Jason Warren is a London-based theatre director, dramaturg and practitioner. His work as a director and dramaturg includes Nerve/Jekyll and Hyde (UK tour), The Sacred Obscene (London and Edinburgh), Two Girls (Southwark Playhouse), and fourteen new plays under the banner of his previous company, AXIS Arts, focused exclusively on new writing, innovative formats and emerging artists. Under AXIS Arts and its predecessor AXIS Theatre, he produced the majority of his immersive work, including Caligula, Anima and #MSND. He also works regularly with marginalised voices, including work with disabled artists and in ex-conflict zones. He is a regular director at East 15 Acting School.

Anne Washburn is an American playwright whose plays include: Antlia Pneumatica; Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play; Shipwreck; The Internationalist; The Communist Dracula Pageant; I Have Loved Strangers; The Ladies; 10 Out of 12; The Small; an adaptation of The Twilight Zone for the stage; and a trans-adaptation of Euripides' Orestes.

Steve Waters is a playwright whose plays include: The Last King of Scotland, adapted from the novel by Giles Foden (Sheffield Theatres, 2019); Limehouse (Donmar Warehouse, 2017); Temple (Donmar Warehouse, 2015); Why Can’t We Live Together? (Menagerie Theatre/Soho/Theatre503, 2013); Europa, as co-author (Birmingham Repertory Theatre/Dresden State Theatre/Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz/Zagreb Youth Theatre, 2013); Ignorance/Jahiliyyah (Hampstead Downstairs, 2012); Little Platoons (Bush Theatre, 2011); The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre, 2009; revived in a new version at Sheffield Theatres, 2022); Fast Labour (Hampstead, in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2008); Out of Your Knowledge (Menagerie Theatre/ Pleasance, Edinburgh/East Anglian tour, 2006-8); World Music (Sheffield Crucible, 2003, and subsequent transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, 2004); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible, 2004); After the Gods (Hampstead Theatre, 2002); and English Journeys (Hampstead Theatre, 1998).

His writing for television and radio includes Safe House (BBC4), The Air Gap, The Moderniser (BBC Radio 4), Scribblers and Bretton Woods (BBC Radio 3).

He ran the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University between 2006 and 2011, and is now Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia, where he convenes the MA in Creative Writing: Scriptwriting programme. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays, published by Nick Hern Books.

Brian Watkins is a writer for stage and screen.

His stage plays include: Weather Girl (Edinburgh Fringe, 2024); Epiphany (Lincoln Center Theater); Wyoming; Evergreens; Into The Earth With You; My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer and High Plains.

His television series Outer Range can be seen on Amazon Prime Video, for which he served as creator, showrunner, and executive producer.

Martha Watson Allpress is a writer and actor. Her plays include: Lady Dealer (Edinburgh Fringe, 2023); and Patricia Gets Ready (for a date with the man who used to hit her) (VAULT Festival, London, 2020; Edinburgh Fringe, 2021; Brixton House, 2022).

Rosemary Waugh is an award-winning art critic and journalist, specialising in theatre, dance and visual art. Her reviews, interviews and essays have been published by titles including the New Statesman, Condé Nast Traveller, The Financial Times, The i, The Evening Standard, The Independent, Time Out, The Stage, Exeunt, Artists and Illustrators, OOF, The English Garden, The Dance Gazette, The Globe and Art UK. She is also the author of an extensive collection of theatre programme notes for shows on in the West End.

She is the author of Running the Room: Conversations with Women Theatre Directors (Nick Hern Books, 2023).

Laura Wayth is Professor of Acting and Coordinator of the Actor Training Program at San Francisco State University. She has worked as an acting teacher and coach in the United States, Italy, Morocco, China and the UK, and is the author of Breaking Down Your Script: The Compact Guide (Nick Hern Books, 2023) and two other books on acting: A Field Guide to Actor Training and The Shakespeare Audition.

Author photo by Tati Scutelnic

Mary Gladys Webb (1881–1927) was an English romantic novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her novels, including Gone to Earth (1917) and Precious Bane (1924), are thought to have inspired the famous parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons.