Stephen Lowe (playwright)
Stephen Lowe (born December 1947) is an English playwright and director.
Lowe's plays have dealt with subjects ranging from the takeover of Tibet by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1959 (Tibetan Inroads) to a dying DH Lawrence trying find a publisher for Lady Chatterley (Empty Bed Blues); from Donald McGill postcards (Cards and Kisses on the Bottom) to Dr John Dee (The Alchemical Wedding). His best known plays are Touched, about a group of working-class women in Nottingham at the end of the second world war; The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, about a group of house-painters in 1906 (adapted from the novel by Robert Tressell); and Old Big ‘Ead in the Spirit of the Man, in which football hero Brian Clough comes back from the dead to inspire a playwright working on his latest play.
He has had plays produced by the Royal Court, Royal Shakespeare Company, Riverside Studios, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Hampstead Theatre, Joint Stock; and at regional theatres across the country including Scarborough Theatre in the Round, Sheffield Crucible, Liverpool Playhouse, Derby Playhouse, Birmingham Rep, Salisbury Playhouse and Plymouth Theatre Royal.
Many of his plays were first produced in his home-town at Nottingham Playhouse, at Lakeside Arts Centre or by Lowe’s own company, Meeting Ground Theatre Company. Lowe moved back to Nottingham in 1985 to start Meeting Ground, with a group including his wife Tanya Myers. For Meeting Ground's latest project, Lowe is directing Tanya Myers' play Inside Out of Mind.
Lowe has worked with many leading directors including Bill Alexander, Alan Ayckbourn, Annie Castledine, Jonathan Chadwick, Anthony Clark, Stephen Daldry, Alan Dossor, Richard Eyre, Bill Gaskill, David Leveaux, and Danny Boyle, who early in his career was assistant director on Lowe’s play Tibetan Inroads. His theatre and television work has featured actors such as Bruce Alexander, Warren Clarke, George Costigan, Kenneth Cranham, Sharon Duce, Emma Fielding, Brian Glover, Nigel Hawthorne, Bill Paterson, Neil Pearson, Kathryn Pogson, Linus Roache, Colin Tarrant, Marjorie Yates, Harriet Walter and Rachel Weisz.
Lowe was writer in residence at Riverside Studios from 1982 to 1984, and he has led numerous theatre and writing workshops, including at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC Television, the Arvon Foundation, Liverpool Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse and Riverside Studios. He has lectured at Dartington College of Arts, Birmingham University (on the MA in Playwriting Studies programme), Nottingham Trent University, Charles University in Prague and at the Performance Art Academy in Sofia. Lowe has been a member of various theatre boards and advisory panels, including Great Eastern Stage Company. he was on the council of Arts Council England, and was Chair of Arts Council England - East Midlands from 2004 to 2010.
Lowe's play Touched was joint winner of the George Devine Award in 1977, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Nottingham in July 2011.
Read more about Stephen Lowe (playwright): Early Life, Peace Plays, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words stephen and/or lowe:
“Seynt Stevene was a clerk in Kyng Herowdes halle.
And servyd him of bred and cloth, as every kyng befalle.”
—Unknown. St. Stephen and King Herod (l. 1–2)
“I call it our collective inheritance of isolation. We inherit isolation in the bones of our lives. It is passed on to us as sure as the shape of our noses and the length of our legs. When we are young, we are taught to keep to ourselves for reasons we may not yet understand. As we grow up we become the “men who never cry” and the “women who never complain.” We become another generation of people expected not to bother others with our problems.”
—Paula C. Lowe (20th century)