Caitlin Abbott

Designer: Match Book

Theatre includes Spy Movie: The Play! (Norwich Theatre Playhouse); Derry Boys (Theatre503); My Pet Star at the Marlowe Theatre; Houdini’s Greatest Escape at the King’s Head Theatre (nominated for Offie award for set design); A Single Man (nominated for Offie award for set design) and Time and Tide (also Norwich Theatre Royal) at the Park Theatre; L’Olimpiade for Vache Baroque; Glitch for RABBLE Theatre; Indigo Giant for Komola Collective and UK tour; Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes for Waterperry Opera Festival and Opera Holland Park (also UK tour); Black, el Payaso for Cervantes Theatre at the Arcola; Crimes on Centre Court at Theatre Royal Bath; The Selfish Giant and Hamelin for Theatre Royal Bath Theatre School; Sweeney Todd for Bath Theatre Academy; Autumn Opera Scenes for Guildhall School of Music and Drama; Perspective at the National Theatre.

Caitlin Abbott was Assistant Designer for the RSC, 2019 – 2020

Awards: Linbury Prize finalist.

Chizzy Akudolu

Cast: Shooters

Theatre includes White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (Greenwich Theatre); I Think We Are Alone (Frantic Assembly); Edmond de Bergerac (Bimringham Rep and UK tour); The Rec and The Weave (Soho Theatre); King of the Castle (Tell Tarra); The Vagina Monologues (Mark Goucher); Funny Black Women on the Edge (Theatre Royal Stratford East); and Blaggers (Aarawak Moon).

TV includes Little Disasters, Death in Paradise, Criminal Record, The Woman in the Wall, Best Interests, Sorry, I Didn’t Know, Kate and Koji, Man Vs Bee, Hitmen, Too Close, Chef Vs Cornershop, Hapless, Hetty Feather Christmas, Shakespeare and Hathaway, Tracey Breaks the News, Strictly Come Dancing and Holby City.

Film: A Game of Two Halves, County Lines, In the Loop, Dustbin Baby, The Most Unromantic Man in the World and Jack Brown & the Curse of the Crown.

Oliver Alvin-Wilson

Cast: Shooters

Theatre includes Dr. Strangelove (West End); Now, I See and Antigone: Sophocles (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Disruption (Park Theatre); All of Us, Nine Night (also West End), The Red Barn, Emperor and Galilean and All’s Well That Ends Well (National Theatre); Henry VI Rebellion/War of the Roses (RSC); Samskara (Yard Theatre); The Twilight Zone (also West End) and The Doctor (Almeida); Genesis Inc. (Hampstead Theatre); Hamlet (HamletScenen); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Young Vic); Othello (Stafford Gatehouse Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Henry V (Propeller Theatre Company); Doctor Faustus (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Citizens Theatre); Blue Orange (West End and UK tour).

Film: Harkness, Wonder Woman 1984 and The Huntsman.

Short film: Kerry, River Cross, Karmic Compensation, The Fields, Interview for Life and Dead End.

TV: Curfew, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, The Bay, Murder in Provence, The Rebel, Collateral, Lovesick, From Cradle to Grave, Misfits, Hollyoaks and Casualty.

Alexander Arnold

Cast: The Beach Trip; My Generation

Theatre: Bitter Wheat (West End), Shopping & F***ing (Lyric Hammersmith); Crushed Shells & Mud (Southwark Playhouse); and Luna Gale and Four Minutes Twelve Seconds (Hampstead Theatre).

Film: Fuze, Delivery Run, The Last Breath, Creation Stories, The Outpost, Yesterday, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, My Cousin Rachel, David Brent: Life on the Road and The Salvation.

TV: We Go Again, Signora Volpe, Pistol, Save Me, Death in Paradise, Capital, Poldark, Foyle’s War, Silk, What Remains, In the Flesh, Vera, A Mother’s Son and Skins.

Radio: Women in Love and Tumanbay (BBC Radio 4); and Tarantula, Nordic Voices, Nothing of Me and Wild is the Wind (BBC Radio 3).

Beth Astins

Writer: The Beach Trip

Beth Astins is a neurodivergent, working-class theatre-maker from Kent. In 2021, she graduated from Anglia Ruskin University with a first-class Drama BA (hons) degree. Beth wrote her first play at 17 years old to raise awareness of selective mutism. As an early career writer, she has gone on to write for several student projects and recently made her London writing debut in Sweeties 2024 at the Etcetera Theatre, with her short piece The Wake. Beth has really enjoyed her time with the Marlowe Theatre Writers’ Room since 2023, and attributes her love, experience and understanding of theatre-making to shaping her writing style – whether writing, acting, directing, designing, producing or something else!

Atri Banerjee

Director: Match Book

Atri Banerjee is the Artistic Lead at the Gate Theatre.

Theatre includes Look Back in Anger (Almeida Theatre), Julius Caesar (RSC); The Glass Menagerie (also UK tour) and Hobson’s Choice (nominated for UK Theatre Award for Best Director; Royal Exchange Theatre).

Awards: 2019 The Stage Debut Award.

Akim Bangura

Cast: Shooters

TV: The Day of the Jackal.

Yazmin Belo

Cast: Shooters

Theatre: Coming to England (Birmingham Rep); Queen Bacchanal (Theatre503); The Bogus Woman (Utopia Theatre); Brit Ain’t Right (Maktub); The Valour of Modern Lives (09Lives); and Bite Your Tongue (Talawa).

TV: Three Little Birds.

Short film: Mother’s Cry.

Annabel Betts

Cast: The Beach Trip; CONTACT; Pieces of Me

Training: LAMDA and University of Warwick.

Theatre includes Frogman (curious directive); Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Treasure Island for (Hull Truck Theatre); Ten Storey Love Song (Middle Child); and Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Shoreditch Town Hall). With her own theatre company, Microwave Coven, she is currently developing a new piece of family theatre about Folkestone, co-created with locals aged 8-10 and over 75.

Television includes Call the Midwife and Doctors.

Alice Blundell

Cast: The Beach Trip; CONTACT; My Generation; Pieces of Me

Theatre: Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, Michael Morpurgo’s Tales From Shakespeare (Hamlet), Festive Tales and Troy Story (RSC); The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Christmas Grump, The Tallest Tales from the Furthest Forest and The Man Who Thought the Moon Would Fall Out of the Sky (Northern Stage); Treasure Island (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Clear White Light and What She Would Have Wanted (Live Theatre); The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (New Vic); Pied Piper (Goblin/Cornerstone Arts Centre); Beyond the End of the Road (November Club); No Miracles Here (also Shoreditch Town Hall) and Five Feet in Front (Summerhall/The Lowry); Sticks (Alphabetti Theatre); Far From the Madding Crowd (Watermill); Bonenkai (Underbelly/Latitude); and Treasure Island (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch).

TV: Mandy, A Thousand Blows, Kirkmoore, The Reckoning, The Sister Boniface Mysteries, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, Hospital People and Inspector George Gently.

Leo Butler

Workshop: Play in a Day

Leo Butler is an award-winning playwright and the Marlowe’s resident dramaturg. His debut play, Made of Stone, was produced at the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers’ Festival in 2000.  In 2001, he won the George Devine Award for Redundant, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs. Leo followed Redundant with Lucky Dog (2004) and Faces in the Crowd (2008), also staged at the Royal Court. Living will be premiere at Sheffield Playhouse next year. As the Writers’ Tutor for the Royal Court’s Young Writers’ Programme between 2006 and 2014, Leo taught and mentored a new generation of acclaimed playwrights. Other career highlights include the critically acclaimed Boy for the Almeida Theatre, I’ll Be The Devil for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Early Bird for the Queen’s Theatre Belfast, All You Need is LSD (which toured the UK with Told by an Idiot), a new version of Woyzeck written for the Birmingham Rep, and Cinderella for Theatre Royal Stratford East. Leo co-composed (with Dan Persad) and performed in Alison! A Rock Opera at the Royal Court, King’s Head Theatre and in live music venues across London. Other work includes three plays written specifically for teenagers: Decades (Brit School/Bridge Theatre Company), Devotion (Theatre Centre), and Innocent Creatures (NT Connections). Film and TV work includes Self Made (Gillian Wearing/UK Film Council) and Jerusalem the Golden (BBC Four). Leo has a number of new stage and screen projects in development. His plays are published as single editions and as anthologies by Bloomsbury.

Robert Calvert

Cast: beats per minute; The Shed

Training: School of Theatre, Manchester.

Theatre includes rep theatres in the UK, Ireland, Europe and the USA; the Royal Shakespeare Company; National Theatre; and the West End.

TV includes Derry Girls and Brassic.

Writing includes for BBC Radio 4, Theatre 503 Rapid Write Response, So & So Arts Club and INK Festival, and several plays for Shorts @ the Landor Theatre London.

Michelle Charvez-Grant

Cast: beats per minute

Training includes Identity, Kingdom, RADA the Actors Lounge, Canterbury.

Theatre includes One Man, Two Guvnors (Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre).

Film includes Adrift.

Commercials include Warner Bros.

Ned Costello

Cast: Match Book

Theatre: The History Boys (Theatre Royal Bath); Hansel and Gretel (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Clothes They Stood Up In (Nottingham Playhouse); and Britannicus (Lyric Hammersmith).

TV: Grantchester, Wreck and The Capture.

Claire Cox

Cast: Pieces of Me

Theatre includes Stillmine (Portrait Theatre); Accolade (St. James Theatre); Women, Power and Politics (Tricycle Theatre); The Winslow Boy (Rose Theatre); White Devil (Menier Chocolate Factory); The Cracks in her Skin (Royal Exchange); The Voysey Inheritance and A Little Night Music (National Theatre); House of Desires, Pedro, the Great Pretender, The Dog in the Manger, Julius Caesar, The Servant of Two Masters (also Young Vic) and Love in a Wood (RSC); Nelson (Nuffield Theatre); Design for Living (English Touring Company); A Little Romance (the Grace at the Latchmere); For Those Who Eat the Yellow Snow… (Etcetera Theatre); Sirens (Almeida); and The Last Girl (Riverside).

Film: Between Us, Luther, The Killing, Shooting Fish and The Leading Man.

Short film: War Hero and Splinters.

Television includes The Ipcress File, Agatha Raisin, Jamestown, Fresh Meat, Elephants Can Remember, Doctors, Casualty, Wallander, Spooks, A Touch of Frost, Holby City, The Bill, Foyle’s War and Mayo.

Tom Cray

Cast: A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET; beats per minute; Finding Turner

Training: East 15.

Theatre includes NewsRevue, Southwark Playhouse and Edinburgh Fringe, where he received a Herald Angel Award. As a writer-performer, Top16 premieres at the Tom Thumb Theatre in August 2025.

TV includes Still Up and Professor T.

Theo Deacon

Cast: The Beach Trip; CONTACT; The Shed

Training: Marlowe Academy of Performing Arts.

Short film: Stinging Nettles.

Commercials include Smyths, Disney Star Wars and HERD.

Isabelle Defaut

Writer: Pieces of Me
Cast: CONTACT

Isabelle Defaut grew up in London. Twelve years ago, she moved to Kent, where she lives with her husband and two children. She is Artistic Director of Portrait Theatre, a company specialising in verbatim theatre, supported by the University of Kent. Isabelle’s verbatim plays include Stillmine for Portrait, and I Am Seen. Are You? for the Marlowe Theatre’s Youth Company. Her latest play, Generation FOMO, completed a tour with Kent County Council in March and recently embarked on a second tour of secondary schools around Kent. Isabelle is proud to be a member of the Marlowe Theatre’s Writers’ Room.

Abigail Graham

Director: The Beach Trip; Pieces of Me

Forthcoming theatre includes Living (Sheffield Crucible).

Other theatre includes Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe); Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith); MUM (Plymouth Drum/Soho Theatre); The Tyler Sisters (Hampstead THeatre); 31 Hours (The Bunker); Death of a Salesman (Royal & Derngate and UK tour); And Now: The World! (OpenWorks and UK tour); Timmy Failure:  Mistakes Were Made (Assembly Rooms); Debris (OpenWorks/Southwark Playhouse); and Molly Sweeney (Print Room/Lyric Belfast).

Julia Grogan

Q&A: Writers and Directors: Q&A with Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon

Julia Grogan’s debut play, Playfight, won the ETPEP Award 2020 and was shortlisted for the Papatango Award, the Theatre Uncut Award and the Women’s Prize for Playwriting. The show sold out its 2024 run at the Edinburgh Fringe and a 2025 run at the Soho Theatre, to great critical acclaim. Julia is currently developing an original TV series with Dinner Party Productions and NBCUniversal, a comedy pilot with Hat Trick Productions, and a new musical for the RSC. Julia was also in the writers’ room for an Amazon Prime series.

Amanda Hadingue

Cast: Seaburn

Theatre: The Secret Garden (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); A Pacifists Gude to the War on Cancer (also National Theatre), The Master and the Margarita (also UK tour) and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Complicité); A Christmas Carol and A Very Expensive Poison (Old Vic); The Winter’s Tale, Miss Littlewood, Duchess of Malfi and Follies of Mrs Rich (RSC); Top Girls and Small Family Business (National Theatre); The Madness of George III (Nottingham Playhouse); I Am Thomas (National Theatre of Scotland/Told By an Idiot); Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith); The Ghost Train (Royal Exchange Theatre); Playing for Time (Sheffield Crucible); The Gamblers (Greyscale/Dundee Rep); and Rising Damp (UK tour).

Film: The Darkest Universe, Black Pond and The Queen.

TV: Murder Before Evensong, Kaos, Casualty, Good Omens, The Alienist, Bad Move, Doctors, Flowers, Holby City, Jonathan Creek, Lead Balloon and Serves You Right.

Anna Himali Howard

Director: Seaburn

Theatre includes, as director, The Secret Garden (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Graceland (Royal Court); Orpheus (Opera North); Kabul Goes Pop (Brixton House); I Stand for What I Stand On (Strike a Light & GYCA); Inside (Orange Tree); I Wanna Be Yours (Bush and UK tour); A Small Place and Albatross (Gate); Be Next Young Company (Birmingham Rep and European Theatre Festival); and Yours Sincerely (Birmingham Rep and Vaults Festival).

As assistant/associate director: Small Island (National Theatre); Fleabag (international tour); Othello (Sam Wanamaker); Paines Plough’s Roundabout Season.

As theatre-maker: Jane Anger (Yard Live Drafts); mahabharat/a (Camden People’s Theatre); and The Beanfield (Breach, Edinburgh Fringe, New Diorama and UK tour).

HJS

Writer: CONTACT

HJS is a graduate of Bretton Hall College of Education and Canterbury Christ Church University. Their working life to date includes working in secondary education as Director of Performing Arts, time as a foster carer, managing learning support in higher education and teaching in a social, emotional and mental health needs specialist school. HJS joined the Marlowe Theatre Writers’ Room under the guidance of Leo Butler in September 2023 and continued with the Advanced Playwriting group in September 2024. Contact is their first full length play to be read professionally.

Leda Hodgson

Cast: Seaburn

Theatre includes Oedipus (West End); 24 (Day): The Measure of My Dreams (Almeida); Medea (@sohoplace); Uncle Vanya (West End); Goldfish (Theatre503); Ivy and The Burning Tower (SPID Theatre); Grimm Tales (Bargehouse); A Doll’s House (Young Vic, West End and BAM, New York); A Lady of Letters, Bed Among the Lentils, Talking, Talking Heads and A Woman of No Importance (Theatre Maketa); The Norman Conquests (Birmingham Rep); A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Man of Mode (Cheek by Jowl); and Cut and Dried (Hull Truck).

Film includes This Bloody Line, Be As You Wish to Seem, Words of Love and Goya.

TV includes The Play’s the Thing, Family Affairs and Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Digital: Waking of a Nation.

Tom Hughes

Director: Finding Turner; The Shed

Tom Hughes’ credits as director include People, Places and Things, Boy and The Watsons (Mountview); Daughters of the Sun (Camden People’s Theatre); The Devil’s Got All the Best Tunes (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama); Three Kingdoms, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Scenes from Europe, The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union and Teenage Road Movie (East 15); Norris & Parker: Burn the Witch (Pleasance Courtyard); Late in the Day (Hen & Chickens Theatre); and punkplay (Southwark Playhouse), for which he won the Off West End Best Director award. Other credits include Associate Director for Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Caroline, or Change and The Son (West End) and National Theatre Connections Festival. He was also Staff Director for The Threepenny Opera and I Want My Hat Back (National Theatre)  and Assistant Director for A Doll’s House (Young Vic Theatre) and Brontë (Shared Experience/Oxford Playhouse/Tricycle Theatre/UK tour).

Sophia Hurdley

Workshop: Storytelling through Movement with New Adventures

Sophia Hurdley joined Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures in 2002. Her credits with the company include Nutcracker!, Swan Lake, Edward Scissorhands, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Early Adventures and Red Shoes. Elsewhere, theatre includes Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Phantom of the Opera in the West End, as well as Pinocchio and The Red Balloon at the Royal Opera House. Film includes The Phantom of the Opera. In addition to performing, Sophia is a workshop leader for New Adventures’ Cygnet school, based at the Marlowe Theatre, and a ballet teacher. Choreography includes Ding Dong for New Adventures Doorstep Duets, The Happy Prince, and Day to Night for the National Youth Ballet Junior Company.

Dystin Johnson

Cast: CONTACT; Seaburn

Theatre: Blame (Sphinx); Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (Royal Court); Hurl (Barabbas); Comedy Rep (Soho Theatre); After Magritte (Bridwell Theatre Company); The Mosquito Coast (The David Glass Ensemble); The Ride Down Mount Morgan (English Theatre Frankfurt); Friends and Lovers and Hogwash (Northern Stage); and The Beggars’ Opera and Godspell (Durham Theatre Company).

TV: Hard Cell, Breeders, This Way Up, Doctors, EastEnders, 4 O’Clock Club, Emmerdale, Breathless, Holby City, Monroe, Prisoners’ Wives, Coronation Street, Bouquet of Barbed Wire, The Bill, Shameless, Prime Suspect, Green Wing, Broken News, Where the Heart Is, The Storymakers and Grange Hill.

Film: Girl Untitled, About Time, Leave to Remain and Another Wild Weekend.

Radio: Gone (BBC Radio 3).

Felix Johnson

Cast: The Beach Trip; Finding Turner; The Shed

Training: New York Conservatory.

Theatre includes Othello, Ajax and Things I Know to Be True.

TV includes Bronx SIU.

Films includes Touching Colours and The Crux.

Charlie Josephine

Workshop: Writing from Lived Experience with Charlie Josephine

Charlie Josephine is an actor and writer, committed to creating stories that centre working-class queer women and trans people. Their most recent play, Cowbois, which Charlie also co-directed, enjoyed a successful run at the RSC and the Royal Court. In 2022, their play I, Joan opened to great acclaim at Shakespeare’s Globe. Other work includes FLIES for Boundless Theatre; Massive for Audible; One of Them Ones for Pentabus; Birds and Bees for Theatre Centre; and Bitch Boxer and BLUSH at Soho Theatre and on tour. Charlie is currently developing a new feature film at Trans+ On Screens development lab The Darkroom. They are also currently under commission at Headlong Theatre, Fuel Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and Open Sky Productions. Charlie is an associate artist at the National Student Drama Festival and a board trustee at Cardboard Citizens.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti

Q&A: Adapting Work for Stage with Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti writes for stage, screen and radio. Her first play, Behsharam, broke box office records at the Soho Theatre and Birmingham Rep, whilst her second play, Behzti, was closed after protests at the Rep, but won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Other credits include A Kind of People, Royal Court Downstairs; Khandan, Royal Court/Birmingham Rep; Behud, Soho/Belgrade; Silence, Donmar Warehouse; 846, Theatre Royal Stratford East; Elephant, Birmingham Rep; Dishoom, Rifco/Watford Palace Theatre; Fourteen, Watford Palace; the feature film Everywhere and Nowhere; DCI Stone, BBC Radio 4; Londonee, Rich Mix; Dead Meat, Channel 4; and An Enemy of the People, BBC. She was a core writer on The Archers and has also written for EastEnders and Hollyoaks. She is developing an original series, Masala, for Hometeam and Universal, adapting Black & Blue by Parm Sandhu for Cuba Pictures, as well as Brando’s Bride by Sarah Broughton as a feature for Martha Stone Productions and Ffilm Cymru Wales. Gurpreet is also writing plays for NT Connections, Tara Theatre and Clean Break. Marriage Material opened to great acclaim at the Lyric Hammersmith in May, Scenes from Lost Mothers, a play for Clean Break, is currently on tour, and her latest work, Choir, will open at Chichester Festival Theatre in August. Her plays are published by Methuen.

Rob Kelly

Casting Director: Seaburn; Shooters

Theatre includes Hadestown (West End); Most Favoured and This Bitter Earth (Soho Theatre); Driving Miss Daisy (York Theatre Royal); Country Music (Omnibus Theatre); Passion (Hope Mill Theatre); Stalled: The Musical (King’s Head Theatre); Mama Goose (Theatre Royal Stratford East); and Faygele (Marylebone Theatre).

Film includes Fing!, How to Date Billy Walsh, Robin and the Hoods, Something in the Water, This is Christmas, Matriarch, Twist, Her Pen Pal, Family Pictures, Very Valentine, Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal, Bixler High Private Eye, Harry & Meghan: A Royal Performance and Descendants 2.

TV includes The Intruder, Never Too Late, Geek Girl, Curfew, Phoenix Rise, Free Rein, Gangsta Granny Strikes Again, The Drowning, Pandora, Whitstable Pearl, Dodger, Hard Cell, Flowers in the Attic: The Origin, Bulletproof, The Royals, The Athena, Almost Never, The A List, Malory Towers, Jamie Johnson, Hank Zipzer, California Dreaming, Will Vs. the Future, The Midnight Gang, Creeped Out, Ride, The Lodge and Demon Headmaster.

Hannah Khalique-Brown

Cast: Seaburn

Theatre includes The Secret Garden (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); and I Know, I Know, I Know (Southwark Playhouse).

Film: Barbie, What’s Love Got to Do With It? and Year 10.

TV: Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, The Undeclared War, Black Doves, Dune: Prophecy, Virdee and Doctors.

Short film: Worst. Experience. Ever., Nearly Never, Muse, Tin Luck and Two’s a Menace.

Audio: War of Words (BBC Radio 4); and Mrs Bibi (Audible).

Rachel Lemon

Director: A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET; beats per minute
Q&A: Writers and Directors: Q&A with Julia Grogan and Rachel Lemon

Rachel Lemon is a theatre director and co-founder of the Dirty Hare collective, one of The Stage’s Top Breakthrough Theatre Makers and ‘Fringe Five’ of 2023. Their critically acclaimed breakthrough hit Gunter, directed and co-created by Rachel, recently transferred to the Royal Court to five-star reviews (Financial Times, Broadway World), following a sold-out run at Summerhall in 2023 for the Edinburgh Festival. During the Festival it was awarded Playbill’s Pick of the Fringe, The Scotsman’s Fringe First Award and Lyn Gardner’s Pick of the Fringe 2023. As a freelance director, Rachel’s other credits include A Little Inquest into What We’re All Doing Here (Battersea Arts Centre, Shoreditch Town Hall, Edinburgh Southside); Belly Up (Turbine Theatre); and Bottom (Soho Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Summerhall). Rachel is a recent graduate of the National Theatre’s Directors Course.

Niall McDaid

Cast: The Beach Trip; Finding Turner

Training: Marlowe Theatre Youth Company and Guildford School of Acting.

Theatre includes Nicholas Nickleby and The Tempest (Oxford Theatre Guild), and a European tour with English Theatre Company.

Matthew Mckew

Cast: A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET; The Beach Trip; My Generation

Matthew McKew is a regular children’s performer and stand-up comedian.

Training: Mischief Theatre, Middleweek Newton and The Workshop, Cardiff.

Theatre includes his Edinburgh Fringe show, which last year attracted multiple five-star audience reviews.

Short film: Lovebirds.

Paul McNally

Writer: My Generation

Paul McNally graduated from Royal Holloway in 2011 with an MA in Screenwriting, for which he received a Distinction and was awarded the David Lean Scholarship by the David Lean Foundation. He’s written shorts and TV and feature scripts (two of which have been optioned) and radio plays including Rocket Science for the BBC’s 7th Dimension series. A 20-minute short, Hello Sunshine, garnered more than 30 film festival Official Selections. (The cast featured Lysette Anthony, Sara Stewart and Simon Paisley Day.) Paul has had work performed at the Arden Theatre, the Marlowe Theatre Studio, the Union Theatre and Barons Court Theatre in London.

Charlotte Merriam

Cast: Seaburn

Theatre: Sad Bride (Camden People’s Theatre); Stranger Beasts (Wildworks); Love Riot (also tour), Everyman (also UK tour) and King Lear (Miracle Theatre); Arrival (Impossible Producing); Small Myth (VAULTS); Peter Pan (Birmingham Rep); Macbeth (Royal Exchange); Everywoman (VAULTS); Dames (Pleasance Theatre); Swansong (UK tour); The Breaks in You and I (Hope Theatre); The Ensemble Project (Lyric Hammersmith); Electra, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Winter’s Tale, Dogville and The Miracle (Richard Burton Company); The Endless Ocean (Gate Theatre); The White Devil (Shakespeare’s Globe); and The Fallen (also UK and US tour) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (Playbox Theatre Company).

TV: 18: Clash of the Futures.

Tolu Michael Okanlawon

Writer: Shooters

Tolu Michael Okanlawon is a British-Nigerian writer for TV and theatre, hailing from Hackney, East London. He has had a TV comedy optioned by Fudge Park Productions. After earning the Potential for Excellence scholarship at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, studying their Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media MFA, he has continued to bolster his knack for storytelling in unscripted TV as a producer at Sky Studios, developing premium documentary series and features. Shooters recently won the 2025 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.

Nedum Okonyia

Cast: Shooters

Training: Guildford School of Acting.

Theatre: Possession (Arcola Theatre); and Frankenstein (Leeds Playhouse/imitating the dog).

Michael Olatunji

Cast: Shooters

Training: University of Cambridge.

Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC).

TV: The Town.

Mary Onions

Writer: Finding Turner

Mary Onions lived in Japan for 30 years, working as a journalist and drama teacher. Since returning to the UK, she has been concentrating on her writing. She has won awards for her short stories and her plays have been performed at the Arden Theatre, Faversham; the Garlinge Theatre, Canterbury; the Abbey Theatre, St. Albans; and most recently at the INK Festival, Suffolk. In 2022, she participated in the RSC’s Henry VI Rebellion as a revolting peasant. She is a member of the Marlowe Theatre Writers’ Room and the Daylight Robbery Writers’ Company.

Charles Orrell

Writer: The Shed

Charles Orrell was born in Lytham St. Anne’s and now lives in East Kent. After an earlier career in horticulture and agri-environment advice, he gravitated to his long-held love of theatre and playwriting. He has written short plays presented as readings in the Marlowe Theatre Studio including Just Impediment, The Trust Fund and It’s a Date. He directed a reading of his play Swifts at the Faversham Fringe. Charles joined the Marlowe Theatre’s Writers’ Room Introduction to Playwriting group in 2023 and was then invited to join the 2024 Advanced Playwriting group. The Shed is his first full-length play.

Simon Paisley Day

Cast: Finding Turner; The Shed

Theatre: God Of Carnage (Bath); Private Lives (West End, Toronto, Broadway); Raleigh Treason Trial, Taming of the Shrew and Timon of Athens (Shakespeare’s Globe); Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Old Vic); Urinetown (West End); Oh! What a Lovely War, Twelfth Night, The Coast of Utopia, Speer, Troilus and Cressida, Candide, Money, Hamlet and Love’s Labour’s Lost (National Theatre); Anything Goes (West End); Low Road and Ugly One (Royal Court); Entertaining Mr Sloane (Trafalgar Studios); Don’t Look Now (Lyric Hammersmith); 39 Steps and By Jeeves! (West End); The Philanthropist (Donmar Warehouse); and Shakespeare at the Bowl with LA Philharmonic.

Film: Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Kesari Chapter 2, The Worst Man in London, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, The Last Vermeer, Victoria & Abdul and The Falling.

TV: The Witcher, The Hack, Brian & Maggie, All Creatures Great and Small, This Town, We Are Lady Parts, Famous Five, All the Light We Cannot See, This England, Death in Paradise, Brexit: The Uncivil War, The Crown, Sherlock and Doctor Who.

Matthew Platt

Cast: beats per minute; CONTACT; The Shed

Theatre includes A View from the Bridge (Arden Theatre); Ten Men – The Lives of John Bindon (Drayton Arms Theatre); Clybourne Park (Jack Studio Theatre); and Doubt, Stones in His Pockets, Stuff Happens and Shakespeare in Love (Bromley Little Theatre).

Ian Porter

Cast: Shooters

Theatre includes 1979 (Finborough); Rare Earth Mettle (Royal Court); Orpheus Descending (Menier Chocolate Factory/Theatr Clwyd); Desperate Measures (House of Detention); The Trial of Jane Fonda (Assembly Room); Driving Miss Daisy (UK tour); On Golden Pond (Salisbury Playhouse); Of Mice and Men (Watermill Theatre); The Exonerated (Charing Cross Theatre); August: Osage County (National Theatre); and You Can’t Take It With You and The Archbishop’s Ceiling (Southwark Playhouse).

Film includes Panic Carefully, People We Meet on Vacation, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, For Love & Honey, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

TV includes Marble Hall Murders, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, Ride Out, Doctor Who, FBI: International, Gangsta Granny Strikes Again, Living the Dream, Patriot, Ransom, Someone You Thought You Knew, Bliss, I Live With Models, The Crown and Angel of Decay.

Saroja-Lily Ratnavel

Cast: Match Book

Training: LAMDA and Durham University.

Theatre includes Cymbeline and Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe); Seen (Pentabus); The Hypochondriac (Sheffield Crucible), The Swell (Orange Tree Theatre); Chasing Hares (Young Vic); Electric Rosary (Royal Exchange); and The Key Workers Cycle and Name, Place, Animal, Thing (Almeida).

TV: Doctors and Bravo Two Charles.

Film: The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde and We Live in Time.

Clare Reeves

Cast: beats per minute; Finding Turner

Theatre this year so far includes The Paddington Bear Experience, and The Vagina Monologues (Folkestone Live).

Digital includes Constructive Citizen.

Voiceover includes BBC Radio 4 and a range of commercial projects for clients including Coca Cola, Colgate, Always and Booking.com.

Presenting includes the BBC and WOMAD Festival.

Holly Robinson

Writer: Seaburn

Holly Robinson’s theatre credits include The Secret Garden (Regents Park Open Air Theatre) and soft animals (Soho Theatre). Fellowships include Royal Court Attachment (2025/5); Writing the Bigger Picture (Hampstead, 2021); Soho Six (2020/21); Hampstead Theatre Inspire (2019) and Soho Writers’ Lab (2018). Holly is working on a number of original ideas for TV and a film adaptation of soft animals.

Peter Rose

Writer: Match Book

Peter Rose is a playwright from London. His plays include Snatch (Soho Theatre, London; Soho Rep, New York) and Bloody Ugly (White Bear Theatre, London). He has also had short work performed by Broken Silence at Theatre503, the Proforça Theatre Company and Theatro Mpelios, Athens. Screenplays include Hard Cases for Silver Bullet Productions. Training includes an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Amy Rosenthal

Q&A: Writing The Party Girls: A Q&A with Amy Rosenthal

Amy Rosenthal is an acclaimed playwright whose work is characterised by its glorious sense of humour and tenderness. Amy is adroit at fashioning accessible and brilliant works of fiction from historical fact. Theatre includes Entanglement (Kiln Theatre, 2022), Fear of Cherry Blossom (Everyman Theatre, 2016), Pelican Daughters (Shakespeare in Shoreditch, 2016), Entanglement (Nova Music Opera, 2015), Polar Bears (West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2015), The Tailor Made Man (Arts Theatre, 2013), Beware Of Young Girls: The Dory Previn Story (co-written with Kate Dimbleby; Matcham Room/Leicester Square Hippodrome, 2012), The Man Who Came To Brunch (66 Books Season, Bush Theatre, 2011), Liberation (Yad Arts, Tricycle Theatre, 2011), Jitterbug Blitz (Lyric Theatre Studio, 2009), On The Rocks (Hampstead Theatre, 2008), Sitting Pretty (Watford Palace Theatre 2005/UK tour/Hypothetical Theatre, New York, 2001), Jerusalem Syndrome (Manchester Royal Exchange Studio, 1999; Soho Theatre, 2000), and Henna Night (Scarborough Festival, 1999; Chelsea Theatre, 2001).

Risha Silvera

Cast: The Beach Trip; My Generation; Pieces of Me

Training: Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company.

Theatre includes Little Piece of You (West End); The Great Murder Mystery (Lost Estate); Ocean at the End of the Lane (UK tour); Black Women Dating White Men (Drayton Arms Theatre); Jack Frost (Moon on a Stick Theatre); and Starcrazy (Miracle Theatre).

TV: This is Going to Hurt.

Short film: Anthropocene: The Human Era.

As puppetry performer: The Hatchling (Queen’s Jubilee); and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Athletes’ Welcome Ceremony.

Giles Smart

Co-Head of the Film & TV department at United Agents.

Sophie Steer

Cast: Seaburn

Theatre includes Rhinoceros (Almeida); Mnemonic (Complicité/National Theatre); Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (Complicité/Barbican/European tour); Exodus (National Theatre of Scotland); Civilisation (Jury Award Winner, Dresden Staatsschauspiel/JWS Company); Lands (Bush Theatre/JWS Company); Dinomania and Still Ill (Kandinksy Theatre/New Diorama); It’s True, It’s True, It’s True (Breach Theatre and UK tour); Buckets (Orange Tree Theatre); Sparks (Old Red Lion); and Romeo and Juliet (Watermill Theatre).

Film includes Days of the Bagnold Summer.

TV: It’s True, It’s True, It’s True and Chickens.

Freya Stephenson

Cast: A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET; beats per minute; My Generation

Theatre includes The Worst Princess (Full House Theatre); My Pet Star (Marlowe Theatre); Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book (Little Angel Theatre, The Lowry and UK tour), Loves Labours Lost/The School for Scandal (Changeling Theatre); and Stranger Sings! (VAULTS).

Nathaniel Turay Boxx

Cast: Shooters

Training: Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Angela Terence

Writer: A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET
Cast: CONTACT

Angela Terence is a South London-born actor and writer, now proudly embracing her status as a DFL based in Folkestone. She trained at the BRIT School and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Her writing work includes A. SMALL BOAT, B. SYCAMORE, C. LEMONS, D. A GOVERNMENT BOOKLET, developed with Leo Butler at the Marlowe Theatre Writers’ Room (2023–25), and the 2024 Marlowe Writers’ Room Team Play. Other writing credits include Mysterious Girl (rehearsed reading, Forest Forge, 2021), #Belgium (Keep On Writing Monologue Festival, 2020), and selection for the Kiln’s Artists in Development programme (2020). Angela began playwriting with the Royal Court Spring Group (2019) and currently writes for the BRIT School’s BRIT Kids.

Dawn Walton OBE

Director: CONTACT; My Generation; Shooters

Theatre includes Sweat (Linbury Theatre); Antigone (Mercury Theatre); The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead Theatre); The Gift (Eclipse Theatre/Belgrade Theatre/Theatre Royal Stratford East); salt (Schaubühne/Public Theater/Royal Court/Summerhall); and Black Men Walking (Eclipse Theatre/Royal Court/Royal Exchange/UK tour). Dawn was founder and former Artistic Director/CEO of Eclipse Theatre.

TV includes salt (BBC Four/Milk and Honey Media; winner of the Grierson Award for Best Arts Documentary, 2022).

Short film includes Samuel’s Trousers and 10by10 (BBC/The Space).

In 2020, Dawn was awarded the OBE for services to theatre.

Lara Wilks Sloan

Cast: CONTACT

Training: ALRA and the Actors Lounge, Canterbury.

Theatre includes Have a Nice Death, Lost & Profound (NB Writers), and Almost Haunted, Murder in the Cathedral, The Comfort of Cole Haans and Tiniest Poem in the World (CP Productions).

Short film includes Choices, Caatch, Consillyum, Donation for Life, Screenplay, LOCI, Simon (Cowell) Says and Teardrop Tattoo.

Joshua-Alexander Williams

Cast: Shooters

Theatre: One Way Out (Brixton House); Animal Farm (Theatre Royal Stratford East/Leeds Playhouse/Nottingham Playhouse); and Romeo & Juliet (The Jamie Lloyd Company).

Short film: Dogman, So Here We Are, Waiting for Taiwo and Sunday’s Cry.

Laura Woodward

Writer: beats per minute
Cast: Pieces of Me

Laura Woodward is an actor, director and writer from Manchester. Her acting work includes Kelly in After Hours (Craig Cash, Sky One), Laura in People, Places and Things (National Theatre/West End/St Ann’s Warehouse, New York) and Steph in A Girl in School Uniform (New Diorama/Leeds Playhouse). She recently directed Birds Don’t Run, They Fly by Lauren-Nicole Mayes (Hope Mill) and regularly participates in new writing workshops. In 2024, she used an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant to develop her writing skills and is a participant of Marlowe Theatre Writers’ Room, led by Leo Butler. She’s excited to present her debut play beats per minute.

Lucy Wray

Workshop: Writing in the Context of the Climate Emergency

Lucy Wray (they/she) is a director, collaborative theatre maker and climate dramaturg, whose work explores big political topics through intimate stories, games and encounters. Recent projects include My Uncle Is Not Pablo Escobar as co-writer and director (Brixton House, Winner OFFIES Awards 2024); FERTILE, a live video game, as co-writer and performer (Colchester Arts and UK Tour); cli-fi serial Rez High as director (audio drama podcast, Rusty Quill); Ghosts as associate director and script editor (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe). Trained at the Oxford School of Drama, Lucy has been shortlisted for the GENESIS Future Directors Award and RTST Sir Peter Hall Directing Award and longlisted for the JMK Young Director Award. They have been Resident Director at National Theatre and the Almeida and they make inter-disciplinary projects as Associate Artist at METIS. Lucy was a Barbican Creative Curriculum Artist and works with young people as a Forest School facilitator and RSC Associate Learning Practitioner.