Jean Newlove (1923-2017) was Rudolf Laban’s first assistant when he came to England. She subsequently became movement teacher to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and trained several generations of performers.

A serious student of dance from childhood, she was auditioned by Laban at Dartington Hall and was offered the post as his personal assistant. Initially she worked with Laban and F.C. Lawrence (design engineer and factory consultant), pioneering ‘Laban Lawrence Industrial Rhythm’ in factories. This improved the movement of women workers in the war effort, increasing their output considerably. These workers also included land-girls, forestry corps and textile workers. She also introduced Laban’s ‘modern dance’ to the A.T.S.

Jean helped Lisa Ullmann establish teachers’ classes in modern educational dance before the Art of Movement Studio opened in Manchester in 1946, and ran drama courses on her own account. Joan Littlewood asked Laban to recommend a dancer/choreographer to train a young company called Theatre Workshop. Jean joined the company - eventually marrying its co-founder, the playwright Ewan MacColl.

During a long working life time, Jean worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, gave masterclasses for actors at RADA and Bristol Old Vic, and for dancers and actors in Havana, Cuba. She introduced Laban classes to actors in companies in Sweden and Czechoslovakia whilst on tour with Theatre Workshop. Her own dance group visited Warsaw and Moscow. In addition she worked with actors in San Francisco, ran many courses in Europe, directing musicals and plays for young people.

Her two books, Laban for Actors and Dancers and Laban for All, are published by Nick Hern Books.

Danny Newman was the long-time press agent for the Lyric Opera of Chicago from its founding in 1954 until his retirement in 2002.

Elizabeth Newman is Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Her stage adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden was premiered there in 2023.

Neda Nezhdana is one of Ukraine's leading playwrights, theatremakers, poets and translators. She is the author of more than two dozen original plays, including The Suicide of Loneliness and When the Rain Returns, as well as several adaptations and two collections of poetry.

Born in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, she lives in Kyiv. She has led the department of dramatic projects in Les Kurbas National Centre for Theatre Arts for fifteen years, founded the Kyiv independent theatre MIST and is Chairman of the Confederation of Playwrights of Ukraine.

Her plays such as Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, He Opens the Door, and Lost In the Fog have become potent symbols of Ukraine's battle for independent existence. One of her most celebrated plays is the culture-defining semi-documentary drama Maidan Inferno about the pivotal events of the Maidan of 2014. It has been performed in France as well as across Ukraine. Her work has been seen in most cities in Ukraine, and in Belarus, Poland, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, Estonia, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, France, Turkey, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Romania, Australia and Iraq. Her play Ovetka@ua received its wartime premieres in Uzhhorod and Poltava in 2022, while The Closed Sky is an epic drama based on four women's true stories from the Russian attacks on Mariupol in spring 2022.

Amy Ng is a writer whose plays include Shangri-La (Finborough Theatre, London, 2016); Shoes (Soho Theatre); Special Occasions (St. James Theatre and Arcola Theatre) and A Little Night Music (Bread and Roses Theatre and The Space).

She is also a historian with a research interest in multinational empires, imperial decline, and nationality conflict, and is the author of Nationalism and Political Liberty (Oxford University Press).

Peter Nichols (1927-2019) was a British playwright whose plays include A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Privates on Parade and Passion Play. Collectively his plays won four Evening Standard Awards, a Society of West End Theatres Award for Best Comedy and two Ivor Novello Best Musical Awards. He also wrote for television, film and radio.

John Nicholson is a writer, director and performer. He is Co-Artistic Director of Peepolykus, with whom he has toured throughout the UK and worldwide since 1995.

As a writer, his work includes: King Arthur (Le Navet Bete, 2024); The Time Machine, co-written with Steven Canny (Original Theatre, 2023); Treasure Island (Le Navet Bete, 2019); Dracula: The Bloody Truth (Le Navet Bete, 2017); The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary, co-written with Javier Marzan for Peepolykus (Liverpool Everyman, 2016); and The Hound of the Baskervilles, co-written with Steven Canny for Peepolykus (West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2007).

He has also written extensively for BBC Radio, including Richard’s Rampage, and the four-part series Trespasser’s Guide to the Classics (2015).

As an actor, he has numerous television credits, particularly across the BBC and ITV.

Yvette Nolan is a Canadian playwright, dramaturg, and director. Her plays include Annie Mae's Movement, The Unplugging, and The Birds. She has been writer-in-residence at Brandon University, Mount Royal College, Saskatoon Public Library, and McGill University, as well as playwright-in-residence at the National Arts Centre. Born in Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father and raised in Manitoba, Yvette lived in the Yukon and Nova Scotia before moving to Toronto, where she served as artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts from 2003 to 2011. Her book Medicine Shows about Indigenous theatre in Canada was published in 2015. She lives in Saskatoon.

Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.