Event: The Vegan Tigress

LONDON PREMIERE OF NEW PLAY ABOUT RADICAL FAIRY TALE WRITER AT THE BREAD & ROSES THEATRE, CLAPHAM, LONDON

Professional theatre company LynchPin presents the London premiere of a new play at the Bread & Roses Theatre, Clapham. The Vegan Tigress by Claire Parker tells the story of a 19th Century fairy tale writer who accidentally summons a ghost. The spirit is the highly-offended mother of the lover the writer spurned many years before. The opposing worlds of free spirits and tightly-laced corsets collide in a hilarious play which explores memory, love and legacy and dares to ask where stories escape to when they’ve run their course.

The play is inspired by the life and works of Victorian author Mary De Morgan, whose fairy tales subverted the genre. The production coincides with the 175th anniversary of De Morgan’s birth (on 24th February 1850).

Mary De Morgan’s mother was a spiritualist and her father a professor of mathematics. She was a woman of independent means, a socialist, suffragist and activist. Mary wrote several volumes of fairy tales, tearing up the rule book on expected outcomes for boys, girls and happy ever afters.

While they often critiqued the social and political norms of her day, her stories are strange, wonderful and eerie. She grew up amongst artists and activists in a circle of free-thinking Pre- Raphaelites and knew the families of William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Rudyard Kipling, and would frequently read her stories to their children.

This new light comedy by Claire Parker is a reimagining of the moment Mary encounters a straight- laced and formidable ghost from her past. The spirit forces her to re-evaluate her own story as she finds herself on the cusp of a life-changing journey. The play celebrates the art and act of storytelling, as Mary and the ghost spar while one of De Morgan’s tales is woven into the drama.

The production playfully explores ideas of memory, legacy, love and loss, and how one will be remembered. Will there be a happy ending?

“What if some inquisitive creature from the future happened across a lost thread of somebody’s story and pulls at it clumsily… Or maybe the magic spirit of one’s own heart calls from the past, demanding to be heard beyond time.” Excerpt from The Vegan Tigress.

“I’m intrigued by the amorphous quality of narrative and the desire for one’s personal story to stand out from the collective. An almost forgotten writer herself, I love to imagine that Mary De Morgan’s bright intellect sowed seeds in the minds of her eminent male contemporaries whose names and legacies we do still remember. And that, even though she was ahead of her time, she sought to be heard through her fairy tales. It may be impertinent but I love to pluck inspiring women from the past and bring their fascinating stories into the light once more.” Claire Parker, the writer.

Claire Parker plays Mary De Morgan and Edie Campbell plays the ghost, Lady Tuttle, in a production directed by Tracy Collier.

18th February – 1st March 2025 at the Bread & Roses Theatre, 68 Clapham Manor Street, Clapham SW4 6DZ

PRESS NIGHT – Thursday 20th February

Tickets: price £15; phone: 020 8050 3025, or visit www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk

For further information:

Philip Parker email: philipjparker02@gmail.com; tel: 07865 244549

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LynchPin

LynchPin is a professional theatre company mounting small-medium scale productions. Founded in 1999 by director Jack Lynch and actor Edie Campbell, it creates compelling theatre through biography, rehearsed readings and productions. It has a particular interest in exploring stories from hidden or forgotten voices.

Claire Parker (Playwright/Performer)

In 2022 Claire directed the OFFIE-nominated production of Jennifer Fawcett’s Apples in Winter (Playground Theatre, London), however her career began as a child performer in the West End in the musical Annie and as Liesl in The Sound of Music. She continued to work extensively as an actress on stage and screen including a season at the National Theatre. Leading and supporting roles include: The Magistrate, A Collier’s Friday Night, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Paris Match, The Hired Man, A Slice of Saturday Night. TV: Babs in Connie, Julia in The Knights of God, Gladys Moon in Boogie Outlaws and guest appearances including Robin of Sherwood, The Refuge, Pulaski and The Bill. Claire then moved to France where she raised a family, ran a dance school, worked as a voice artist in Paris, and began working with cultural organisations, publishing and writing plays. On her return to the UK, Claire began collaborating with LynchPin Theatre, as a performer, writer and director: her play Rotten Perfect was produced at Watts Gallery in 2017; LynchPin toured her play, When the Cat’s Away, in the southeast of England in 2018. Claire directed the UK Premiere of Amelia in 2019 at the Electric Theatre in Guildford.

Edie Campbell (Performer)

Edie trained at Guildford School of Acting. In 2022 she played Miriam in the European premiere of Jennifer Fawcett’s Apples in Winter (Playground Theatre, London) for which she was a finalist for the OFFIE Award for Solo Performance in a Play. Other roles include: Alice Comyns Carr Rotten Perfect (Watts Gallery); Mrs Cheveley An Ideal Husband (Electric Theatre); Henry V/Prince Hal The Wooden O; Elsa Road to Mecca; Célimène The Misanthrope; Rosie Dancing at Lughnasa (Riverside Theatre, Iowa); Bess Abundance; Me HIM (University of Iowa Theatres); Emily Stilson Wings (Liar’s Theatre, Iowa); and Alison Look Back in Anger (Pegasus, Oxford). Edie continues to perform LynchPin’s one- woman play Emily Dickinson & I which has toured in the UK, Europe and North America.

Tracy Collier (Director)

Tracy has been a Director and Choreographer since 1984, and a professional actor since 1979. Her directorial work has included Shakespeare, musical theatre, physical theatre and radio. She has also created her own work with her company Time4Change Theatre. Her most recent work has been as choreographer on My Fair Lady, and director of Semi Monde at the Bridewell, and Legally Blonde at the Playground Theatre. Other ventures include a new play with music, Vengeance, the story of Oscar Wilde which completed a tour, The Show Queen and A Christmas Carol for the Corbett Theatre, The Laundry at the Drayton Arms and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at the Bridewell Theatre in London. Other directorial credits include: Air Swimming, Man Equals Man, Merrily We Roll Along, Dames at Sea, Follow the Star, Godspell, Lucky Stiff, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Guys and Dolls. Choreographic credits include: Romeo and Juliet, Vivat, Vivat Regina, Pride and Prejudice and a Gala Concert for Hal Prince. She has also written, directed and choreographed three short musical plays: Hart to Hart, The Other Side of the Rainbow and The Mitfords.