Alanna Beeken is a writer and consultant working in arts education. She was Creative and Festival Director of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, the flagship project of Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation.

After studying History at Oxford University, Geoffrey Beevers trained as an actor at LAMDA. In the theatre he has worked at the RSC, the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe and the West End, and has made over two hundred television appearances including The Jewel in the Crown, A Very British Coup and Dr Who; countless radio broadcasts including many book readings; and films from Victor/Victoria to Miss Potter.

He also writes and directs. At the Orange Tree Theatre he has directed many plays, including his own, and several by Václav Havel. He has also directed in repertory theatres and drama schools. His writing work includes about a dozen plays produced in the theatre and on radio. His latest publications include an audio CD Unintelligent Design (2011), and a novel The Forgotten Fields (2014).

He has long had a particular love for George Eliot’s work. He has previously adapted Adam Bede for the stage (Time Out Award) and also Silas Marner. One of his plays for Radio 4 was A Proper Woman, a drama-documentary about George Eliot’s marriage.

Aphra Behn (1640-89) was the first English woman to be a professional playwright. She wrote at least seventeen plays, mostly comedies.

Sergi Belbel (born Terrassa, Barcelona 1963) is a leading playwright, director and translator. He is a founder member of the Theatre School of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and has been Lecturer in Dramaturgy at the Institut del Teatr, Barcelona, since 1988. He has written many prize-winning plays which include: Calidoscopios y faros de hoy (1985), Elsa Schneider (1987), En companyia d’abisme (1988), Tàlem (1989), Carícies (1991), Després de la pluja (1994), Morir (1994), La Sang (1998), El temps de Plank (1999), Forasters (2005) and Soy fea A la Toscana (2007). He has also written screenplays for drama serials for Televisió de Cataluñya. Some of his plays (particularly Carícies, Després de la Pluja and Morir) have been translated and produced in several countries in Europe and South America. Després de la Pluja (After the Rain) was performed in English at the Gate Theatre, London in the spring of 1996.

Robin Belfield is a theatre director and writer who has worked with major theatre companies including the National Theatre (where he has also taught verbatim-theatre techniques), the Royal Shakespeare Company, Nuffield Southampton Theatres, Bristol Old Vic, Watermill Theatre and Theatre Royal Bath. He is one half of Belfield and Slater Musicals. (Author photo by Toby Farrow).

Joss Bennathan was a freelance theatre director and writer. After a career as a drama teacher and head of Drama, he became a drama-in-education advisor and inspector. He was also Artistic Director of Present Moment theatre company, and directed regularly at various drama schools. He died in 2014 at the age of 56.