Description

A Trilogy
By Louise Stokes

ISBN: 9781849911979
Published: 2010
Pages: 509
Key Themes: prose, plays, poetry, relationships, love

Description

A Trilogy compiling of: Community Chaos; The Land of No Hope Survives and Five Plays on The Mind

About the Author

Louise Stokes, born in Somerset on February 8th 1962, became an actor, writer, stand up comedian, artist and healer, as a result of nhs bullying. She grew up in Shropshire before studying a Joint Honours B.A. in Philosophy and Politics at Durham University, moving to Birmingham in 1984, after gaining her degree, to train as a psychiatric nurse. She devoted fifteen years of her life to the health service, working first with adults, and later specialising in child psychiatry. During these years, she gained a Certificate in Individual and Family Counselling, an M.A. in Sociological Research in Health Care, and a Diploma in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing.

Up until the events of 1998, written about in this first book, Louise had never taken one single day off sick, even completing shifts only hours before the births of three of her four children. The twelve months sick leave imposed upon her by health service managerial bullies bullying her to within an inch of her life, ended one vocation only to open the door almost immediately to another when she embarked on a theatre studies course at Birmingham Theatre School in 2000. From here, she went on to achieve an HND in Community Theatre at Dudley College. The ability to write, which had been given to her as a gift, she believes, to ease her pain in her darkest moments, developed into a new career, and Louise now writes and performs for a living as well as running drama and creative workshops for children and adults. Her previous background has meant she now uses her drama and writing training and skills to work creatively with people experiencing mental health issues as well as with a variety of other people.

The intense and disillusioned condition in which the nhs bullying had left her meant that although it had provided her with plenty of comedy, as well as serious material, she had been completely robbed of her sense of humour. A vow to remain serious, depressed, and pessimistic about the world and those within it for the rest of her life, came to a premature close when her sense of humour unexpectedly returned and she decided to turn tragedy into comedy and become a stand-up comedian and comedy writer in addition to her serious writing and performance work. She now tours the country on the comedy circuit, reached the semi-finals of So You Think You’re Funny? the Edinburgh Fringe national new comedy act competition in 2008, the quarter finals of The Laughing Horse New Comedy Act of the Year in 2009 and continues to make her mark in national competitions around the country.
Louise works as co-director of Black Country based Fizzog Theatre Company, in addition to her varied work as a freelance artist. Most of her work is issue-based and awareness-raising, using both humour and serious social comment through the mediums of literature and drama to try and challenge perceptions which are discriminatory, prejudiced, ignorant, or just plain unhelpful.

These days Louise would list her achievements thus: BA, RMN, MA, Cert. Family and Individual Counselling, Diploma Child and Adolescent psychiatric nursing, Certificate in Theatre Studies, HND Performing Arts Community Theatre, NFSH Healer, Reiki Healer 2nd Degree, Wife, Mother, Human Being

Book Extract

SCENE III

EVIE: Yes. Bye mother.