Simon Bowler
Title of Play
Marlowe, Part One
Date and Place of Reading
June 9, 2025
Pearl Studios, New York City
Playwright's Website
Director
Jesse Jou
Cast
Caitlin Clouthier–Lill/Judith/Elizabeth I
Joey Collins–Bishop Whitgift
Ian Gould–John Ballard/Philip Henslowe
Slate Holmgren–Robert Poley/Maunder
Lou Liberatore–Francis Walsingham/Collector
Anthony Michael Martinez–Christopher Marlowe
Kyrstal Riggs–Anne Whitgift
Max Roll–Thomas Walsingham/Stage Hand/Zenocrate
About the Playwright
Simon Bowler is a playwright and producer whose works span stage, film, and television. His plays include Judgement of the Eye, All Souls’ Night, The Briefing, Marlowe, Part One, and Part Two, and The Enemy of the State, which have earned awards from the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, Phoenix Theatre, Broad Horizons Theatre Company, and Overtime Theatre, among others. In film and television, Bowler produced Man of the Year and served as Executive Producer on BET’s Street Apostle and Channel 4’s Unnatural Disaster. He has
produced for ABC, BBC, Discovery, Fox, CBS, Vh1, OWN, PBS, and Channel 4.
About the Play
Marlowe, Part One is a historical stage drama that traces the early rise of Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, a brilliant, subversive poet, secret agent, and eventual playwright, against the backdrop of Elizabethan England’s religious and political upheaval. Set in the late 1500s, the play explores the intersection of art, politics, love, and espionage during a time of national crisis and intellectual repression.
The story opens in a plague-ridden London where poverty, censorship, and the threat of Spanish invasion loom. Kit Marlowe, a provocative Cambridge student with radical views on religion and society, clashes with the conservative Bishop Whitgift, who expels him from university and condemns his controversial poetry. Marlowe’s defiance, however, catches the attention of Thomas Walsingham, the nephew of Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Thomas sees potential in Marlowe’s intelligence and theatrical flair and recruits him for covert work in exchange for patronage.
Marlowe’s journey into espionage begins when he is dispatched to Reims, France, a hotbed of Catholic revolutionaries and English exiles, to infiltrate the seminary and uncover traitors communicating with Mary, Queen of Scots. To succeed, Marlowe must disguise himself as a faithful Catholic fleeing persecution, using charm, deception, and intellect.
Meanwhile, back in England, as political tensions rise, Anne Whitgift, the bishop’s daughter, finds herself torn between obedience and self-expression, caught in an unwanted betrothal to Sir Francis and drawn to Marlowe’s rebellious spirit. Her aspirations as a writer add a feminist thread to the play’s broader theme of intellectual repression.
Returning to England, Marlowe struggles with his own identity: artist, atheist, lover, and liar. His romantic entanglements with both Anne and Thomas reflect his deep yearning for connection and his defiance of conventional attitudes regarding sexuality and class. His quest to bring his play Tamburlaine to the London stage becomes symbolic of his broader fight for freedom of thought and artistic expression.