Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2024, 90 full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit Relatively Speaking opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.
Jane Asher is an English actress and author. She achieved early fame as a child actress, and then through her association with Paul McCartney, and has worked extensively in film and TV throughout her career.
Abigail's Party is a play for stage and television, devised and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh. It is a suburban situation comedy of manners, and a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class that emerged in Britain in the 1970s. The play developed in lengthy improvisations during which Mike Leigh explored the characters with the actors, but did not always reveal the incidents that would occur during the play. The production opened in April 1977 at the Hampstead Theatre, and returned after its initial run in the summer of 1977, for 104 performances in all. A recording was arranged at the BBC as a Play for Today, produced by Margaret Matheson for BBC Scotland and transmitted in November 1977.
Mike Leigh is an English writer-director with a career spanning film, theatre and television. He has received numerous accolades, including prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, three BAFTA Awards, and nominations for seven Academy Awards. He also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2014, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1993 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE was an English theatre, opera and film director. His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled". In 2018, the Laurence Olivier Awards, recognising achievements in London theatre, changed the award for Best Director to the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.
Claire Skinner is an English actress, known in the United Kingdom for her television career, particularly playing Sue Brockman from the BBC television series Outnumbered. She is also known for her collaboration with director Mike Leigh on two of his films, Life is Sweet (1990) and Naked (1993).
Alison Steadman is an English actress. She received the 1977 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress for Abigail's Party, the 1991 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for the Mike Leigh film Life Is Sweet and the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Actress for her role as Mari in the original production of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. In a 2007 Channel 4 poll, the '50 Greatest Actors' voted for by other actors, she was ranked 42.
Sophie Lara Winkleman, styled as Lady Frederick Windsor, is an English actress. She is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, the second cousin of King Charles III and son of Prince Michael of Kent.
Janine Duvitski is a British actress, known for her roles in the BBC television sitcom series Waiting for God, One Foot in the Grave and Benidorm. Duvitski first came to national attention in the play Abigail's Party, written and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh.
Deborah Chazen is an English actress. She is best known for portraying Annie in the BBC comedy The Smoking Room, Big Claire in Mine All Mine, and various roles in the BBC sketch show Tittybangbang. Alongside these appearances, Chazen has had recurring roles on Trollied and Holby City.
Julia Hills is an English actress, known for portraying the role of Rona in all eight series of the BBC sitcom 2point4 Children. She also portrayed various roles in Channel 4's first late night satirical sketch show Who Dares Wins, Beryl in two series of the sitcom Dad and Caroline Joyner in Casualty.
Alison Pargeter is an English actress who played the roles of stalker Sarah Cairns in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, Mary Slessor in an 11-part television series of Mary Slessor, the Nag's Head barmaid called Val in the BBC Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips, She later played the role of Margaret Campbell in the third series of STARZ's Outlander, and also as a Kindly Old Woman in the HBO series The Nevers.
Janie Dee is a British actress. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Play, and in New York the Obie and Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer, for her performance as Jacie Triplethree in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.
Thelma Holt is a British theatre producer and former actress.
Lia Williams is an English actress and director, on stage, in film and television. She has had television roles in The Crown, in May 33rd (2004) for which she was nominated for a BAFTA, and in The Missing (2016), Kiri (2016), His Dark Materials (2019–2022) and The Capture (2019–2021).
Jonathan Paul Harvey is an English screenwriter, actor, playwright and author.
Ramin Gray is a theatre director of Iranian (Muslim) and British (Jewish) heritage.
Gregory Motton is a British playwright and author. Motton is best known for the originality of his formally demanding, largely a-political theatre plays at the Royal Court in the 1980s and 1990s, state of the nation satires in the 1990s, and later for his polemics about working class politics, A Working Class Alternative To Labour and Helping Themselves – The Left Wing Middle Classes In Theatre And The Arts.
Mark James Harrison, known professionally as Samuel James, is an English actor and voiceover artist, known for portraying the role of Garth Stubbs in the ITV sitcom Birds of a Feather from 2014 to 2017. He has also starred in Casualty and EastEnders.
Cat and Mouse (Sheep) is a 1995 theatre play by British playwright Gregory Motton. It satirises both the left and right in British society. It was premiered at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris and then shown briefly in Britain at the Gate Theatre.It has subsequently only been performed outside Britain. It is published by Oberon Books. In the play, Conservative, capitalist and contemporary left wing politics are merged and discredited, identified as middle-class in their nature and origin and hostile to working class interests.
