Stephen Unwin is Artistic Director of the Rose Theatre in Kingston. He founded English Touring Theatre in 1993, where his Shakespeare productions include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, As You Like It, Henry IV, Parts One and Two, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. He is the winner of the 2003 Sam Wanamaker Shakespeare Globe Award. He directed Kenneth McLeish's translations of A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder. He has directed more than fifty theatre and opera productions for the Royal National Theatre, English National Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Court Theatre and many others. His work has been seen at the Donmar Warehouse, the Almeida Theatre and the Old Vic. He has co-written A Pocket Guide to Twentieth Century Drama and A Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg (Faber & Faber), So You Want to be a Theatre Director? (Nick Hern Books) and A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht (Methuen).

Michael Pennington has been a leading British actor for over thirty years, playing a wide variety of roles in London's West End and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and his own English Shakespeare Company, which he co-founded in 1986. He has also directed in England, Japan and the United States. His books include A Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg (with Stephen Unwin), The English Shakespeare Company - The Wars of the Roses, Hamlet: A User's Guide, Twelfth Night: A User's Guide, A Midsummer Night's Dream: A User's Guide, Sweet William and Are You There, Crocodile?: Inventing Anton Chekhov. 'It is fortunate that so remarkable a writer and man has attracted so remarkable an actor.' Sunday Telegraph on Michael Pennington's one-man show on Anton Chekhov.