Meet Lane Paul Stewart
Lane joins the TFT team as Head of Programme, producing the in-house productions and overseeing the wider artistic programme. He’ll work closely with Heidi to continue to offer our audiences engaging and vibrant work. He previously held the role of Producer at Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot and is new to Bristol, coming from Manchester.
He worked as an actor and puppeteer for two decades, across that time touring extensively across the UK and internationally, performing in many Shakespeare productions and appearing on stage with Kate Bush in her theatre production Before The Dawn, and more recently moved into directing, writing and producing his own productions for his theatre company Facing North Theatre.
Lane received his Masters degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and is also the Artistic Director of Facing North Theatre.
Meet Mike Akers
This February we welcomed Mike Akers to the team as the new Creative Community Officer. Mike has worked as a freelancer for TF in various capacities over the years and has been running Writers Lab for the last two years. On top of working part time here, he is known as a writer and performer. His most recent project was David Copperfield – A Life, at Thetre Royal, Bath: an ambitious community play written by Mike and directed by Sally Cookson – featuring a cast of over 100 local people! Every other Monday he can be found appearing in the cult improvised soap opera Closer Each Day, where he plays Roy Keen, the hapless manager of Newtown United FC.
Just prior to joining us, Mike went on a tour of Latvia with Theatre West. The company was marking its 35th birthday by heading back to the Baltic with the first new play they ever produced, Holding Hands With Angels, which was also the first play Mike wrote. In Riga, Mike was astonished to find that there was also a Tobacco Factory Theatre. ‘When I first heard that there was a theatre of the same name, located inside an old industrial building right next to the Academy of Culture, I thought it was too good to be true. When I arrived at the Academy to deliver a writing workshop with students, I found this was the case. At the Academy the lecturer told me that about 18 months ago, the Tobacco Factory Theatre (Riga) had been demolished, to be replaced by a brand new building as part of a huge new investment by the University. There was no trace of it left at all. Thankfully Bristol still has TF and I am delighted to be joining the team as CCO!’
Posted on 22 April 2026
