Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and academic. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Dinner with Friends.
Travesties is a 1974 play by Tom Stoppard. It centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an old man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time.
Simon James Holliday Gray was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to five published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries.
Samantha Jane Bond is an English actress. She played Miss Moneypenny in four James Bond films during the Pierce Brosnan era, and appeared in Downton Abbey as the wealthy widow Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister of Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham. On television, she played "Auntie Angela" in the sitcom Outnumbered and the villain Mrs Wormwood in the CBBC Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures. She also originated the role of "Miz Liz" Probert in the Rumpole of the Bailey series. She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Jennifer Anne Ehle is an American actress. She gained recognition and acclaim for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice (1995), for which she received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Known for her roles on Broadway and the West End, she has won two Tony Awards as well as a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award.
John Lamin Wood was an English actor, known for his performances in Shakespeare and his lasting association with Tom Stoppard. In 1976, he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Stoppard's Travesties. He was nominated for two other Tony Awards for his roles in Sherlock Holmes (1975) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1968). In 2007, Wood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours List. Wood also appeared in WarGames, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Ladyhawke, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Orlando, Shadowlands, The Madness of King George, Richard III, Sabrina, and Chocolat.
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard that was first performed in 1982. The play focuses on the relationship between Henry and Annie, an actress and member of a group fighting to free Brodie, a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest.
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and (self-)deceptions.
Jumpers is a play by Tom Stoppard which was first performed in 1972. It explores and satirises the field of academic philosophy by likening it to a less-than-skilful competitive gymnastics display. Jumpers raises questions such as "What do we know?" and "Where do values come from?" It is set in an alternative reality in which some British astronauts have landed on the Moon and "Radical Liberals" have taken over the British government. It was inspired by the notion that a crewed Moon landing would ruin the Moon as a poetic trope and possibly lead to a collapse of moral values. It has been said that Jumpers is "a play often dismissed as too clever by half", but a number of other writers have listed it among Stoppard's highest achievements.
Scott Pask is an American scenic and costume designer. He has worked primarily on stage productions in the United States, on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre, as well as in the United Kingdom. He has won Tony Awards for his work on The Pillowman, The Coast of Utopia and The Book of Mormon.
Michael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian, and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).
Jack O'Brien is an American director, producer, writer and lyricist. He served as the Artistic Director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California from 1981 through the end of 2007.
John Richard Easton was a Canadian actor, best known for his portrayal of Brian Hammond in the 1970s BBC serial The Brothers.
Skylight is a play by British dramatist David Hare. The play premiered in the West End at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1995, moving to the Wyndham's Theatre in 1996. After opening on Broadway in 1996, it played again in the West End in 1997 at the Vaudeville Theatre. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End in 2014, and that production transferred to Broadway in 2015.
Jason Thomas Butler Harner is an American actor known for his role as FBI Special Agent Roy Petty in Ozark.
William Dudley is a British theatre designer.
David Leveaux is a British theatre director who has been nominated for five Tony Awards as director of both plays and musicals. He directs in the UK, working at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Almeida Theatre, and the Donmar Warehouse, on Broadway, and also in Tokyo.
David Jonathan Pittu is an American actor, writer and director.
Sir Michael Victor Codron is a British theatre producer, known for his productions of the early work of Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard. He has been honoured with a Laurence Olivier Award for Lifetime Achievement, and is a stakeholder and director of the Aldwych Theatre in the West End, London.
