La bohème is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith is an English actress. With an extensive career on screen and stage beginning in the mid-1950s, Smith has appeared in over 60 films and 70 plays. She is one of the few artists to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting", having received highest achievement for film, television and theatre, winning two Academy Awards, a Tony Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards. She is also a recipient of various accolades including seven BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 1996 she was honored with the BAFTA Fellowship. Hailed as is one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 for contributions to the Arts, and a Companion of Honour in 2014 for services to Drama.
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera and film. Since her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997, 24 global productions have been seen by more than 100 million people in over 100 cities in 20 countries, on every continent except Antarctica, and its worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history. The Lion King also received 11 Tony Award nominations, earning Taymor Tony Awards for Best Director and Costume Designer, and was honored with more than 70 major arts awards worldwide.
Deborah Warner is a British director of theatre and opera, known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin Britten, and Henrik Ibsen.
Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre is an English film, theatre, television and opera director.
Jill Halfpenny is an English actress. Her notable roles include Rebecca Hopkins in ITV soap opera Coronation Street (1999–2000), Kate Mitchell in BBC One soap opera EastEnders (2002–2005), Izzie Redpath in Waterloo Road (2006–2007), and Diane Manning in In The Club (2014–2016). She won the second series of the television dance contest Strictly Come Dancing in 2004.
The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a large theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company, famously associated with Joan Littlewood.
Jenna Russell is an English actress and singer. She has appeared on the stage in London in both musicals and dramas, as well as appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She performed the role of Dot in Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and on Broadway, receiving the Tony Award nomination and the 2006 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role. She has also appeared in several television series, including Born and Bred and EastEnders.
Sharon Delores Clarke is an English actress and singer. She is a three-time Olivier award winner, and is best known to television audiences for her role as Lola Griffin in the medical drama Holby City, and as Grace O'Brien in Doctor Who. Clarke has also played lead roles in many West End musicals, and originated the roles of the Killer Queen in We Will Rock You and Oda Mae Brown in Ghost the Musical.
Nick Winston is an internationally renowned English director and choreographer working in theatre, opera and film.
Emily "Eve" Best is an English actress and director. She is known for her television roles as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–13), First Lady Dolley Madison in the American Experience television special (2011), and Monica Chatwin in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014). She also played Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech.
Terence Richard Knapp was an English actor, director, educator, and author. He was an Emeritus Professor of Theatre, University of Hawaii at Manoa, a Churchill Fellow and a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Associate.
John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Richard Jones CBE is a British theatre and opera director. He was born in London, and studied at the University of Hull and University of London. After working as a jazz musician, he spent 1982–83 on a bursary working with Scottish Opera and the Citizens Theatre.
Rupert Goold is an English director who works primarily in theatre. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013).
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.
Adam Spreadbury-Maher is an Australian/Irish theatre artistic director, producer and writer. He is the founding artistic director of the Cock Tavern Theatre, OperaUpClose and The Hope Theatre, and is the current artistic director of the King's Head Theatre. Spreadbury-Maher introduced the first unionised pay agreement for actors in a pub-theatre in 2011, and in 2017 introduced the first fringe creative pay agreement and gender policy.
OperaUpClose is a touring opera company, based in London and led by Artistic Director Robin Norton-Hale. The company was founded in 2009 to produce its début production, Robin Norton-Hale's Olivier Award-winning adaptation of Puccini's La bohème at The Cock Tavern Theatre.
Amanda Juliet Holden was a British pianist, librettist, translator, editor and academic teacher. She is known for translating opera librettos to more contemporary English for the English National Opera, and for writing new librettos, especially in collaboration with Brett Dean. She contributed to encyclopedias such as the New Penguin Opera Guide.
Cassidy Janson is a British actress, known for her work in musical theatre. She won the 2020 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical for & Juliet.
