Frances Poet is a Glasgow-based writer. Her stage work includes: Still (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2021); Maggie May (Leeds Playhouse, Leicester Curve & Queen's Theatre Hornchurch co-production, 2020); Fibres (Stellar Quines & Glasgow Citizens Theatre, 2019); Gut (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2018); Adam (National Theatre of Scotland at the Traverse Theatre, 2017); Faith Fall (Òran Mór and Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, 2012) and What Put the Blood (Abbey Theatre, 2017). She has also written a number of free adaptations including Strindberg's Dance of Death (Citizens Theatre, 2016) and Molière's The Misanthrope (Òran Mór, 2014).

Her TV and radio work includes River City and The Disappointed, aired on BBC Radio Scotland in 2015. Her short film, Spores, screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival and Bogoshorts Festival, Bogotá, in 2016.

Alicia Pope is a teacher and writer. She has taught GCSE and A-Level English, Drama and Theatre Studies, and currently teaches Drama in Bath.

She is the author of Princess & The Hustler: The GCSE Study Guide (Nick Hern Books, 2024), a guide to Chinonyerem Odimba's play.

Sam Potter trained at Dartington College of Arts, Trinity College Dublin, the NT and the RSC.

As a director she has worked at Hampstead Theatre, the RSC, the NT and Glyndebourne Opera. She was the Literary Manager at Out of Joint from 2011 until 2013 and the Creative Associate at Headlong from 2013 until 2015.

Her debut play, Mucky Kid, which opened at Theatre 503 in 2013, earned her a Most Promising New Playwright Offie nomination and a place on the 2015 Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme.

In 2015 she was Papatango's Resident Playwright supported by the BBC Performing Arts Fund and was one of five writers invited to take part in the Tricycle's inaugural New Writers' Programme, NW6.

Other plays include: Hanna (Papatango, 2018); Tuesday play (Daily Plays by Etch, Squint, The Pleasance Theatre); Daniel (New Plays Festival, Tricycle Theatre); and The Same Old Same Old Same (Oxford School of Drama, Soho Theatre).

Mike Poulton is an award-winning dramatist whose many adaptations and translations for the stage include: Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2024); Robert Harris's Imperium (Royal Shakespeare Company); The York Mystery Plays (directed by Philip Breen at York Minster); Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (directed by Jeremy Herrin for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (directed by James Dacre at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton); Fortune’s Fool (directed by Lucy Bailey at the Old Vic, London); Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (directed by Lucy Bailey at The Print Room, London); Schiller’s Luise Miller (directed by Michael Grandage for the Donmar Warehouse, London); Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro in Tokyo); Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Schiller’s Wallenstein (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester Festival Theatre); Schiller’s Mary Stuart (directed by Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (directed by Lucy Bailey at Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (directed by Philip Franks at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (directed by Anthony Page at the Almeida Theatre, London); Strindberg’s The Father (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester); Myrmidons (directed by Simon Coury at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin); and a two-part adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End, and on tour of the US and Spain).

His acclaimed version of Schiller’s Don Carlos premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in a production directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as King Philip II of Spain. It has since been widely performed, including by Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin (directed by Lynne Parker), and at the Göteborgs Stadsteater (directed by Eva Bergman). Other productions include Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse); Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool (directed by Arthur Penn at the Music Box Theater, Broadway; nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and winner of seven major awards including the Tony Awards for Best Actor for Alan Bates and Best Featured Actor for Frank Langella); Uncle Vanya (directed by Michael Mayer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway; with Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney); Three Sisters (directed by Bill Bryden at the Birmingham Rep; with Charles Dance); Ghosts (Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Dance of Death and an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion (all directed by David Hunt at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester).

He was made an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017.

Nathan Powell is a writer and theatre director. He is Creative Director of Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse. Before that, he was Artistic Director of NSDF (National Student Drama Festival) and Creative Producer and Associate Artist for 20 Stories High. He co-founded New Step Theatre with writer Joe Ward Munrow.

As a writer, his plays include Takeaway (Liverpool Everyman, 2025), Pleasant Land (Derby Theatre, 2023) and an adaptation of Alex Wheatle's Home Girl (Derby Theatre, 2021).

Author photo by DidEyeShutter

Tom Powell is a playwright and screenwriter. His plays include The Silence and The Noise (Papatango New Writing Prize, 2021) and Little Echoes (Hope Theatre, London, 2019).

The Presnyakov Brothers - Oleg, born 1969, and Vladimir, born 1974 - are writers, playwrights, screenwriters, directors, producers and actors.