Tony Stowers Actor, Writer & Director

'When a man puts his pen to paper and proceeds to print the result, he is attempting to convey his ideas. He presupposes the existence of a reader. It is therefore essential that he should arrange his ideas clearly, that he should state them so that they may be understood, and express them so that they may leave a lasting impression on the mind of the person to whom they are addressed. If he fails to achieve this, he has done only half of his work.'

Sir Charles Firth 1857-1936, 'Commentary on Macauley's History'.

Click on any of these titles below and you'll be taken to a unique page with a description of the book and how to purchase. The costs are low, the covers, presentation, formatting and pagination is all smart and delivery is always prompt. Each book has a unique structure and approach. No corners are cut in my quest for the best quality product, both in terms of how it looks and what it portrays. Click on BOOKS in the drop-down menu above and a short video explanation and sample is available, possibly a review or two and support publicity and red-marked links to click to buy. But a note of caution: all my books are available exclusively through www.lulu.com throughout the world. Please avoid any of my books on Amazon. Because of a dispute I had with Amazon three years ago they are continuing to sell earlier, inferior versions of my books to unsuspecting buyers today. Jeff Bezos and Amazon don't get rich by playing by the rules but I'm not wealthy or powerful enough to take them on. So stand up for the little guy.
They are ripping me off and I'm not getting any royalties.
Remember: it's Lulu or nothing!

So welcome to the website officially and a little bit about me. I was born in Darlington, north east England in 1963. Apart from a few diversifications in my working life, I like to think of myself mostly as writer, director, poet, teacher and creative person and most of what I've done over the last four decades has come from imagination, training, self-belief and from an amazing array of talented people who I got to know, worked with, sometimes paid, over the years who have aided, abetted and contributed to the many, many creative ideas I've come up with over the last 40 years. Without other people, we are nothing. The Master Plan? 'Make the world a better place through art showing not only how things are but how they could be'. I think of teaching English as an extension of that creativity and my students over the years have, I hope, profited from my unorthodox approach though it's also put me in conflict with external traditional approaches to teaching, instructing, mentoring, educating and in conflict with myself because I'm always seeking new ways to interpret reality and leave my comfort zone for new territory and convey it back to the world like a mirror.

What do I do? I make something out of nothing, a reality from an idea. I've written eighteen books and counting, compiled five volumes of twenty-nine theatre plays and one full-length film script - sometimes a living, sometimes a hobby, sometimes a pain, but always a passion! Art can be seen as a kind of philosophy and different ideas can be explored, as I've discovered, via both traditional and experimental cultural platforms such as plays, poems, novels, acting, drama groups, youth theatre, film and video, theatre in education, ambient audio and spoken word, poetry gigs, interviews and Shakespearean scenes adapted into French and English, to name the most obvious. I love writing, directing and sometimes acting, in that order. and working with people to create something magical.

For three years in the late 1980's I trained as an actor at the prestigious Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London and today can count many 'famous' television actors and writers in film and theatre faces among my former peers. I really loved the time I spent training with that team of diverse talents - it taught me to treat my output with professionalism - but I disliked the solo, jobbing actor world once it finished and especially the business part of 'show business'. I thrived instead on teamwork and group creativity and really wanted to join the RSC to develop my craft but all my agent saw was £ signs imprinted on my face. We parted company soon after so very early on knew I'd have to travel via my own route to preserve my self-respect and I suspected it would be a long and painful road and it has been - I even tried for six years to suppress my creative urges to avoid that pain but no, I had to undergo my forty days in the wilderness - it proved to be 'write or die trying'! I know it sounds a bit basic but getting dressed up in costumes and pretending to be other people and speaking other writers' lines for a living as an actor seemed to me to be less interesting than being myself and writing about the world I lived in, much of it through my own experiences and creating innovative plays, shows, events, happenings, readings, performances, solo and with others. I think we all have a voice and we all have a right to express it. We don't get anywhere by copying other people. We have to be ourselves and that's something I learned from studying the art and history of Impressionist art and its founders.

Have I succeeded? Yes and no. It seems the quest is eternal, that's the whole point I suppose! I don't have much of an education in English higher than Advanced and Ordinary Level and never went to a British university (which though a commendable challenge for many still strikes me as rather exclusive club so I will quote Oscar Wilde's 'I would hate to belong to any club which would have somebody like me as a member!') but I've done my best over the years to claw knowledge back through college courses, night school, correspondence with Max Stafford-Clarke and Edward Bond, an indefatigable search for expression, a couple of A-Levels, The Oxford English Dictionary, my French 'degree' from Nantes University in 2015, running two professional theatre companies, entertaining 100,000 people with my theatre work, giving 50 young actors Equity cards and solid experience, a ravenous appetite for English literature and theatre plays which still sees me reading about 50 books a year and new works I'm currently working on as a writer. And also sheer, stubbornness. I've written and 'made stuff happen' since I was a kid and will continue to do so. I currently live in Nantes, France and have been living and working here/there for 16 years as a teacher and theatre director. Click the menu titles at the top of this page to be taken on a journey into the fascinating world of Antony J Stowers, or not.

The book cover for Plays Three is at the top of the page, the image from 'Space Jockey' in 2004. Then comes the covers of all my books, three photos: one of the theatre audience at the premier of my play X in Prague in August 2015 (that's me bottom left corner), the 'flowers photograph' and the one below it is the curtain call of the première the same play. The actor on my right is Maty Dio who was born Martina Maladi and changed sex a few years before this play. Martina and I were married in London in 1994 and divorced again in 1996 but stayed in contact. Next down on left is one-man show 'Gauguin's Ghost' which premiered in Pont-Aven Brittany in 2009 and below that responding to audience questions at a public reading in English of 'Unpoken' in Paris in 2017. Directing scenes from an homage to French film director Claude Chabrol in Nantes in 2022 and the poster for a charity gig in Nottingham UK in May 2022 performing/reading poems for a live audience. Down the page on the right is the original artwork by Paul Dillon of my first serious attempt at writing in 1983. Surreal and abstract, 'The Waiting Room' featured a young Mark Gatiss. Mark was 16 and still in sixth form and I was 19 and on the dole. Below this is the poster for Shopping with Shakespeare adapted in French in Angers in 2008. more details of the concept are in the drop-down menu at the top of the page under THEATRE. Below that and left is a review from 2006 when my play 'X' played in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The flyer from my first professional TIE company The Northern Line from 1998 is under that. About 100,000 young people saw my work over a 10 year period. Right is a photo of me in Paris in 2015 and left is a review in a French paper from 2013 when I performed my one-man shows 'Colours' and 'Confessions of a rock n roll star' in French. Below is myself and James Purefoy in Henry V in 1987 and below that the poster for my adaptation of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' from 1999, the poster for 'Confessions' and 'Colours' below that, both in French. Left: one of my most popular English TIE shows 'Mr Gaston' promoting French language in English schools - 101 performances in three years!