A Lovely Lunch 'ere by Jeremy Rowe Directed by Ruth Sullivan
		Wednesday 2nd - Saturday 5th June, 2021 At the Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington

One of five short plays in Opening Up, a programme curated by David Taylor to celebrate the reopening of the theatre after the lengthy closure during the Covid lockdown of 2020/2021

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Photography by David Sprecher

Cast List The Widower : John Chapman

Production Team Director : Ruth Sullivan Set Design : David Taylor Lighting Design : Nick Insley Stage Manager : Laura Corkill Technical Support : Laurence Tuerk Set Construction and Rigging : Jude Chalk, Peter Foster, Isaac Insley, Stephen Ley

	Jeremy Rowe was headteacher of The Lyceum School in the City, where he wrote many plays for children. Since retiring, he has been writing novels - his fourth Singing for Spitfires was published in 2020 - and working on some new ideas for plays. In his writing, both novels and plays, he generally investigates historical themes.			Ruth Sullivan has been a Tower member for 14 years and has performed, directed, choreographed and designed sound for many productions in that time. Her most recent play as a director for the Tower was King Charles III which was a large scale ensemble piece but she does have some experience of monologues, having performed in Happy Days. Since the theatre was forced to close last March she has been part of Virtual Tower and the Tower podcast, both directing and performing. As a Foley Artist she’s usually found in a dark studio, making sounds for TV drama and film (as well as an occasional foray into radio) and regularly works with directors such as Katie Mitchell and Simon McBurney to create and perform live theatre sound. She’s one of the Tower’s new Artistic Directors and is so pleased to be finally back in the theatre.
	John Chapman works (occasionally) as a freelance education consultant, writer and copy editor. Prior to this he worked at the "chalkface" for rather longer than he cares to remember. He first took to the stage as a schoolboy pretending to be a Greek frog. Decades later he has found himself involved with over 150 productions, though this will be his first monologue performance. Favourite acting roles along the way have been Hector in The History Boys, Norman in The Norman Conquests, Felix in Humble Boy and Mr Micawber in David Copperfield. Most memorable of all was when he got to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Tower Theatre's collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His most recent appearance at the Tower was as Falstaff in The Merry Wives Of Windsor. Best directing jobs have been with The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Lord of The Flies, Glorious! and ten works by Alan Ayckbourn. Most recently he was in the Tower director’s chair for the anarchic Rules For Living. John has always been interested in the world of drama and has served as a panellist for professional stage awards. He has recently expanded his theatre reviewing via his blog 2nd from Bottom and, during the pandemic, has become something of an expert on the subject of online theatre having seen and reviewed a new show every day since April 1st, 2020. During the pandemic he has also kept himself busy by co-ordinating Virtual Tower – an initiative for the company which has mounted over thirty shows online including the OffWestEnd award nominated Metamorphosis In Lockdown.