Susan Croft is a writer, historian, curator and researcher. She worked in the USA with the Omaha Magic Theatre in the early 1980s, returning to Britain to work as a dramaturg with small-scale theatre companies and founding New Playwrights Trust, of which she was Director from 1986-89. She taught Creative Arts (Performance) at Nottingham Trent University and then was Senior Research Fellow in Performance Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University to 1996. From 1997-2005 she was Curator of Contemporary Performance at the Theatre Museum where she worked on the National Video Archive of Performance. She has written extensively on women playwrights, including: 'She Also Wrote Plays: an International Guide to Women Playwrights from the 10th to the 21st Century' (Faber and Faber, 2001). She also runs the project Unfinished Histories: Recording the History of Alternative Theatre, with Jessica Higgs, a major initiative to record oral histories and preserve archives of the alternative theatre movement from the 1960s to the 1980s.For Aurora Metro Books, her other books are 'Classic Plays by Women' (2010), 'Votes for Women and other play's (2009) and 'Art, Theatre and Women's Suffrage', written jointly with Irene Cockroft (2010). Cheryl is a film-maker, writer and editor who worked at the BBC for several years and then taught film-making at the University of Westminster. Her acclaimed music documentary 'Rock n Roll Island' aired on BBC4 in 2020 and was named a Sunday Times Critics Choice programme. In addition, she has created a publishing company, publishing over 200 international writers. As a writer, she has won the Croydon Warehouse International Playwriting Competition, been longlisted for the Bruntwood Playwriting Prize and had several plays produced on the London fringe. She ran a theatre company and worked as a dramaturg for several years in the 1990s developing new plays by women. As an editor she has edited '50 Women in the Blues' and '50 Women Sculptors', as a co-editor, she has published 'Celluloid Ceiling: women film directors breaking through', the first global overview of women film directors and 'Silent Women; pioneers of cinema' voted best book on silent film in 2017. In 2019 she was a finalist in the ITV National Diversity Awards for Lifetime Achievement. www.cherylrobson.net Woddis was born in Nottingham and educated in Switzerland, McGill University, Canada and Warwick University where she read a BA in History/French. She has been a Theatre journalist and critic for over 30 years. London reviewer and feature writer for Glasgow's The Herald for 12 years and for many other newspapers and magazines, she also reviews for various theatre websites. Books published include: The Bloomsbury Theatre Guide with Trevor T Griffiths; a collection of interviews with actresses, Sheer Bloody Magic (Virago) and Faber & Faber's Pocket Guide to 20th Century Drama with Stephen Unwin. For ten years she was a Visiting Tutor in Journalism at Goldsmiths College and for three years with City University, London. Prior to all of that she worked with the RSC, National Theatre, Round House and Royal Ballet as a PR and as an administrator for other theatre and dance organisations. She has also lived and worked in Montreal and Texas; Marsha Norman is the winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize, Blackburn Prize, Hull-Warriner, and Drama Desk Awards for her play 'NIGHT, MOTHER. In l992 she won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for her book for the Broadway musical, THE SECRET GARDEN. She also wrote the book for the Broadway musical, The Color Purple; she received a Tony nomination for the original production, and a Tony Aware for the 2016 Revival. Her play 'The Master Butcher's Singing Club', premiered at the Guthrie Theatre in the fall of 2010. She won a Peabody Award for her writing on the HBO television series, IN TREATMENT, starring Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest. Her most recent work is the adaptation of THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN: A NOVEL SYMPHONY FOR ACTORS AND ORCHESTRA, with music conducted and written by Jason Robert Brown. The CD has been released by TRW and PS Classics. Her other plays include Getting Out, for which she won the John Gassner Medallion and the American Theater Critics Association Citation, Third And Oak: The Laundromat, The Pool Hall, The Holdup, Traveler In The Dark, Sarah And Abraham, Loving Daniel Boone, Trudy Blue, and Last Dance. Her television and film credits include 'NIGHT, MOTHER, starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft, THE LAUNDROMAT, starring Carol Burnett and Amy Madigan; THE POOL HALL, starring James Earl Jones; FACE OF A STRANGER starring Gena Rowlands and Tyne Daley; COOLER CLIMATE, starring Sally Field and Judy Davis; AUDREY HEPBURN, CUSTODY OF THE HEART, and most recently, SAMANTHA, AN AMERICAN GIRL. She spent one year as Co-Executive Producer of LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, and wrote the Gina episodes of Season 2 of HBO's In Treatment. The Trumpet of the Swan: A Novel symphony for actors and orchestra, written by Jason Robert Brown and Marsha Norman, was released by TRW and PS Classics on June 22, 2011. Her other published work includes Four Plays, Collected Works Of Marsha Norman, Vol 1, and a novel, The Fortune Teller. She has Grammy and Emmy nominations, as well as grants and awards from among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She has won the Margo Jones Award, and the Sidney Kingsley Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guild Hall Academy of Arts and Letters. Ms. Norman is Co-Chair, with Christopher Durang, of the Playwriting Department of The Juilliard School. She writes and lectures frequently on the theatre and has 18 honorary degrees from American colleges and Universities. She was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers and serves on the Governing Board of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She sat on the Board Trustees of Agnes Scott College from 2001 - 2011, and was the Chair of the Academic Affairs committee from 2008 - 2011. She is a former Vice-President of the Dramatists Guild of America. She is a native of Kentucky and currently lives in New York. Most recently, she received the William Inge Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award, and the Career Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild of America. In 2016, Marsha Norman was inducted into The Theatre Hall of Fame. Daryl Roth is an award-winning producer whose mission is to champion thought-provoking, inspiring work onstage. She is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing 7 Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee's Three Tall Women; and Wit. The proud recipient of 12 Tony Awards and London's Olivier Award, her over 120 productions both on and off Broadway include Kinky Boots, the 2013 Tony Award winning Best Musical, which ran for 6 years on Broadway and is now represented on tour in the US and around the world (London, Toronto, Australia, Korea, Japan, Germany); Larry Kramer's seminal play about the AIDS crisis, The Normal Heart (2011 Tony Award); Paula Vogel's award-winning play Indecent; Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron's international hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore; and Gloria: A Life, a play about the iconic Gloria Steinem. Upcoming: The new musical Between the Lines; the Broadway premiere of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. Daryl is a Trustee of the Kennedy Center, and served on the Board of Lincoln Center Theatre for twenty years, and remains the Co-Chair of the Patron Committee and an Honorary Trustee. Previously, she served on the Boards of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Sundance Institute, the Vineyard Theatre, and LAByrinth Theater Company. She actively supports a diverse group of charitable and cultural institutions, and is involved in LGBTQ rights causes, animal rights organizations, and numerous theatre, dance, public television, and cultural arts organizations. The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award annually honors a gifted theatre artist or organization, providing them with financial support as they develop new works in an artistic residency. The Daryl Roth Theatre, a landmark building on Manhattan's Union Square, is home to three distinct performance spaces. Honors include The New Dramatists Outstanding Career Achievement Award; New York Living Landmarks Award; and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. She is proud to have been inducted into the 2017 Theatre Hall of Fame and be named to Crain's 2019 "50 Most Powerful Women in New York."
