Michael Pennington is a British actor, director and writer. He has played a variety of leading roles in the West End, for the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the National Theatre and for the English Shakespeare Company, of which he was co-founder and joint Artistic Director from 1986-1992. He has also directed several of Shakespeare's plays, and is the author of books on Hamlet, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, amongst others. He has toured his solo shows, Sweet William and Anton Chekhov, throughout the world.

Margaret Perry is a playwright from Cork, living in London. Her plays include: Paradise Now! (Bush Theatre, 2022); Collapsible (VAULT Festival, London, & Assembly, Edinburgh, 2019); and Porcelain (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2018, and adapted for BBC Radio 4).

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated the works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the PEN Translation Prize in 1991 and 2002, respectively. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married and live in France.

Tim Pigott-Smith (1946-2017) was a British actor, known for works such as The Chief, V for Vendetta and Quantum of Solace. He won a BAFTA in 1985 for his performance in The Jewel in the Crown.

Richard Pilbrow (1933–2023) was a West End and Broadway lighting designer. He was also a theatre, film and television producer and a world-renowned theatre consultant. A pioneer of modern stage lighting in Britain, he was retained by Laurence Olivier to be theatre consultant to the National Theatre in London. His lighting has been seen in over three hundred productions in London, New York, Paris, Vienna and Moscow. He was awarded the 2008 Wally Russell Award for Lifetime Achievement in lighting design.

Winsome Pinnock is an award-winning British playwright of Jamaican heritage. Her plays include: Rockets and Blue Lights (Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2020; National Theatre, 2021); One Under (2005) and Water (2000) at the Tricycle Theatre; Mules (Clean Break/Royal Court Theatre Upstairs/Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles and The Magic Theatre, San Francisco, 1996); Talking in Tongues (1991) and A Hero's Welcome (1989; runner-up Susan Smith Blackburn Prize) at the Royal Court Theatre; and Leave Taking (Liverpool Playhouse Theatre/Contact Theatre Manchester/Belgrade Theatre Coventry/Lyric Hammersmith/ National Theatre, 1986).

The prizes awarded to her work include the Alfred Fagon Award (2018), the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama (2022), the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Special Commendation (1990), the George Devine Award (1991), the Pearson Award for Best New Play (1991), and the Unity Theatre Trust Award (1989).

(Author photo by Bronwen Sharp)