Sam Bain is a TV writer, playwright and novelist. Together with Jesse Armstrong, he co-created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show from 2003–2015. Peep Show has won two British Comedy Awards, two Royal Television Society Awards, a BAFTA and the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for Comedy Writers of the Year. Also with Armstrong, he created Fresh Meat, a team-written comedy-drama about university students, which won two RTS awards and a British Comedy Award. In 2014 Sam and Jesse wrote Babylon, a six-part hour-long comedy-drama series for Channel 4 and the Sundance Channel. The feature-length pilot was directed by Danny Boyle. The duo’s other writing includes the feature film Four Lions (2010), co-written with Chris Morris, which premiered at Sundance and won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut.

Sam’s first solo series, three-part comedy thriller Ill Behaviour, was screened on BBC2 and Showtime in 2017. He adapted his novel, Yours Truly, Pierre Stone, for a four-part Radio 4 series broadcast in 2017.

His debut play, The Retreat, was premiered at Park Theatre, London, in 2017.

Annie Baker is a leading American playwright whose plays include: Infinite Life (Linda Gross Theater, New York, and National Theatre, London, 2023); The Antipodes (Signature Theatre, New York, 2017; National Theatre, London, 2019); John (Off-Broadway, 2015; National Theatre, London, 2018); The Flick (Off-Broadway, 2013; National Theatre, London, 2013; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Obie Award for Playwriting), Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best New American Play), The Aliens (Obie Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival).

Her plays have been produced at over 150 theatres throughout the U.S., and have been produced internationally in over a dozen countries. Other recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Hull-Warriner Award, Steinberg Award, and the Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.

Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946) was an actor, playwright, director and critic, who exerted a major influence on British drama both during and after his lifetime.

Patrick Barlow is an English actor, comedian and playwright. His comedic alter ego, Desmond Olivier Dingle, is the founder, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the two-man National Theatre of Brent, which has performed on stage, on television and on radio. 

As a playwright, his work includes: a stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2005, then Tricycle Theatre and West End, as well as productions in Australia, New Zealand and Broadway); The Wonder of Sex (National Theatre, London, 2001); Love Upon the Throne (Edinburgh Festival and West End, 1998); and The Messiah (Tricycle Theatre, London, 1983; revived in a new version for a UK tour, 2018).