Gillian Plowman is an English playwright. She is the author of more than 20 plays. She won the 1988 Verity Bargate Award for her play Me and My Friend. Originally staged at the Soho Poly, it was later revived at the Chichester Festival and at the Orange Tree Theatre. [1] In 2008, the Oval House Theatre staged her play Yours Abundantly, From Zimbabwe. [2]
Plowman is a patron of the Royal Air Force Theatrical Association, along with Sir Peter Hall, Sir Frederick Sowrey, Stephen Daldry and Ben Humphrey. [3]
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedian, singer, and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Susannah Yolande Fletcher, known professionally as Susannah York, was an English actress. Her appearances in various films of the 1960s, including Tom Jones (1963) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), formed the basis of her international reputation. An obituary in The Telegraph characterised her as "the blue-eyed English rose with the china-white skin and cupid lips who epitomised the sensuality of the swinging sixties", who later "proved that she was a real actor of extraordinary emotional range".
Juliet Maryon Mills is a British-American actress.
Toby Stephens is a British actor who has appeared in films in the United Kingdom, United States and India. He is known for the roles of Bond villain Gustav Graves in the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day, for which he was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, William Gordon in the 2005 Mangal Pandey: The Rising film and Edward Fairfax Rochester in the 2006 BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre. From 2014 to 2017, he starred as Captain Flint in the Starz television series Black Sails, followed by one of the lead roles in the Netflix science fiction series Lost in Space from 2018 to 2021. He has starred as the Greek God Poseidon in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Phillip Jon Plowman is a British television and film producer. He has been a producer at the BBC since 1980, when he produced Russell Harty's chat show Harty. He moved on to executive producing at the BBC in 1986, working on sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and became Head of Comedy Entertainment in 1994, mainly responsible for sketch shows. He produced the first four series of the BBC comedy show Absolutely Fabulous between 1992 and 2001, plus the big screen version in 2016.
Geraldine McEwan was an English actress, who had a long career in film, theatre and television. Michael Coveney described her, in a tribute article, as "a great comic stylist, with a syrupy, seductive voice and a forthright, sparkling manner".
Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. It is one of the three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898, alongside The Philanderer and Widowers' Houses. The play is about a former prostitute, now a madam, who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter. It is a problem play, offering social commentary to illustrate the idea that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity. Elements of the play were borrowed from Shaw's 1882 novel Cashel Byron's Profession, about a man who becomes a boxer due to limited employment opportunities.
Anna-Louise Plowman is a New Zealand-born actress.
Ayub Khan Din is a British writer and actor. He wrote the BAFTA, BIFA and London Film Critics Circle award-winning film East Is East (1999), adapted from his 1996 Olivier-nominated play of the same name. His 2008 comedy play Rafta, Rafta... won the Olivier Award. He went on to write the film sequel West Is West (2010). On television, he created the Channel 4 comedy-drama Ackley Bridge (2017–2022).
Irene Worth, CBE, born Harriett Elizabeth Abrams, was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the British and American theatre. She pronounced her first name with three syllables: "I-REE-nee".
Ranjit Chowdhry was an Indian character actor, known for his roles in television, movies, and theatre. He appeared in two episodes of The Office, as Vikram, a telemarketer who worked with Michael, and was briefly hired for The Michael Scott Paper Company.
Geeta Citygirl is an actress, dancer, director, producer and the founder and artistic director of SALAAM, the first South Asian American theatre, arts and film company in the USA. Based in New York City, the theatre company was started in the year 2000. SALAAM Theatre and Geeta Citygirl received the SAMA Award for Excellence in Theater in June 2005.
Rafta, Rafta... is a comedy by British Pakistani playwright Ayub Khan-Din adapted from the 1963 Bill Naughton play, All in Good Time. The play is set in the working class English town of Bolton, and examines a story of marital difficulties within an immigrant Indian family. Ishwar Dutt is a first-generation immigrant and patriarch of the family. He has a troubled relationship with his newlywed son Atul, whose married life with Vina Patel has got off to a rocky start. The play deals with setting out and resolving these various conflicts.
Harish Patel is an Indian character actor. He has appeared in a variety of Hindi films, but in recent years has begun to appear in American projects like reimagination of Four Weddings and a Funeral on Hulu. His latest project is the MCU film Eternals. Although mainly associated with the stage, he has appeared in Indian and British films and television shows.
Paul Groothuis is a Dutch sound designer who has had a long career working on the London stage. Groothuis was born in the Netherlands and moved to the UK in 1979 to study Stage Management at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He joined the National Theatre on the South Bank in 1984 and has designed sound for more than 120 NT productions. Some of his recent productions are Her Naked Skin, Rafta, Rafta..., The Man of Mode, The Life of Galileo, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Once in a Lifetime, His Dark Materials, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Stuff Happens. He has also designed sound for musicals at the NT, including Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Lady in the Dark and Guys and Dolls. In 1999, he won Live! Magazine Sound Designer of the Year Award for his work on Oklahoma! and Oh, What a Lovely War!.
The Royal Air Force Theatrical Association is an association and registered charity which links theatre clubs at RAF stations around the world and provides information, training, adjudication and advice. RAFTA undertakes a bi-annual project to put on a large show at a professional theatre using resources from all affiliated clubs. There is an annual One-Act Play Festival, play writing competition and play competition.
Trelawny of the "Wells" is an 1898 comic play by Arthur Wing Pinero. It tells the story of a theatre star who attempts to give up the stage for love, but is unable to fit into conventional society.
Alison Wright is an English actress. She is best known for her starring role as Martha Hanson on the FX period spy drama series The Americans (2013–2017), for which she received critical acclaim and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2017. She has also acted in the Ryan Murphy limited series Feud: Bette and Joan (2017) and Hollywood (2020).
Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi is an English actress. She is known for portraying from 2011 to 2025 the role of Leyla Harding in ITV soap Emmerdale. In 2024, she was a contestant on the sixteenth series of Dancing on Ice.
Ben Humphrey is an English actor, director, writer, lecturer and criminal court Magistrate. He graduated from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2007 and is also an associate of LAMDA.