Laura Barnett is an arts journalist, theatre critic and features writer for several national newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Observer and Time Out London. She is also a novelist whose debut novel, The Versions of Us, became a number-one Sunday Times bestseller in 2015.

Photo by Sarah Lee

Genevieve Barr is a deaf writer and actor from Harrogate.

After reading History and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, Genevieve taught at a secondary school in South London before her breakout performance in the lead role in The Silence for the BBC.

As a writer, Genevieve won the Red Planet Prize in 2020 and has original series commissions with ITV and Channel 4. She contributed a monologue, Thunderbox, to the BBC's CripTales in 2020. She has also co-written a single drama for the BBC with Jack Thorne.

As an actor, Genevieve is also known for her roles in BBC's Press and Call the Midwife, BAFTA-winning series The Fades, ITV's Liar and Channel 4's Shameless. She starred alongside Sarah Lancashire in Channel 4's The Accident, which became the highest-rated drama premiere of 2019.

J.M. Barrie (1860–1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan.

Seth Barrish is an actor, director and co-founder of The Barrow Group, a theatre company and acting school in New York City. During his near forty-year career he has directed the award-winning My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, Sleepwalk with Me, The Tricky Part, Pentecost, All the Rage and Old Wicked Songs.

Mike Bartlett's plays have been staged at the National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre among others. His play Cock won the 2010 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement In An Affiliate Theatre.

Neil Bartlett is an acclaimed theatre director, playwright, novelist and translator. As well as creating many original pieces for the stage, his adaptations and translations have been performed throughout the world.

Roger Bartlett is a Master Teacher and Examiner with the British Academy of Stage & Screen Combat (BASSC), the UK's leading provider of stage-combat training. He has taught at events and workshops throughout Europe and the United States; schools including the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Nissan Nativ Acting Studio in Jerusalem; and has been the stage-combat teacher at the Birmingham School of Acting since 2003 and City Lit, London, since 2004. He is the author of Stage Combat: Unarmed, published by Nick Hern Books.

He is also an Equity-registered fight director and has worked on many varied productions for venues including Liverpool Everyman, the Bush Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Theatre Royal Bath, Southwark Playhouse, the Finborough Theatre, the Gala Theatre, Durham, and Warwick Castle – and companies including Paines Plough, Sell A Door and Iris Theatre. He was the Associate Fight Director for the National Theatre's worldwide hit One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean.

For film, he has worked as part of the stunt team for the Vertigo Films production Hammer of the Gods, the popular TV show Vikings, and fulfilled a dream when he was able to kill a zombie or two
in Apocalypse.

Having started out as an actor, working on small-scale and fringe-theatre productions and student films, he still regularly acts and directs for the Company of Ten, an amateur theatre company based at the Abbey Theatre, St Albans. He lives in the city with his wife and cat.

Visit his website, www.fights4stage.com.

Arthur Bartow has worked as a professional actor, producer and director, and was the Chair and Artistic Director of the Drama Department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Tom Basden's plays include: an adaptation of Dario Fo and Franca Rame's Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Sheffield Theatres, 2022; Lyric Hammersmith and West End, 2023); The Crocodile, an adaptation of a short story by Dostoyevksy (Manchester International Festival, 2015); Holes (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2013; Arcola Theatre, London, 2014); There is a War (as part of the Double Feature season in the Paintframe at the National Theatre); Joseph K, an adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (Gate Theatre, London) and Party (Fringe First Winner; Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Sydney International Festival/Arts Theatre, London).

He has written for some of Britain's best TV comedies, including Peep Show, Fresh Meat, The Wrong Mans and Plebs, which won Best New Comedy at the British Comedy Awards 2013 and Best Scripted Comedy at the RTS Awards 2014. He is also a member of sketch group Cowards, who wrote and performed their own TV series on BBC4.

For Radio 4 he has made two series of Cowards and three series of his sitcom Party, based on his 2009 play.

He has been nominated for a BAFTA three times, and has won a Fringe First and an Edinburgh Comedy Award.