Maverick Theatre Company was launched in 1994 by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and founded by Robb Williams, local musician and Nick Hennegan, [1] radio presenter with BRMB Radio. The company aimed to demystify theatre by presenting contemporary classics in informal spaces, mainly pubs. [2] The company grew from a production in Birmingham and at the Edinburgh Festival, including Henry V - Lion of England, Nick Hennegan's one-person version of Shakespeare's classic. Maverick began working in London and launched the London Literary Pub Crawl in 2012. [3]
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. He has won an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Gay News was a fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper's height, circulation was 18,000 to 19,000 copies.
Kerrang! Radio is a specialist digital rock music radio station owned and operated by Bauer and forms part of the Kiss Network.
Motionhouse is a dance-circus company based in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Founded in 1988, Motionhouse operates under the direction of Louise Richards and Kevin Finnan MBE and the company aims to create startling, passionate dance theatre that fuses images, action and dynamism to surprise, challenge and delight their audiences. Imagery, theatricality and immediate impact combine with modern, contemporary dance and a focus on accessibility. Motionhouse also draw on theatre, circus, acrobatics and film to create performance spectacle with meaningful and resonant content which speaks directly to people through imagery and physicality.
Alan Armstrong, known professionally as Alun Armstrong, is an English character actor. He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school. Since his career began in the early 1970s, he has played, in his words, "the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals... I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic".
The Renaissance Theatre Company was a theatre company founded in 1987 by Kenneth Branagh and David Parfitt. It was disbanded in 1992.
Oliver Robert Ford Davies is an English actor and writer, best known for his extensive theatre work, and to a broader audience for his role as Sio Bibble in Star Wars Episodes I to III. He is also known for his role as Maester Cressen in HBO series Game of Thrones.
Bonnie Greer, OBE FRSL is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster, who has lived in the UK since 1986. She has appeared as a panellist on television programmes such as Newsnight Review and Question Time and has served on the boards of several leading arts organisations, including the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the London Film School. She is Vice President of the Shaw Society. She is former Chancellor of Kingston University in Kingston upon Thames, London. In July 2022 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Dame Harriet Mary Walter is a British actress. Known for her extensive work in numerous Royal Shakespeare Company productions, Walter has received an Olivier Award as well as nominations for a Tony Award, five Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2011, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama.
David Pownall FRSL was a British playwright and prolific radio dramatist performed internationally, and novelist translated into several languages.
The Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) is a major international theatre organisation headquartered in the United Kingdom, with offices in Woking, London, New York, Sydney, Mannheim and Cologne. ATG's key operations comprise three inter-related activities: theatre ownership and management, ticketing and marketing operations, and show productions
David Edgar is a British playwright and writer who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain. He was resident playwright at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1974–5 and has been a board member there since 1985. Awarded a Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds Polytechnic, he was made a Bicentennial Arts Fellow (US) (1978–79).
Helen Edmundson is a British playwright, screenwriter and producer. She has won awards and critical acclaim both for her original writing and for her adaptations of various literary classics for the stage and screen.
Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright, dramatist, librettist and Director working in theatre, film, opera and television. As a playwright, she won the Helpmann Award. Valentine first worked with Vicki Gordon Music Productions to create the First Nations show Barefoot Divas, Walk a Mile in My Shoes. The work premiered at the Sydney Festival in 2012 and the Wellington International Arts Festival in 2013 touring the USA and Canada in 2014 before selling out the Hong Kong International Arts Festival in 2015. In 2016 Gordon commissioned Valentine and Ursula Yovich to co-write the First Nations rock musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs presented on stage in December 2017 at Belvoir in Sydney and touring nationally in 2019. The work was critically acclaimed winning best Original Score and Best Musical in the 2019 Helpmann Awards and four Green Room Awards (2020) for Best Writing, Best Music Composition, Best Production and Best Performance. The screen adaptation is currently in development as a major International feature film.
The Old Red Lion is a pub and fringe theatre, at Angel, in the London Borough of Islington.
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the second city of the United Kingdom.
Billboard is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in various music genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm and operates several television shows.
William Alexander Paterson known professionally as Bill Alexander is a British theatre director who is best known for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and as artistic director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He currently works as a freelance, internationally as a theatre director and most recently as a director of BBC Radio 4 drama.
The Cock Tavern Theatre was a pub theatre located in Kilburn in the north-west of London. The venue specialised in new works and critical revivals. Resident companies Good Night Out Presents and OperaUpClose were also based at the venue. It shut in 2011, due to health and safety problems regarding the Victorian staircases that serviced the theatre.
Nick Stafford is a British playwright and writer. He is best known for writing the stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse, which garnered him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best New Play in 2008, and the Tony Award for Best Play in 2011.