Learning auditions

ABOUT

Townsend Rose Productions was created in 2016 to showcase the plays written and co-written by Francesca Rose. She started with her first script, Deborah’s Children, co-written with Iain Whitmore. This unlikely collaboration also produced the as yet untitled, ‘Project 2’ which may be in the pipeline for the future. Grappling with so many frustrating hurdles to progress, (not least the experience of the pandemic) Francesca decided to produce her own work and expand the company.

Learning cast audition
Casting panel of Learning
Learning cast
Learning auditions

  • Again, thank you so much for sharing your brilliant piece with us tonight - albeit abridged, it packs a powerful emotional punch - extremely thought provoking and should definitely be seen far and wide……Many, many congratulations to a very talented writer

    Jo Collins and Mary Ward – Founders, Chickenshed Theatre

  • “I thought it was a really powerful and thought-provoking piece. Excellent performances by both actors made it very gripping too.”

    Audience member – Rehearsed Readings, ‘Learning’ December 2023

  • “Having both actors play the counsellor was much more effective than I thought it was going to be. Just having two actors added to the intimacy of the experience of exploring a relationship between two people. …. The ending had emotional impact for me, having got to know the two characters and understand their perspectives. The impending marital split which was suggested was a natural consequence of the preceding 'failure to connect'  “

    Audience member – Rehearsed Readings, ‘Learning’ December 2023

  • “Those two characters ‘felt’ right.  They convinced me that these changes of agenda could happen. Until I thought about this after seeing the play I would have argued that people don’t move from a liberal standpoint to one which they would have deemed constricting and demanding….. Set the way you have, I get it.”

    Audience member – Rehearsed Readings, ‘Learning’ December 2023

  • “I so admire it as a piece of work....important, sensitively and intelligently written and as I said to you on Thursday, it is a tragic love story together with all the other levels and themes that resonate.....I did at one point feel a tear in the eye....who me???? I love and admire how you have developed and worked and worked on it.....something rare happened to me during reading....I wanted to be directing it in a rehearsal room.....so engaged and excited by the text.....”:

    Seamus Finnegan – playwright

A note from the writer:

It feels as though things have been a bit quiet from this end since our successful runs of my last play, Learning. However I am delighted to have written the first draft of my next play. Chains traces the story of Dina who is ‘chained’ in marriage to her abusive husband, Lewis. She is known as an ‘Agunah’, a chained woman. Lewis refuses to grant her the Jewish divorce known as a ‘Get’. I am currently looking in to arranging an initial rehearsed reading of this first draft in collaboration with Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre. More to be announced in 2026!

Francesca Rose

November 2025