The Sketchbooks by Richard Margrave Directed by David Taylor
		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 Elise Brodeur : Alison Liney

Production Team Director : David Taylor 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

	The Sketchbooks premiered last year on The Other Stage at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch starring Alison Liney, directed by David Taylor. Richard Margrave is delighted that the team is reassembled for this reopening programme of plays at the Tower Theatre. His other short plays performed professionally at Hornchurch are The Girl on the Last Bus (2016), Firefight (2016), Life on the Line (2017), Boomerang Kid (2018), Whispers (2019), Lizzie’s Law (2019) and The Ockendon Witch (2019). He was a co-writer on Standing on their Shoulders (2018) and Mummy, What Did You Do? (2019) by Local Girls Productions. A digital version of The Ockendon Witch (available on Scenesaver and YouTube) won an OnComm or Offies Commendation for online shows from The Off West End Theatre Awards in September 2020. He is an alumni of the National Theatre, Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch and Faber Academy. Richard is a passionate supporter of the arts in East London and south Essex and has chaired ELE Group (East London & Essex Playwriting Group) since 2016. He is a former political adviser and PR consultant who has worked in the UK Houses of Parliament and the European Parliament. He has a PhD in economics from the LSE. He was appointed to the Board of Governors of Anglia Ruskin University in 2017.			David Taylor's early years were spent tinkering with model theatres and doing school plays but his first directing job for the Tower Theatre (as a very young man) was The Boy Friend in 1975. Since then he has directed and designed and occasionally acted in a wide range of shows. Favourite play productions include Pygmalion, Nicholas Nickleby, My Night With Reg, As You Like It and Lark Rise, and favourite musicals include Mr Cinders, West Side Story, On The Town, Blitz, Valmouth, Sail Away, Guys and Dolls and The Producers. which won the Minack Theatre trophy for the best production of the season in 2014. In 2016, he led the Tower's team in their co-production with the RSC of A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Play for the Nation, which was presented at the Barbican Theatre in London and the RSC theatre in Stratford. His most recent production was Gainsborough's Girls in 2019.
	Alison Liney has been involved in amateur drama for a very long time and has been a member of the Tower since 1997. She alternates between acting and crewing shows, most recently playing Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India, Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit and working as Stage Manager on Deposit. Other recent roles include Jean in To Kill a Mockingbird, the Nurse in Antigone, Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers, Q in Handbagged and Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw.