Biography of Michael Fosbrook

Mike was born in Wolverhampton in 1947 and was educated at St Luke's Primary School, Wolverhampton Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he took his degree in his passion, English Literature. After completing his Postgraduate Diploma in Education he returned to Wolverhampton - he couldn't stay away from the Wolves for long - and began his 25-year teaching career, passing on his enthusiasm for literature, and drama in particular, to his pupils. As well as producing many school plays he directed and performed with local drama groups including Codsall, Albrighton and Perton, where he co-founded Perton Players in 1983. Their annual pantomimes, which he wrote and produced, are particularly remembered in the community in which he also served for three years as an independent Parish Councillor with a particular interest in developing facilities for young people. Throughout this time he was always writing - sketches, poems, plays, stories, articles - and it is ironic that when ill-health forced him to reduce his teaching commitments the extra time which he was enabled to give to this led him to start to see some success. Encoraged and supported by Jane Alsop, the then adjudicator for Wolverhampton Drama Federation, he submitted plays to various theatres and directors and as a result, in 1998, Alan Ayckbourn directed his comedy, Figuring Things, about a man, not unlike himself in his obsession with cricket (but quite unlike him as a husband!), at his Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. As Mike commented, he had directed enough of Ayckbourn's plays in his time so it was only fair that Sir Alan return the compliment! He always considered drama to be a collaborative art in which the writer is just the catalyst for the director, actors and set designers to utilise their skills and imagination in order to achieve the finished production, and wrote 'Some people think I'm odd' especially for Jane Frost, as a thank-you for her support and in recognition of her acting talent. It has its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2008, at Venue 29.