Pont-Aven in Brittany in French, spiritual home of the French Impressionist painters of the late 19th century. Despite rubbing shoulders with many “stars” of today in his early days, he continues to plough his own furrow as a theatre artist and hopes that his output will “one day mean something more, to somebody somewhere”.