Polly Teale is Artistic Director of Shared Experience. Her plays include Mermaid (based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen), Mine, Speechless, After Mrs Rochester (winner of Time Out and Evening Standard Awards), Brontë, and an acclaimed adaptation of Jane Eyre.

Zoë Templeman-Young is an actor, director and theatre-maker. She is Artistic Director of Écoute Theatre, an award-winning verbatim theatre company with bases in both Bristol and London, which she co-founded with Catherine Lynch and Sam McLaughlin. Their plays include Take Care, first created and performed in 2013, winning the Clive Barker Award (University of Warwick), with runs at both the Edinburgh Fringe and The Courtyard Theatre, London, before being revived at VAULT Festival, London, in 2020.

Izzy Tennyson is a writer and performer whose work includes Grotty (The Bunker, London, 2018); Brute (winner of the 2015 IdeasTap Underbelly Award; Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Soho Theatre, 2016); Runts (Brighton Fringe Festival 2016); and Career Boy (London Raindance Festival 2015).

Shelley Tepperman is a Toronto-born, Montreal-based writer, dramaturge, and translator. Working from French, Spanish, and Italian, she has brought more than twenty-five plays into English, including Serge Boucher's Natures Mortes and Les Bonbons qui sauvent la vie. Shelley's translations have been produced at CBC Radio and on stages from coast to coast, and she was twice nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award in Translation. From 1994–1998 she worked for CBC Radio developing, adapting, and producing radio dramas for broadcast. Shelley also writes, story-edits, and directs for documentary film and television.

Giles Terera MBE is an award-winning actor, musician and writer. 

He trained at Mountview Theatre School and has worked consistently at venues such as the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe. He is best known for originating the role of Aaron Burr in the London production of the award-winning musical Hamilton, for which he won the 2018 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

His other theatre credits include Rosmersholm, The Tempest, Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, 125th Street, Rent (West End); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Hamlet, Death and the King's Horseman, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Troilus and Cressida, Candide, Honk! (National Theatre); The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe/international tour); The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Donmar Warehouse); Pure Imagination – The Songs of Lesley Bricusse (St. James’s); King John (Shakespeare’s Globe/UK tour); Don’t You Leave Me Here (West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Playboy of the Western World (Abbey, Dublin); The Ratpack (West End/international tour); Jailhouse Rock (Theatre Royal Plymouth/West End); You Don’t Kiss (Stratford Circus); Up on the Roof (Chichester); The Tempest (RSC); Six Degrees of Separation (Sheffield); Generations of the Dead (Young Vic); Bill Shakespeare's Italian Job (Playbox, Warwick/Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh); The Demon Headmaster/The Animals of Farthing Wood (Pleasance, Edinburgh).

As a writer, his theatre work includes The Meaning of Zong (Bristol Old Vic), The Ballad of Soho Jones (St. James') and Black Matter (Crazy Coqs). As a filmmaker, Giles's first documentary, Muse of Fire – created with Dan Poole – centres on modern perspectives of Shakespeare and premiered on BBC Four in Autumn 2013. Giles was an associate producer on Poole's feature documentary The Space: Theatre of Survival and he wrote and directed the concert film Hello Harry! A Celebration.

Giles was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to theatre.

Jeanine Tesori is an American composer and musical arranger whose work includes Fun Home, Caroline, or Change, Shrek The Musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Violet.

Beru Tessema is an Ethiopian-British writer and director based in London. He is a graduate of the London Film School and RADA, making work for both stage and screen.

His plays include Wolves on Road (Bush Theatre & Tamasha, 2024); House of Ife (Bush Theatre, 2022); and Exile in North Weezy (shortlisted for the Papatango Playwriting Prize 2020.

His short film Lions was awarded the UniFrance Grand Prix for Best International Short Film at Cannes.

Vern Thiessen is one of Canada's most-produced playwrights. Well-known works include Vimy, Shakespeare's Will and Einstein's Gift. He is the winner of many awards including the Governor General's Literary Award, Canada's highest honour for playwriting.

Milly Thomas is an actor and writer whose plays have been staged at Theatre503, the Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and the West End's Trafalgar Studios.

She is the co-author, with Lisa Carroll, of Making Your Solo Show: The Compact Guide (Nick Hern Books, 2023), and teaches regular solo-show workshops.

Author photo by Faye Thomas

Andrew Thompson has worked as an actor for companies including the National Theatre and Sheffield Theatres. As a writer, he has had works staged at Arch468, Sheffield Theatres, Chats Palace, White Bear Theatre and The Vaults, amongst others. His play In Event of Moone Disaster was the winner of the 2016 Theatre503 Playwriting Award, and was premiered at Theatre503 in 2017.