In This Program

• Show Program
• Out of the Forest: The Origins of Agnes
• Who was Shakespeare’s Wife?
• Who's Who
• Print Edition
• More about A.C.T.

The Cast

Agnes
Kemi-Bo Jacobs

William
Rory Alexander

Bartholomew
Troy Alexander

John, Will Kempe
Nigel Barrett

Hamnet, Thomas Day
Ajani Cabey

Tilly
Elizabeth Connick

Judith
Saffron Dey

Eliza
Heather Forster

Ned, Henry Condell, Physician
Karl Haynes

Susanna
Ava Hinds-Jones

Joan
Nicki Hobday

Mary
Penny Layden

Jude, Physician’s Wife, Will’s Landlady, Caterina
Matilda McCarthy†

Burbage, Father John
Bert Seymour††

Understudies

Physician
Troy Alexander

Bartholomew, Hamnet, Thomas Day, Henry Condell
Haydn Burke

Eliza, Jude, Physician’s Wife
Elizabeth Connick

Caterina
Heather Forster

Susanna, Judith, Tilly
Thalia Gambe

John, Will Kempe, Burbage, Father John
Karl Haynes

Agnes
Ava Hinds-Jones

Mary
Nicki Hobday

Eliza, Joan
Matilda McCarthy†

William, Ned
Bert Seymour††

Stage Management

Company Stage Manager
Marius Arnold-Clarke

Deputy Stage Manager
Chloë Forestier-Walker

Stage Manager
Megan McClintock*

Creative Team

Scenic and Costume Designer
Tom Piper

Lighting Designer
Prema Mehta

Composer
Oğuz Kaplangi

Sound Designer
Simon Baker

Movement Director
Ayşe Tashkiran

Fight Director
Kate Waters

Casting Director
Amy Ball CDG

A.C.T. Producing Team

Artistic Producing Director
Andy Chan Donald

Director of General Management & Operations
Louisa Liska

General Manager
Amy Dalba

Director of Production
Martin Barron

Royal Shakespeare Company

Co-Artistic Directors
Daniel Evans & Tamara Harvey

Executive Director
Andrew Leveson

Executive Producer
Despina Tsatsas

Production Coordinator
Tom Dickinson

Finance Business Partner
Chris Harris

Strategic Marketing Consultant
Lydia Cassidy

Head of Marketing (London)
Nicole James

Senior Marketing Officer
Hannah Lord

Head of Media Relations
Kate Evans

Neal Street Productions

Producers
Caro Newling and Georgia Gatti

Pemberley Productions

Managing Partners & General Managers
Doreen Sayegh & Tim Smith

General Manager
Annie Shea Graney

Associate General Managers
Rosie Bross-Rice, Terri Kohler & Jimmy Yandoli

US General Management & Tour Booking
Pemberley Productions

UK General Management
Simon Woolley for New Road Theatricals

This production is made possible by

Season Presenters

Priscilla and Keith Geeslin

Company Sponsors

Donald J. and Toni Ratner Miller

Executive Producers

Linda Jo Fitz
Jo S. Hurley
Laura Posey and Aaron Goldsmid

Producers

Abby and Gene Schnair
Cherie Sorokin

Associate Producers

Dr. Barbara L. Bessey
Allison Butler and Richard Peers
Winn Ellis and David Mahoney
Linda and Frank Kurtz
Rich Rava and Elisa Neipp
Emmett and Marion Stanton

Benefactors

Peggy Kivel
Christine and Stan Mattison

Corporate Production Sponsor

Official Hotel Partner

Additional Support

Government of Ireland | Emigrant Support Programme

Pam MacKinnon: I’m very excited. It feels like it’s been a long time coming, so I want to dive in. Lolita, what led you after reading Maggie O’Farrell’s beautiful novel to want to adapt it? And how did you even start?

Lolita Chakrabarti: When I read this book, and this stunning story, the enormity of it, knowing that in the background, the man we’re talking about is Shakespeare and this is his family, and it’s leading towards this extraordinary play that he wrote, all of that history and expectation crowded in. And my own association with watching, studying, being in Shakespeare, all of it, plays its part. And what I really loved about this book is how personal it is. It’s very interior, isn’t it, which is the beauty of the novel. We can get inside people’s heads, which is a good signpost towards character and who this person is. But I needed to make it driven. To have a drive underneath it that will take us through the story.

So my literal answer to that is sacrilegiously, I took a highlighter to the book, and marked up everything that I think is interesting—character, dialogue, landscape, story, philosophy, history, everything. And then I deconstruct it into a document that allows me to use that as a base note to tell the story. 

Pam: Love that. And, Erica, when did you know that this was a piece for you?

Erica Whyman: I read the novel in Stratford during lockdown. I was still working at the Royal Shakespeare Company then and commissioning new work, and I had a young daughter, and I was living through plague times. So this novel was personal for me, actually, and spoke to the importance of theater. It also talks about grief, and love. It intersected things that I care about very much both personally and professionally. So for me, it was just a very vivid thing to read it. I asked Lolita if she’d be interested, and thank goodness she said yes.

As the director, I’m interested in the story of theater and how theater lurks in the book.  Also Maggie can choose to marginalize William completely —but we have the opportunity to get to know him. He’s not given a name really in the book. He’s the father, the son, the lover, the poet, the Latin tutor. And that’s very compelling, because he’s usually celebrated by all of us and has been for so long. So there’s a lovely challenge in how to make sure it is still the story of Agnes because truly she is at the center of it, but that it’s also the story of William—the man—and also the story of Hamnet and also indeed the story of Judith.

I think one of the brilliant things that Lolita has done is tell the story of the whole community, that we take off from Agnes but there’s always a village around her, sometimes a sympathetic one and sometimes not. It requires you to try and communicate how this couple’s life, and love, and loss changes that whole community.

Pam: It feels like there’s a form and content marriage about putting on this play as the telos of the story is about how to build a play.

Lolita: I don’t know if it’s that obvious in the book, the play making, because that’s in the background of what William’s doing in London. But I suppose with this version, the play making is happening in front of you on several levels, our play, their play, his plays.

Erica: A collaborator of ours is Tom Piper, who designed the show, and very early on, Tom talked about hiding the Globe Theatre in the design. I hope that doesn’t feel like a spoiler, because you really can’t see it, but we wanted the sense that William’s play Hamlet and the power of the theatre has been quietly waiting in the wings all evening.

Pam: I’m also very taken by the foregrounding of Agnes. She was another living, breathing, real person, but we don’t know much about her, oddly. In Bardology through the ages, she’s been maligned.

Lolita: Maligned by men. By male historians.

Pam: Yes, 100%. And that is an amazing gift of the novel and to have now a three-dimensional, very interesting person living life on her own terms. We now have a love story between equals. I wonder if you can talk about the development of that character on stage.

Lolita: Well, in the book, Maggie says that her mother came out of the forest, and there’s no sense of where she was from. It implies she wasn’t from Stratford, and she met Agnes’s dad and they fell in love and married.

Her mother was a healer, somebody who had natural instincts and herb knowledge and was a person who was possibly a seer. And to me, that instantly spoke of a different culture, of an African or an Asian culture, where that can be innate.

And for her seeing, I combined three elements. One was the witches in Macbeth. Another was, I had a psychic friend who’s sadly passed now, but I remember vividly her telling me when she was in her 20s, and she realized she had this...well, she thought at the time it was a curse, but it was a gift, that she woke up at night and saw three figures at the bottom of her bed that were all in medieval clothing and they wanted to speak to her. She was totally freaked out, obviously, but then got used to the fact that this is something that was going to happen to her. And that image has just stayed with me throughout my life. And then also schizophrenia, a mental health aspect of hearing.

I thought the combination of those three elements would make Agnes a little dangerous and worthy of suspicion, but definitely a vessel, a clear channel, a woman with a sixth sense. So that was a starting point for me.

Erica: Kemi-Bo Jacobs plays Agnes in our version. I have always thought that lots of Shakespeare’s female characters are alive in Agnes. Because part of that project that you talk about, Pam, the project of interrogating the maligning men is to say, well, hang on a minute. He chose to marry her, he came back to her throughout his life and therefore she must have been a tremendous influence on these stories that came out of him.

Time and again, you get underestimated women in the plays: Juliet, Ophelia, Constance, Portia—women whose power and intelligence in the face of difficulty is designed to startle and impress us. In lockdown around the time I first read the book, Kemi-Bo and I did The Winter’s Tale and she played Hermione. And so I think that both of us brought a memory of that very late and beautiful play into this process. And for my money, some of the best women he wrote, both Hermione and Paulina, have something of Agnes about them.

In rehearsals, Kemi-Bo was very struck by how incredibly physical the role is. The story of Agnes, accelerated across 15, 16 years is a story of your body going through extraordinary experiences. And Lolita had already made the connection with the kestrel. The kestrel is course there in the book, but we play with that differently on stage and in the sound design, the sense that not only does Agnes own a kestrel and has to let it go in order to marry William, but that she actually is the kestrel in some sense, the spirit, the freedom, of the kestrel.

I didn’t want that to be a soft idea; it’s an image of a strong, very frightening bird that’s got a tiny body, but can do extraordinary things. Its wing span is massive. Then of course she’s pregnant twice in the play, and then nursing children, and dealing with illness and dying, which would’ve been absolutely routine for her as a woman and a mother, but we wanted to honour the labour, the strength  of that.

Pam: I have one last question. What have you seen or heard or read recently? Please tell us about a piece of art that excites you or has stuck with you.

Lolita: I went to see an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery a few days ago of an Estonian artist called Konrad Mägi. And it was absolutely stunning. He was late 19th, early 20th century. And there were nods to Van Gogh, Gauguin, a little bit of Seurat in the different paintings, but it was very much himself. And the curation was brilliant. One line really struck me in the curation: he was in a certain part of Europe, and he couldn’t afford to get home, or to eat properly, because he was living in “poverty and despair.” And that kind of broke my heart. A lot of these beautiful paintings were on cardboard. So you know often it says “on canvas” or “on paper” but this said “on cardboard.” Anyway, it was a beautiful exhibition.

Erica: I saw a piece of theater maybe six months ago, an adaptation  of Hamlet, called Hamlet, Hail to the Thief, and it was made in collaboration with Radiohead. Thom York from Radiohead wrote the music and they had the musicians on stage in these wonderful, transparent boxes. And I went to it, as I suspect some other people did, thinking it might feel a bit gimmicky.

I went with my daughter and it was her first Hamlet, and it was utterly thrilling. It was young actors playing the young roles, and they were so gloriously angry, and it was just fantastic, the sense of raging against corrupt power. There was some really brilliant choreography from Stephen Hoggett. And they just made it move like the wind. It was exhilarating. I’ve spent a lot of time, as we all have, trying to make sure Shakespeare really comes alive for an audience now, and that was such a bold and brilliant example of doing that.

Pam: Thank you, both!

Who was Shakespeare’s Wife?

Reclaiming a Mystery Woman through a Feminist Lens

By Rebecca J. Ennals

ABOVE: Historic cottage of Anne Hathaway. Photo by Michael Hoffman.

The woman at the center of Hamnet is wild and bold, tender and nurturing, skilled in her arts and possessed of unusual gifts. So powerfully does she emerge from Maggie O’Farrell’s story that the fictionalized Shakespeare, and the audience with him, can’t help asking Who is she?

We have limited factual information on Anne/Agnes Hathaway, the woman who became Shakespeare’s wife, but imaginative speculation has always run wild. From the marriage register, which indicates Anne was eight years older than her teenaged husband, centuries of (male) scholars have chosen to extrapolate that the Bard’s wife was (at 26!) an unattractive spinster, who likely entrapped Our Hero into marriage by getting inconveniently pregnant. In 1823, Thomas De Quincey wrote “Neither do we like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the semblance of having been led astray by a boy who still had two years and a half to run of his minority.” As respected a biographer as S. Shoenbaum describes her in 1977 as “past the bloom of youth” and “growing a bit long in the tooth,” and in 1999, Anthony Holden describes Anne without evidence as a “homely wench” and asks “Did the local farmer’s 26-year-old daughter, only a month after her father’s death, set out to catch herself a much younger husband by seducing him?”

Scholars have also imagined that Shakespeare’s career in London was a way to escape a miserable union. Schoenbaum unnecessarily writes that at the moment he left, his wife was “already over the threshold of thirty,” implying that at this advanced age, she no longer gave him much reason to want to stay, and asks “Did the young husband tick off the weeks and months of the apprentice’s statutory seven-year sentence until the fateful day of his departure from Stratford?” Never did any scholar try to imagine Shakespeare’s wife living with him in London. Despite a letter addressed to a “Mrs. Shakspaire” of London emerging in 1978, it seems to have been largely ignored by scholars until 2016.

From Shakespeare’s will, there was a longheld assumption that by leaving his wife out of his will at first, then amending it to leave her “the second-best bed,” he was punishing her. In 1738, Edmund Malone wrote that to “more strongly mark how little he esteemed her; he had already (as is vulgarly expressed) cut her off, not indeed with a shilling, but with an old bed.” Stephen Greenblatt goes further in his widely-read Will in the World (2004), writing “perhaps as he lay in his bed, his strength ebbing away, Shakespeare… brooded on his relationship to Anne… on the strange, ineradicable distaste for her that he felt deep within him,” and decided to “acknowledge his wife’s existence” with the gift of an undesirable bed. Greenblatt also insists that the verse inscribed on Shakespeare’s tomb “Blest be the man that spares these stones/and curst be he that moves my bones” was put there to prevent anyone from allowing his wife to be buried beside him—“When he thought of the afterlife, the last thing he wanted was to be mingled with the woman he married.” So deep is Greenblatt’s antipathy that he has posited the very few living wives and mothers in Shakespeare’s plays, the insistence on virginity at the time of marriage, and even the villainous pairing of Lord and Lady Macbeth are all connected to Shakespeare’s deep resentment of Anne and by extension, married life in general.

As Bill Bryson wrote in 2007 in Shakespeare: The World as Stage, perhaps in an effort to insert sober judgment into his contemporaries’ assumptions, “We know precious little about Shakespeare’s wife and nothing at all about her temperament, intelligence, religious views, or other personal qualities. We are not even sure if Anne was her usual name.” As Bryson notes, 26 was close to the average age for young women to marry—it was Shakespeare’s age that was unusual—and 40% of brides at the time were pregnant, likely due to having hand-fasted prior to the official ceremony. It seems quite clear that if anyone benefitted from the marriage, it was the young man marrying an independent woman with considerable financial resources. In addition, with his father deeply in debt, Shakespeare seeking employment in London as a player, a job for which he had a clear affinity, seems practical. There is evidence that women were involved in running the theaters in London. As for the infamous will, it’s possible that provision for the widow was assumed and did not need to be added to the document, and that the second-best bed may have been the very one they shared nightly as a couple. No one has challenged the fact that at the end of Shakespeare’s career, he chose to return to Stratford and live with Anne in the beautiful home he had purchased for his family.

Despite a general lack of conclusive evidence, the misogynistic mythology that Anne was the villain of the Bard’s story was difficult to shake until 2007, when the leading feminist and Shakespeare scholar Germaine Greer published Shakespeare’s Wife. Greer takes on centuries of assumptions and presents a sympathetic portrait of a woman who seems to have enraged bardolators simply by existing. She carefully refutes Greenblatt and others, noting that it is just as easy to assume that Anne and Shakespeare had a loving relationship as to assume that it was miserable. “All biographies of Shakespeare are houses built of straw, but there is good straw and rotten straw, and some houses are better built than others. The evidence that is always construed to Anne Hathaway’s disadvantage is capable of other, more fruitful interpretations,” she writes, arguing for an Anne who is a resilient middle-class woman of the period, busy raising children, running a household, and contributing financially to her family.

Maggie O’Farrell’s alternate imagining of Anne as a deeply self-realized woman, more than worthy of desire and admiration, is based very much on Greer’s research. “I got slightly sidetracked by how badly history and scholarship has treated his [Shakespeare’s] wife, the woman we’ve been taught to call Anne Hathaway,” she has said, noting that she was inspired to write the novel in part by the indignation she felt after reading Greer. O’Farrell renames her Agnes, the name mentioned in her father’s will, as if to exorcise remaining bias against her—as O’Farrell puts it, we’ve even been getting her name wrong!

O’Farrell gives Agnes some interesting characteristics not mentioned by Greer but perhaps inspired by her research into the cottage industries that thrived in a town like Stratford. Many households at the time had a “medicine garden,” where women would grow herbs and plants known to be useful for healing. O’Farrell gives Agnes unusual skill in this area, as well as “second sight,” or the ability to see past the present moment into the future. She notes that several key characters in Shakespeare’s plays have access to second sight, see ghosts, and otherwise have a sense of their future fates…what if these ideas came from proximity with someone who possessed this skill?

The neglected evidence of the letter addressed to “Mrs. Shakspair” suggests that not only was Agnes/Anne possibly literate, but that the Shakespeares may have lived together in London for a time, perhaps in the early 1600s. If this is the case, the house of straw comes tumbling down. If she, and possibly her daughters, did indeed spend time in the city, what might they have done there?

Andrew Gurr, in The Shakespeare Company (2004), makes a strong case that the wives and daughters of the London players were actively involved in the financial management of the company. Unable to perform on stage, they served as “gatherers,” a combination of box office employees and ushers, who collected money from the play-goers. “The women were not a minor element in the team,” Gurr argues, giving evidence that Shakespeare’s co-shareholder Henry Condell left to his beloved servant Elizabeth Wheaton “that place or privilege which she now exerciseth and enjoyeth in the houses of the Blackfriers London and the Globe on the Bankside for and during all the term of her natural life”—the place or privilege likely being a job working in the theater. Gurr also notes that “it was not just a working but a familial community,” in which theater families intermarried and players left their shares in the theater to their children, with the assurance that their fellow players would look after their families after their deaths. The wealth that Shakespeare used to purchase his coat of arms and family home in Stratford came from what Gurr calls “the wonderful paradox that the most durable success in an authoritarian society was a thoroughly anti-authoritarian organization,” which seems to have been gender-inclusive as well.

Whether Anne/Agnes and her children ever spent time in London may never be known. What we do know is that due to the lack of literacy among women of the period, we have little access to their thoughts, their grief at the loss of children in infancy and childhood, their daily struggles and their marriages. Into such a vacuum, it has been easy for male voices to insert themselves, Shakespeare’s included. In that case, then, let us end with a few of his words:

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?”
—Constance, King John

Scholars date this play between 1594 and 1596, the year of Hamnet’s death. Shakespeare gives these words to a mother, not a father. Engaging in our own imaginative speculation, could we assume he might have heard the voice of his wife—who perhaps he loved dearly despite all the complications of a long-distance marriage—grieving the death of their beloved son?

KEMI-BO JACOBS (Agnes) Theatre: Coriolanus (National Theatre), The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester), Ocean at the End of the Lane (West End and National Theatre Tour), All My Sons (Manchester Royal Exchange and UK Tour), Wild East (Young Vic), The Winter’s Tale (RSC), LIVE Theatre: All White Everything But Me. Screen: A Million Days, The Letter for The King (Netflix), The Great (Hulu), McMafia, Thirteen, Delicious, London Has Fallen, The Honorable Woman, Inspector Lewis, Doctor Who, The Agency. Kemi-Bo is also a writer and recipient of the Peter Shaffer award. She trained at LAMDA.

RORY ALEXANDER (William) British actor Rory Alexander can currently be seen starring as a young Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser in the highly anticipated Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood for Starz, alongside Harriet Slater, Jamie Roy, and Tony Curran and is now in production on S2. His character is a key figure in the Outlander universe, originally portrayed by Duncan LaCroix. In this prequel, the story explores the lives and relationships of the parents of both Jamie and Claire, set in two distinct time periods. Further cementing his growing presence in the industry, Rory was longlisted for a BIFA for Best Breakthrough Performance for his leading role as Man in feature film Inland opposite Mark Rylance and Kathryn Hunter. The film explores the fractured identity of a young man after the mysterious disappearance of his mother and premiered to rave reviews at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival with the Guardian praising the film as an “enigmatic, genre-defying picture”: he won best actor at Nót Film Festival 2024. He has recently completed filming on Justin Chadwick’s latest feature Untamed with Emily Barber and Matthew Steer. Rory can also be seen playing the role of Boogie in Danny Boyle’s Pistol alongside Louis Partridge, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maisie Williams for FX/Hulu (US) and Disney+(UK). The series follows the Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and the band’s rise to prominence and notoriety. Other notable film and television credits include Element Film’s Dark Windows, DarkGame with Ed Westwick, Kenny Swinney in Sky’s Then You Run with Leah McNamara, Eric in Amazon’s Alex Rider S2 with Vicky McClure, and Netflix’s Anxious People. He trained at Bristol Old Vic.

TROY ALEXANDER (Bartholomew; U/S Physician) Stage credits include: Passion Fruit (Barbican), Slave Play (West End), Midsummer Night’s Dream (York Theatre Royal), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (West End), The Visit (National Theatre) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (English Theatre Frankfurt). Television credits include: Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV), Extraordinary S1 (Disney+), Feel Good S2 (Netflix) and Not Going Out (BBC). Film credits include: The Lair (dir. Neil Marshall).

NIGEL BARRETT (John, Will Kempe) Theatre includes: Cymbeline, Taming of the Shrew, Princess Essex (Shakespeare’s Globe), Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Complicite), Julius Caesar (RSC), Britannicus (Lyric Hammersmith), Living Newspaper (Royal Court), The Mysteries (Royal Exchange Manchester), Party Skills for the End of the World (Manchester International Festival), Kingdom Come, Richard III – An Arab Tragedy (RSC), Margate/Dreamland, Get Stuff Break Free, The Eye Test (National Theatre), Attack of the Wolfdogs, The Show In Which Hopefully Nothing Happens, Baddies the Musical (Unicorn), The Body, A Mirror for Princes (The Barbican), Cyrano de Bergerac (Northern Stage), Kidstown, The Passion, Praxis Makes Perfect, Shelflife (National Theatre Wales/Berlin Festspiele), There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Soho Theatre), A Speakers Progress (Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord Paris/Brooklyn Academy of Music), Pericles (Regent’s Park), SHUNT. Film and TV includes: One Hundred & Eighty (Dark Avenue Film Ltd), Doctors, Casualty, The Mysteries, Coast, The Lens (BBC), Dream Agency (Forest Fringe/Arthaus), Cycles (Toynbee Films), The Gospel of Us ( Welsh Film Council), Hairy Eyeball (Channel 4), England My England (Film 4), Robin Hood (Squint Opera), Better Than Life (Telecaster). Awards: Stage Award, Best Actor (Pops); Samuel Beckett Theatre Award (The Body).

AJANI CABEY (Hamnet, Thomas Day) Training: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Theatre whilst training: Absolute Scenes, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Romeo and Juliet, Loam, Jumpers for Goalposts, A View from the Bridge, Pickney (short film). Screen credits include: The Gathering (World/ITV), Alex Rider 3 (Amazon), The Fence, Pickney (Blak Wave Productions), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (BOVTS).

ELIZABETH CONNICK (Tilly; U/S Eliza, Jude, Physician’s Wife) is a London-based writer, actress and director. She trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and most recently appeared as Hayley in the Offie-nominated The Pitchfork Disney at the King’s Head theatre. Other stage credits include Gun to your head (HighTide and the Dakota Collective tour), Girls with Wings and Trauma (Bush Theatre), Something as Raw as a Funeral (Marylebone Theatre), and The Jew (Kiln Theatre). Her screen work includes Dalgliesh Series 3 (Channel 5), Tumtum (BFI/Sourpuss), Burn (Klara Films), Maternal (NFTS), and Seed of Doubt (NFTS).

SAFFRON DEY (Judith) Theatre: Inertia (Kings Playground), Blacklist – R&D (Mercury Theatre), The Brenda Line – Rehearsed Reading “Karen” Dir. Danielle Kassarate (National Theatre Studio), Ain’t i a woman? (Tower Theatre), Top Girls (Liverpool Everyman). Theatre whilst at ALRA: Consensual, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Laramie Project, Antigone, Boy Gets Girl. Television: Call The Midwife. Short film: The Angry Man and The Washing Machine, Flying Monkey, Lungs, Estate. Commercial: Un-Safe Spaces Now (Missing Link Films), Bloom & Wild (Academy Films), Aldi – Teatime Takedown (McCann London), EE – Best Seats In The House (Saatchi & Saatchi), Bose: Live Loud, Love Quiet (Pretty Bird), BT Infinity and Beyond (AMVBBDO).

HEATHER FORSTER (Eliza; U/S Caterina) Heather trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She made her professional stage debut in The Book Of Dust: La Belle Sauvage at the Bridge Theatre directed by Nicholas Hytner. Other stage performances include: We Could All Be Perfect at the Sheffield Crucible, Run, Rebel for Pilot Theatre. Her TV credits include: DI RAY (Series reg, S2, ITV), Call The Midwife (BBC), Grace (ITV), Casualty, Doctors (BBC), Dirty Business (Channel 4). Film includes: The Colour Room.

KARL HAYNES (Ned, Henry Condell, Physician; U/S John, Will Kempe, Burbage, Father John) Theatre includes: War Horse (National Theatre Productions), Hamnet (RSC & West End), Enemy of the People, Wonderland, Shebeen, Of Mice and Men, The Ashes (Nottingham Playhouse), Passion, (Theatre du Chatelet, Paris), Warhorse (National Theatre UK, Ireland, South Africa/ Tenth Anniversary/ International Tours), Much Ado About Nothing, (Colchester Mercury), Seeing The Lights (New Vic), Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Macbeth and 1984, (Hull Truck), Crying in the Chapel, (Fink On/Contact Theatre), Wasteland and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (New Perspectives), Look Back in Anger (Harrogate/Oldham), Bloodtide, Road, Lord of the Flies (Pilot Theatre/ Theatre Royal York/Lyric Hammersmith), Macbeth, (Theatre Royal York), Aeroplane Bones, (Bristol Old Vic), Waking and Sleeping Dogs (Red Ladder), We’re Going On A Bear Hunt (Polka/ Lakeside Arts), Glory, (Theatre Clwyd). Television credits include: The long shadow, Sherwood, World on Fire, Gunpowder, Happy Valley, Doctors, The Chase, Holby City, Most Mysterious Murders, Grange Hill, North and South, Eastenders, Casualty (BBC), Downton Abbey, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Boy Meets Girl, Blue Murder, The Royal, Heartbeat, Cold Feet (ITV), Ghost Squad, North Square (ch4) Urban Gothic (ch5). Feature Films: When The Lights Went Out, The Devil Outside, The Colour Room, Apartment 7a. Radio: Out of the Blue BBC Radio 4.

AVA HINDS-JONES (Susanna; U/S Agnes) Ava trained at LAMDA. She starred in Ben Wheatley’s TV series, Generation Z (Channel 4), Silent Witness (BBC) and the upcoming series, Believe Me (ITV).

NICKI HOBDAY (Joan; U/S Mary) Forced Entertainment shows: Out of Order (International tour), 12am: Awake and Looking Down (Festival d’Automne, Paris), Under Bright Light (PACT, Essen), And on the Thousandth Night (international tour), Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare (international tour), Speak Bitterness (MCA Chicago) and The Last Adventures (Asia Culture Centre, South Korea). Other theatre work includes: Heartbreaking Final (Wiener Festwochen, Vienna), ’Trainers: or The Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere of this Most Disagreeable Season’ (The Gate Theatre), No Planet B (Jacksons Lane).

PENNY LAYDEN (Mary) RSC: The Tempest, Roberto Zucco and Measure for Measure. Theatre: Coven (Kiln), London Tide, Paradise, Jellyfish, Macbeth, My Country, Another World, An Oak Tree, Everyman, Edward II, Table and Timon of Athens (NT), The Ocean at the End of the Lane (NT/West End), Pygmalion, The Lorax and Cinderella (Old Vic), Medea (Soho Place), A Christmas Carol (Rose, Kingston), Cleft (Rough Magic/Galway Festival), Bright Phoenix (Liverpool Everyman), Beryl (West Yorkshire Playhouse), 66 Books (Bush), Lidless (West End/Hightide), Draw Me Close, Vernon God Little and The Art of Random Whistling (Young Vic), The Bacchae, Mary Barton, Electra and Mayhem (Manchester Royal Exchange), Dancing at Lughnasa (Birmingham Rep), Romeo and Juliet, The Antipodes and Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Globe), Comfort Me With Apples (Hampstead), Assassins (Sheffield Crucible), Seasons Greetings and Popcorn (Liverpool Playhouse), The Laramie Project (West End), A Passage to India, The Magic Toyshop and Jane Eyre (Shared Experience), Maid Marian and her Merry Men (Bristol Old Vic). Television: Supacell, Father Brown, Belgravia, My Country, Grantchester, Dark Angel, EastEnders, Prisoners’ Wives, Call the Midwife, Land Girls, Sirens, South Riding, Silent Witness, Poppy Shakespeare, Bad Mother’s Handbook, Waterloo Road, No Angels, Murphy’s Law, Fat Friends, Outlaws, M.I.T and Casualty. Film: Broken and The Libertine.

MATILDA MCCARTHY (Jude, Physician’s Wife, Will’s Landlady, Caterina; U/S Eliza, Joan) Matilda trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and drama. She’s thrilled to be making her RSC debut. Theatre credits include: BROS (Kings Heads Theatre), A Very Expensive Poison (Chapter Theatre Cardiff), Dissonance (Young Vic), DNA-I (Criterion Theatre).

BERT SEYMOUR (Burbage, Father John; U/S William, Ned) Bert Seymour is a LAMDA-trained actor and linguist. His recent TV work includes: Bridgerton (Netflix), Masters of The Air (Apple TV+), The Crown (Netflix), Say Nothing (FX), The Diplomat (Sky), The Girl Before (BBC), Endeavour (ITV), and Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (Disney+). He will soon appear in the French feature film LES PARFAITS (Dir. Ludovic Bernard), Mike Newell’s latest feature THE BITTER END, as well as the independent feature RED FLAGS (Dir. Bradley Porter.) On stage Bert recently played ‘Caesar’ in Anthony & Cleopatra (Dir. Blanche McIntyre) at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, ‘Andrew Carter’ in Pressure (Dir. John Dove) in the West End, and Bertie Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (Dir. Patrick Marlowe.) Bert speaks fluent French and Italian, high level Mandarin, and signs Level 3 BSL. He also performs regular Improvised comedy, occasional stand-up, and sings in a folk/shanty band.

HAYDN BURKE (U/S Bartholomew, Hamnet, Thomas Day, Henry Condell) Training: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Recent credits include: Warhorse (UK Tour), Hamnet (RSC & West End), and The Gunpowder Plot (immersive) directed by Hannah Price.

THALIA GAMBE (U/S Susanna, Judith, Tilly) Thalia Gambe trained at Rose Bruford College of Acting, graduating in 2024. Credits include: Punk Rock (Stratford East Theatre) and Blue Corridor 15 (BBC Creating a Scene).

MAGGIE O’FARRELL (Writer) is the author of Hamnet, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, both Sunday Times No. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand that First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave, This Must Be the Place, and The Marriage Portrait, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022. She is also the author of three books for children, Where Snow Angels Go, The Boy Who Lost His Spark and When the Stammer Came to Stay. Her new novel, Land, will be published in June 2026. Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, she now lives in Edinburgh.

LOLITA CHAKRABARTI, OBE (Adaptor) is an award-winning playwright and actress. Writing includes: The stage adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s modern classic Hamnet (RSC/ Garrick Theatre West End, US tour); stage adaptation of Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi (Sheffield Theatres/Wyndham’s Theatre West End/ART in Boston/Broadway, New York/UK, US and International tours); Hymn (Almeida/Sky Arts and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); Red Velvet (Tricycle/ St Ann’s Warehouse, New York/Garrick Theatre, West End); Invisible Cities (Manchester International Festival and Brisbane Festival); Calmer (BBC Radio 4); Lolita curated The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Last Seen: Joy (Slung Low/Almeida). As Dramaturg: Message in a Bottle (ZooNation/Sadler’s Wells); Sylvia (The Old Vic, UK tour and Royal Albert Hall 2026). Acting includes: Wendy and Peter Pan (Barbican), The Hunt (Almeida at St Ann’s Warehouse, New York), Summer 1954 (Bath Theatre Royal and UK tour), This Thing of Darkness (BBC Radio 4), Silo (Apple TV), Vigil, Showtrial, The Casual Vacancy (BBC); Fanny and Alexander (The Old Vic); Wheel of Time (Amazon Prime); Born to Kill (Channel 4); Gertrude in Hamlet (RADA directed by Kenneth Branagh); Riviera (Sky); Criminal (Netflix); Screw (Channel 4). Awards: Lolita’s debut play Red Velvet earned her the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright 2012, the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright 2013, an AWA award for Arts and Culture 2013 and several other notable nominations including an Olivier nomination. Red Velvet has had over twenty five productions worldwide and is now studied in schools and universities in the UK and US. Her adaptation of Life of Pi has won numerous awards including five Olivier awards in 2022 of which Lolita won Best Play, the WhatsonStage Award for Best Play, four UK Theatre Awards, including Best Play and three Tony Awards in 2023. Lolita was awarded an OBE in 2022 for her Services to Drama.

ERICA WHYMAN (Director) RSC: Erica joined the RSC as Deputy Artistic Director in January 2013, responsible for new work, The Other Place and co-created Shakespeare productions in collaboration with regional UK theatres. She stepped up as Acting Artistic Director in 2021 and led the Company as it recovered from the pandemic. Her single year of programming included My Neighbour Totoro, the Power Shifts season of Shakespeare, The Empress, Falkland Sound, Cowbois, Box of Delights, Fair Maid of the West and Hamnet. She went freelance in June 2023. RSC directing credits include: Revolt. She said. Revolt again. by Alice Birch for the Other Place, The Traverse and Shoreditch Town Hall, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, The Christmas Truce by Phil Porter, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation, Romeo and Juliet for which Ball Gill won the Ian Charleson Award, and The Winter’s Tale with Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Hermione (for the BBC). In the Swan Erica directed Hecuba by Marina Carr, The Seven Acts of Mercy by Anders Lustgarten, Miss Littlewood by Sam Kenyon, A Museum in Baghdad by Hannah Khalil and Ben and Imo by Mark Ravenhill. In 2021 she directed Faith, a major city-wide co-production between the RSC and the Coventry City of Culture Trust. Trained: Philippe Gaulier in Paris and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School who awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in 2015. Erica was Chief Executive of Northern Stage in Newcastle upon Tyne from 2005 to 2012. Under her stewardship Northern Stage became known for ambitious international partnerships, the development of experimental new work especially by young theatre makers and for bold interpretations of modern classics. In 2012 she won the TMA award for Theatre Manager of the Year and was awarded the OBE for services to British Theatre. Erica was also Artistic Director of Southwark Playhouse (1998-2000) and Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre, London (2000-2004) Directing credits for Northern Stage include: Son of Man, Ruby Moon, Our Friends in the North, A Christmas Carol, A Doll’s House, Look Back in Anger, Hansel and Gretel, Oh! What a Lovely War, The Wind in the Willows, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (nominated for Best Director at the 2011 TMA Awards), The Borrowers (Best Family Production TMA awards 2013), and the UK premiere of Oh, the Humanity? by Will Eno (Edinburgh/Soho Theatre). Other credits include: The Birthday Party (Sheffield Crucible); The Shadow of a Boy (National Theatre); The Flu Season, Marieluise, Witness, Les Justes (Gate); The Winter’s Tale, The Glass Slipper (Southwark Playhouse). In November 2016, Erica was the recipient of the Peter Brook Special Achievement Award. Erica is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford where she is contributing to the co-creative strand of the new cultural programme. She is developing a new musical about the Norse Gods and a new play with Good Chance about the Chagos Islands. In 2027 she will direct Serse for Garsington Opera. She is Chair of Improbable.

TOM PIPER (Set and Costume Designer) RSC: Associate Artist. Tom was Associate Designer at the RSC for 10 years and has designed over 55 productions for the Company. Recent productions include: The Tempest, Faith (RSC/Coventry City of Culture), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet (Stratford/UK tour). Theatre includes: Much Ado About Nothing & Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet (Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Richard III, Tempest, and As You Like It (Bridge Project – BAM), The Wind in the Wilton’s, The Child in the Snow, A Christmas Carol, The Box of Delights (Wilton’s Music Hall); Medea (Edinburgh International Festival/National Theatre Scotland); The Purists, Girl on an Altar, White Teeth (Kiln Theatre); Macbeth (an Undoing), The Scent of Roses, Lyceum Christmas Tales, The Duchess (of Malfi), Rhinoceros, Mrs Puntila, Hay Fever (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh); Nora: A Doll’s House (Young Vic); Endgame, King Lear, Hamlet, The Libertine, Nora, and Small Acts of Love (Glasgow Citizens); Rusalka, Pelléas Et Mélisande, Eugene Onegin, Don Giovanni and Queen of Spades (Garsington Opera); Frankenstein, Hedda Gabler (Northern Stage); iHo, The Haystack (Hampstead); Harrogate (HighTide/Royal Court); Cyrano de Bergerac (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh/ Citizens Theatre/National heatre Scotland); Carmen La Cubana (Le Chatelet, Paris); Red Velvet (West End/Tricycle/ New York); A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes (Tricycle); The King’s Speech (Birmingham Rep/Chichester Festival Theatre/UK tour); Orfeo (Royal Opera House); Tamburlaine the Great (Theatre for a New Audience, New York); The Great Wave (National Theatre); The Turn of the Screw (Wilton’s Music Hall/OperaGlass Works film). Tom was Associate Designer at the Kiln Theatre 2020-22. Installation Design includes: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London. Tom received an MBE for services to Theatre and First World War commemorations. Exhibitions include: Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic, Curtain Up (V&A/Lincoln Centre New York); Shakespeare: Staging the World (British Museum). Awards include: Olivier Award for Best Costume Design for The Histories (RSC); South Bank Arts Award for Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, Critics’ Circle Award Scotland for Twelfth Night (Dundee Rep) and Macbeth (An Undoing) (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh).

PREMA MEHTA (Lighting Designer) is the founder of Stage Sight. She is a fellow of The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Association of British Theatre Technicians  Theatre includes: Cruise, Mad House, The Comeback, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (West End); Last Days (Royal Opera House & Los Angeles Philharmonic); Mother Goose (UK tour); Further Than the Furthest Thing, Things of Dry Hours (Young Vic); Hymn (Almeida/Sky Arts); What If If Only, A History of Water in the Middle East, Superhoe (Royal Court); Cow | Deer (Royal Court); The Dumb Waiter (The Old Vic); Swive [Elizabeth], Bartholomew Fair, Richard II (Shakespeare’s Globe, Candle Consultant); Nest (St. Aidan’s Nature Reserve, Leeds 2023); The Taxidermist’s Daughter (Chichester Festival Theatre); Super High Resolution (Soho Theatre); Studio Créole (Manchester International Festival); Of Kith and Kin (Sheffield Crucible/ Bush Theatre); Fame (UK tour/Peacock Theatre); East Is East (Northern Stage/ Nottingham Playhouse); Talking Heads (Leeds Playhouse); Chicken Soup (Sheffield Crucible); Holes, Hercules (Nottingham Playhouse); Mighty Atoms (Hull Truck); A Passage to India (Royal & Derngate/UK tour); A Christmas Carol, The Wizard of Oz (Storyhouse); The York Suffragettes, Murder, Margaret and Me (York Theatre Royal); Love, Lies and Taxidermy, Growth, I Got Superpowers for My Birthday (Paines Plough); The Effect (English Theatre of Frankfurt); The Electric Hills (Liverpool Everyman); The Great Extension (Theatre Royal Stratford East); The Canterville Ghost, Huddle (Unicorn); Wipers (UK tour). Dance includes: Bells (Mayor of London, 2012); Spill (Düsseldorf); Sufi Zen (Royal Festival Hall); Dhamaka (O2 Arena); Maaya (Westminster Hall). Extended and virtual reality: Museum of Austerity BFI London Film Festival); Adult Children (Donmar Warehouse). Other work: A-List Party Area (Madame Tussauds, London); Football City, Art United (Aviva Studios).

OĞUZ KAPLANGI (Composer) is a composer and sound designer based in Edinburgh, who primarily works in theatre, film, television and advertising. Oğuz moved to the UK in 2018 and that same year he was awarded with the Best Music and Sound in Scotland Theatre at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland for his work in Zinnie Harris’ adaptation of Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros. RSC: A Museum in Baghdad, Hamnet, #WeAreArrested. Theatre includes: Macbeth (an Undoing), The Duchess (of Malfi), Mrs Puntila and Her Man Matti, Rhinoceros (Royal Lyceum Theatre); Still, The Monstrous Heart, Class Act (Traverse Theatre); Arabian Nights (Bristol Old Vic); Treasure Island (Cumbernauld Theatre); The Alchemist (Tron Theatre); 1984, Let the Right One In, How to Hold Your Breath, Frozen, Yangınlar (adaptation of Incendies) (DOT); Meet Me at Dawn (DOT/Arcola Theatre); Positive Stories for Negative Times (Wonder Fools). Television includes: Wahlburgers, Kanaga, The Class, Donnie Loves Jenny, Nightwatch, Lock Up, Sexy Beasts, According to Alex, Killer Kids, Young Marvels, Big Brew Theory, Bizarre Foods. Film includes: Make Me A King, Chasing the Wind, Last Summer, Birthday, Swipe Right, A Glimpse, Bad Cat. Dance: A Wee Journey (Edinburgh International Festival 2022 / Scotland Tour 2023). Other work includes: Albums and soundtracks: RESIST, 1984, Last Summer, End Your Groan, Yangınlar, Don’t Walk Alone, Rhinoceros, Meet Me at Dawn, Nocturne of Pruva, Istanbul Calling series, Nudge Nudge (Zi Punt), Are You Satisfied? (Rebel Moves).

SIMON BAKER (Sound Designer) RSC: Matilda The Musical (Olivier Award for Best Sound; also UK and Ireland tour); Don John (also UK tour); The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Roaring Girl. Theatre includes: Girl From the North Country (US/UK/Ireland/Australia tour); The Secret Life of Bees (Almeida); Hex (National Theatre); Woman in Mind (Chichester Festival Theatre); Wuthering Heights (Wise Children/UK tour); Bagdad Café (Wise Children/The Old Vic); A Christmas Carol, Groundhog Day, Lungs, Present Laughter (The Old Vic); Malory Towers (Wise Children/Bristol Old Vic/UK tour); Standing at the Sky’s Edge (Sheffield Crucible); Wise Children (Wise Children/The Old Vic/UK tour/BBC film); Brief Encounter (UK tour/Broadway); The Moderate Soprano, The Birthday Party, Shakespeare in Love, Mojo, Boeing-Boeing, Loserville, Deathtrap, La Bête, Groundhog Day, The Caretaker, The Master Builder, Future Conditional, High Society, Electra, The Real Thing, The Norman Conquests, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Lord of the Rings, The Grinning Man (West End); A Christmas Carol, Girl From the North Country (West End/Broadway/Canada); Complicit, Hedda Gabler, Pinocchio, The Amen Corner, The Light Princess, Tristan & Yseult (Off-Broadway); The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, The Little Match Girl (UK tour); Romantics Anonymous (UK/US tour); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe). Live-streamed theatre: A Christmas Carol, Faith Healer, Three Kings, Lungs (The Old Vic in Camera); The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk (Wise Children/Kneehigh/Bristol Old Vic); Romantics Anonymous (Wise Children/ Bristol Old Vic). Awards: Olivier for Best Sound for Matilda The Musical. Simon is a Fellow of the Guildhall School, Associate Artist for The Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre and part of Emma Rice’s new movement, Wise Children.

AYŞE TASHKIRAN (Movement Director) RSC: Associate Artist. Hamnet (2023, 2024), As You Like It (2019, 2013), The Provoked Wife, Romeo and Juliet, The Duchess of Malfi, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Doctor Faustus, Hecuba, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, The White Devil, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard III, King John, Measure for Measure, Little Eagles, The Gods Weep, Days of Significance. Trained: University of Bristol and Jacques Lecoq, Paris. Theatre includes: Anna Karenina, The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester Festival Theatre); Never Let Me Go ( Rose theatre/National Tour); And Then There Were None (UK/China/Ireland tour); Mary, Belongings, Folk (Hampstead Theatre); The Sleep Show, The Dark (Peut-Être Theatre/UK tour); Dido’s Bar (Dash Arts/UK tour); Let Your Hands Sing in the Silence (Projekt Europa); I DO, Ballad of Thamesmead, Kiss Marry Kill and Skin Hunger (Dante or Die); [BLANK] (Donmar Warehouse); The Wolves (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Shakespeare in Love (national tour); Othello (Sam Wanamaker at Shakespeare’s Globe); Fantastic Mr Fox (Nuffield Southampton/national and international tour); Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Crucible Theatre/English Touring Theatre national tour); The Government Inspector (Birmingham Rep/national tour); The York Minster Mystery Plays (York Minster); Barbarians, Ma Vie en Rose (Young Vic); Shh...Bang! (Peut-Être Theatre/national tour); Tidy Up (Peut-Être Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Chairs (Theatre Royal Bath); The Tempest (Gdansk Shakespeare Festival); Sarajevo Story, Brixton Stories (Lyric Hammersmith); Stacy (Trafalgat Studios); Macbeth (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); La Songe du 21 Juin (French national tour); Here’s What I Did With My Body One Day (Pleasance/national tour); Chi Chi Bunichi (tour). Opera includes: The Sleeper (Welsh National Opera Max, Cardiff Coal Exchange); Sweeney Todd (Welsh National Opera Max, Millennium Centre); The Beggar’s Opera (Blackheath Concert Halls); L’Orfeo (Greenwich). Puppetry includes: Feast on the Bridge (Thames Festival); Silent Tide (ICA); Forget Me Not (London International Mime Festival). Publications include: Movement Directors in Contemporary Theatre: Conversations on Craft, introduction to The Actor and His Body by Litz Pisk, ‘Movement direction as R&D’ in Research and Development in British Theatre; ‘British Movement Directors’ in The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq.

KATE WATERS (Fight Director) RSC: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, All is But Fantasy, Henry V, Venice Preserved, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Two Noble Kinsmen, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Love’s Sacrifice, Doctor Faustus. Theatre includes: Regular work at the National Theatre, RSC, Donmar Warehouse, Shakespeare’s Globe and in the West End. Kate has also worked in many of the country’s regional theatres. Recent work includes: High Noon, Othello, Stereophonic, The Great Gatsby, Barcelona, The Hills of California, Tina - The Tina Turner Musical, The Maids, The Pride, The Hothouse, East is East (West End); Evita, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest (Jamie Lloyd Company); Sunset Boulevard, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Ruling Class, Macbeth, Richard III (ATG & Jamie Lloyd Company); Bacchae, Hamlet, Alterations, Grapes of Wrath, The Father and the Assassin, The Effect, Small Island, Much Ado About Nothing, Frankenstein, One Man Two Guvnors, War Horse, Hamlet, Othello, Women Beware Women, The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre); Arcadia, The Brightening Air (The Old Vic); Richard II, Guys & Dolls, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre); Animal Farm (Stratford East); Macbeth (Wessex Grove); King Lear, Portia Coughlan, The Secret Life of Bees, The Tragedy of Macbeth (Almeida); Treasure Island, Starter for Ten (Bristol Old Vic); A Knight’s Tale (Manchester Opera House); Private Lives, Clyde’s, Henry V (Donmar); Sweat (Donmar & Gielgud Theatre); Julius Caesar and Henry IV (Donmar, Kings Cross Theatre & St Annes Warehouse, Brooklyn); Little Shop of Horrors (Sheffield Theatres); Rigoletto (Welsh National Opera); Lord of the Flies (Leeds Playhouse), Peter Pan, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads (Chichester Festival Theatre). Screen includes: Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks, on all of which she is a regular fight director. She has recently filmed: My Policeman (Amazon Studios); Death of England (Sky Arts/ National Theatre – BAFTA nominee for Best Single Drama); Romeo and Juliet (Sky Arts/PBS America/National Theatre); Pondlife, Making Noises Quietly (Open Palm Films). Short: Gym (RADA). Other work: Kate is a qualified boxing coach and coaches at Rathbone Amateur Boxing Club.

AMY BALL (Casting Director) Theatre includes: The Weir (Harold Pinter); Small Hotel (Theatre Royal Bath); Mrs Warren’s Profession (Garrick); The Hunger Games (Troubadour); The Years (Harold Pinter); Unicorn (Garrick); Slave Play (Noel Coward); The Hills of California (Harold Pinter); Jerusalem (Apollo); Leopoldstadt (Wyndham’s); Uncle Vanya (Harold Pinter Theatre); The Son (Duke of York’s/Kiln Theatre); The Night of the Iguana (Noël Coward Theatre); Sweat (Gielgud/Donmar Warehouse); Rosmersholm (Duke of York’s); True West (Vaudeville); The Ferryman (Royal Court/ Gielgud/Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre); The Moderate Soprano (Hampstead/Duke of York’s); The Birthday Party, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Harold Pinter Theatre); Consent (National Theatre/Harold Pinter Theatre); The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Theatre Royal Haymarket); Hangmen (Royal Court/Wyndham’s/Atlantic Theatre Company); Berberian Sound Studio (Donmar Warehouse); Women Beware the Devil, Daddy, The Hunt, Shipwreck, Dance Nation, Albion (Almeida); Stories, Exit the King (National Theatre); White Noise, A Very Very Very Dark Matter (Bridge); The Brothers Size (Young Vic); Maryland, ear for eye, Girls & Boys, Cyprus Avenue (Royal Court).

MARIUS ARNOLD-CLARKE (Company Stage Manager) Originally performing as a classical ballet dancer, Marius moved into Stage and Production management in 2006. He has worked with internationally renowned directors and choreographers from around the world; touring large-scale dance, theatre and musical-theatre production for the past two decades. His most recent works include: productions for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Sutra, Milonga), American choreographer Wiliam Forsythe (A Quiet Evening of Dance), Rob Ashford’s Quadrophenia, Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring, Universal Music’s Message in a Bottle, Australia’s internationally-celebrated Burn the Floor, and the National Theatre Production of The Lehman Trilogy.

CHLOË FORESTIER-WALKER (Deputy Stage Manager) Credits include Ohio (Bristol Old Vic; Young Vic, London), Garry Starr: Classic Penguins (Soho Theatre, London; Underbelly, Edinburgh), Ben and Imo (Orange Tree Theatre, London), Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen (Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, Adelaide Festival Centre, Australia; Bush Theatre, London; Summerhall, Edinburgh), Aladdin (Watford Palace Theatre), Bellringers (Hampstead Theatre, London), Skeleton Crew (Donmar Warehouse, London), Plaza Suite (Savoy Theatre, London), Guys & Dolls (Bridge Theatre, London), Straight Line Crazy (Bridge Theatre, London).

MEGAN MCCLINTOCK* (Stage Manager) Resident Stage Manager Megan McClintock’s favorite A.C.T. credits include Co-Founders, Big Data, A Whynot Christmas Carol, The Wizard of Oz, Wakey Wakey, A Walk on the Moon, Between Riverside and Crazy, A Little Night Music, and Indian Ink. Other Bay Area credits include productions at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, The Curran, Aurora Theatre Company, and Marin Theatre Company. Regionally she has worked at St. Ann’s Warehouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, McCarter Theatre Center, and Arena Stage. She has a BA in theater and history from Willamette University.

ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a leading global theatre company that sparks local, national and international conversations that build connections, create opportunities and bring joy. We passionately believe that great storytelling can change the world, and that theatre offers its own unique form of storytelling: it’s live and shared, and transforms a group of strangers into audiences who, together, experience a story come to life in front of their eyes. We collaborate with the most exciting artists to tell the stories of our time, and through a range of programmes we nurture the talent of the future. We perform on three stages in our home in Stratford-upon-Avon, in London and in communities and schools across the country and around the world. Our transformative Creative Learning and Engagement programmes reach over half a million young people each year.

NEAL STREET PRODUCTIONS Neal Street is one of the UK’s most respected production companies, producing film, television and theatre. Founded 2003 by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris and Caro Newling, it makes distinctive, popular award-winning projects on both sides of the Atlantic. TV includes Call the Midwife, The Franchise, Britannia, Penny Dreadful, The Hollow Crown. Films include Mendes’ Empire of Light, 1917 and Revolutionary Road; Hamnet and The Magic Faraway Tree. Currently in development The Beatles project for Sony Pictures – four distinct theatrical feature films about the greatest band in history, conceived and directed by Sam Mendes. Theatre originated by Neal Street includes The Lehman Trilogy, The Motive and the Cue, The Hills of California, Hamnet, Local Hero, The Ferryman, Shrek the Musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Bridge Project 2010 – 2012, Three Days of Rain, The Vertical Hour. West End transfers include The Fifth Step, Walking with Ghosts, The Moderate Soprano, This House, The Painkiller, Merrily We Roll Along, South Downs/The Browning Version, Red, Enron, Sunday in the Park with George, Mary Stuart. The theatre slate is overseen by Newling together with producer, Georgia Gatti. In 2015 Neal Street moved under the umbrella of parent company, All3Media, which is owned by RedBird IMI. nealstreetproductions.com

PEMBERLEY PRODUCTIONS is a producing, general management, and tour booking company based in New York/Chicago. We collaborate with overseas companies and US-based productions to bring theatre across North America as well as internationally. Highlights include the long-running West End production of The Woman in Black (off-Broadway at NYC’s McKittrick Hotel and across the US); The Lehman Trilogy (also at A.C.T.), the US Tour of Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights; the US Tour of the National Theatre’s An Inspector Calls; the Center Theatre Group production of The Secret Garden; and the US Tour of The Last Ship (starring STING). In the 25/26 Season, Pemberley is also looking after Kim’s Convenience (US Tour, also at A.C.T.), Heathers The Musical (off-Broadway), Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile (US Tour), and more. For information on upcoming tours and projects in development, visit pemberleyproductions.com

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