Fin Kennedy, an award-winning UK playwright, is a graduate of the MA Writing for Performance programme at Goldsmiths College, London. He writes for adults and teenagers and his plays are regularly produced in the UK and around the world. He is also an acclaimed teacher of playwriting and community arts project manager, with a particular focus on young people's projects in London's East End. His second play How To Disappear Completely & Never Be Found won the 38th Arts Council John Whiting Playwrighting Award. It was subsequently commissioned by Sam West for Sheffield Crucible and produced to critical acclaim in 2007. It has since been produced in London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Melbourne, Auckland, and Portland, Oregon.
Kevin Fegan was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire. He works full-time as a playwright and poet. He has written to commission over forty plays for a wide variety of theatres, several plays for BBC Radio 4 (including a 'Classic Serial' and a 'Woman's Hour' serial), a few short films and has worked as a storyline writer for Coronation Street. Kevin has published eight collections of poetry and edited several anthologies. He is a regular performer of his own poetry, and contributed to Methuen Drama's Six Ensemble Plays for Young People with Wan2Talk for the Everyman Theatre Liverpool, 2001.www.kevinfegan.co.uk
Mike Bartlett is a multi-award-winning writer for both stage and screen. Theatre includes: Scandaltown (Lyric Hammersmith Theatre); The 47th (The Old Vic); Cock (The Ambassadors´ Theatre/Royal Court); Mrs Delgado (Arts at the Old Fire Station/Theatre Royal Bath/Oxford Playhouse); Albion, Game (Almeida); Snowflake (Arts at the Old Fire Station); Wild (Hampstead Theatre); King Charles III (Almeida Theatre/Wyndham´s Theatre/Music Box Theatre, New York); An Intervention (Paines Plough/Watford); Bull (Sheffield Theatres/Off Broadway/Young Vic); Medea (Headlong/Glasgow Citizens/Watford/Warwick); Chariots of Fire (Hampstead Theatre/Gielgud Theatre); 13 (Royal Court); Decade (Headlong); Earthquakes in London (Headlong, National Theatre); Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough / Plymouth Theatre Royal/Royal Court/Roundabout Theatre Company, New York/Lyric Hammersmith Theatre);Contractions (Royal Court/Crucible Theatre, Sheffield); My Child (Royal Court); Artefacts (Bush Theatre/ Nabokov); Television includes: Life, Doctor Foster SE2, King Charles III, Doctor Foster SE1 (Drama Republic/BBC); Sticks and Stones, Trauma (Tall Story Pictures/ITV); Press (Lookout Point/BBC).
John Retallack is the artistic director of Company of Angels, and has written and directed a number of plays in recent years. John was formerly director of Oxford Stage Company (1989 - 1999) where his adaptation of Melvyn Burgess' Junk won the TMA Young People's Award in 1998. His Shakespeare productions for Oxford Stage Company toured internationally and won widespread critical acclaim over a period of ten years. He was the founding director of Actors Touring Company (ATC) (1977 - 85). His work has been awarded several prizes, including a SWET award in 1983 and a Herald Angel in both the 2001 and 2010 Edinburgh Festivals.
Usifu Jalloh from Sierra Leone is a professional actor, dancer, percussionist and storyteller. Since 1990 he has worked on numerous educational programmes in Sierra Leone, America and the UK. He has made two short films about refugees, including the award-winning Journeyman (2003).
Kay Adshead is a poet, playwright and theatre maker. In 1999 with Lucinda Gane she co-founded award-winning theatre company Mama Quilla, producing: The Bogus Woman (Fringe First, Adelaide Fringe Sensation Award, M.E.N. award for best actress, nominated for an E.M.M.A and Susan Smith Blackburn Award.) at the Traverse and the Bush; Bites, the Bush (nominated for Susan Smith Blackburn Award); and Bones at the Haymarket Leicester and the Bush. All plays have subsequently been produced internationally. Ongoing projects include Acts Of Defiance and Working Girls. She has written over twenty-five plays, including Thatcher´s Women for Paines Plough at the Tricycle, (nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award); Bacillus for the Royal Court; Animal for Soho Theatre Company (nominated for Encore Best Play of Year); and Lady Chill for the RNT. Recently she contributed to Thatcherwrite for Theatre503 and wrote Happy Ending for Natural Shocks. She lives between London, and Houston Texas.
Hattie Naylor has won several national and international awards for her plays, and has much of her work broadcast on BBC Radio, including Mathilde, Solaris, The Making of Ivan the Terrible, Ivan and the Dogs (Tinniswood Award for Best Original Radio Drama in 2009), and Clarissa. The stage version of Ivan and the Dogs was nominated in the 2010 Olivier Awards for Outstanding Achievement. Theatre and opera work include Going Dark, Mother Savage, the opera Odysseus Unwound, The Nutcracker, Ben Hur, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Samuel Pepys' Diaries, Piccard in Space, and The Dark Art of Forgetting.
