Clare McIntyre (1952-2009) was amongst the extraordinary generation of British female playwrights who emerged in the 1980s. Her best-known plays, including Low Level Panic (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1988) and My Heart's a Suitcase (Royal Court, 1990; winner of the Evening Standard and London Drama Critics awards for Most Promising Playwright), are now considered modern feminist classics. She also had an extensive career writing and acting for film, radio and television.

Ian McKellen is an acclaimed British actor whose career spans genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is internationally known for his work on screen, including in The Lord of the Rings, X-Men and The Da Vinci Code. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts, and made a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to equality in 2008.

Erin McKeown is an American multi-instrumentalist and folk-rock singer-songwriter. Her first musical, Miss You Like Hell, opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2018.

Maeve McKeown is the former Administrator and Education Manager of Out of Joint.

Peter McKinnon is professor of design and management in the Department of Theatre at York University, Canada. He has also worked as a lighting designer on some 450 shows, principally for dance and opera.

Sam McLaughlin is an actor, theatre-maker and improviser based in Bristol. Since graduating from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, she has performed with Missing Pieces and is a company member of the Bristol Improv Theatre's flagship shows: This Is Your Musical and The Bish Bosh Bash. She is a Company Director of Écoute Theatre, an award-winning verbatim theatre company with bases in both Bristol and London, which she co-founded with Zoë Templeman-Young and Catherine Lynch. 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.

Linda McLean is a Scottish playwright based in Glasgow. Her plays include Glory on Earth, Every Five Minutes, Any Given Day, Sex & God, strangers, babies, Shimmer, Riddance, One Good Beating, Thingummy Bob, and an adaptation of Alice Munro’s The View From Castle Rock for Stellar Quines and the EIBF.

Linda was the Creative Fellow at Edinburgh University’s Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities in 2011. She was Chair of the Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland from 2008–2015, and she is an artistic associate of Magic Theatre, San Francisco.

An anthology of her work, translated into French by Sarah Vermande and Blandine Pelissiér, was published in 2015 by Actes Sud-Papiers.