Simon Stephens is a celebrated playwright and screenwriter whose writing is distinguished by its emotional resonance, intelligence, and tenderness and his ability to realize the extraordinary in the most ordinary of lives. He is renowned for his outstanding stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Directed by Stephens’s long-term collaborator Marianne Elliott, the production and play won seven Olivier Awards in 2013 (including Best New Play) and five Tony Awards (including Best New Play) in 2015 and has since been produced in all major territories throughout the world.

His Olivier Award-winning Vanya played at the Lucille Lortel Theater in 2025, starring Andrew Scott. Other plays include Cornelia Street, Morning Sun, Light Falls, Heisenberg, Song from Far Away, Birdland, Carmen Disruption, Blindsided, Morning, Three Kingdoms, Wastwater, Punk Rock, Marine Parade, Sea Wall, Harper Regan, Pornography, Motortown, On the Shore of the Wide World (Olivier Award for Best New Play, 2006), One Minute, Country Music, Christmas, Port, Herons, and Bluebird.

Stephens has been an associate at the Royal Court, London and a resident artist at the Lyric, Hammersmith. He has presented three series of the Royal Court’s Playwright’s Podcast and his book A Working Diary is published by Methuen. Stephens is currently a professor of scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University and an associate professor at the Danish National School of the Performing Arts, Copenhagen. He has also written for radio and for the screen, including his screenplay for Dive (2010), and his adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s Brothers of Lionheart is in development with Thomas Vinterberg to direct for Mediares.

Sarah Frankcom has worked extensively as a director and dramaturg making theater in a range of participatory, training and professional settings.

After joining the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester as literary manager, she developed the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and became artistic director between 2014 and 2019. Her directing work there includes acclaimed collaborations with Maxine Peake—Hamlet, Miss Julie, Streetcar Named Desire, Happy Days.

Frankcom directed world premieres by the playwright Simon Stephens—On the Shore of the Wide World (Olivier Award Best Play), Punk Rock (MEN Best Production), Blindsided, and Light Falls. Other work at the Royal Exchange includes Separate Tables, View from the Bridge, Mary Barton, Three Birds (with Bush Theatre), Black Roses, Winterlong (with Soho Theatre), That Day We Sang, West Side Story, Death of a Salesman, and Our Town (winner UK Theatre Award Best Director 2018).

For Manchester International Festival, The Masque of Anarchy (2013), The Skirker (2015), and The Nico Project (2019) and for Hull City of Culture 2017, The Last Testament of Lillian Bilocca.

Between 2019 and 2022 she was director of LAMDA. Since then, her work as a director and dramaturg has included a Macbeth for Schools at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Breach at Hampstead, Work It Out for HOME, Betty! A sort of Musical, Brief Encounter and Escaped Alone for the Royal Exchange Theatre, They and Robin/Red/Breast for Manchester International Festival and Factory International, and The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse for Nottingham Playhouse.

Todd Eckert started being a published journalist at 14 and became editor of the national OnlyMusic Magazine when he was 17. He worked throughout traditional film and media for the next 30 years and produced Control, Anton Corbijn’s award-winning feature film about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, which premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2007. He was director of North America for Eutechnyx (now Zerolight), a British video game development company.

He first started exploring dimension in media as the director of content development for Magic Leap, a pioneer in mixed reality (MR) hardware. He joined the company in 2012 when an early presentation of the technology convinced him to abandon work in all other mediums in order to focus solely on what he saw (and still sees) as the unlimited potential of a more human recorded experience.

Besides shaping Tin Drum’s corporate and artistic development, Eckert has directed two of the company’s works, The Life and Kagami. It’s his belief that the connection between artist and audience is a sacred event, and he’s obsessed with diminishing the limitations of time in these relationships.

Tin Drum is a New York-based, globally active collection of artists, technologists, and designers working to create and present work through the new medium of mixed reality. Their focus is never the tech, but rather what the tech can achieve that is not otherwise possible. At the center of everything they do is the sacred relationship between artist and audience.

The Life, a collaboration with legendary performance artist Marina Abramović, was the world’s first publicly presented, large-scale mixed reality exhibition. Medusa, a large-scale work blending design with generative algorithmic software had a sold-out run at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and was followed by a record-setting presentation at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works.

Kagami, with Academy Award–winning composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, was the most ambitious mixed reality performance piece ever attempted before An Ark, and it set the bar for MR experience. It has been presented in seven cities to date, with new shows in Hong Kong and Japan coming early this year.

Tin Drum’s work has been seen by over 100,000 people to date. tindrum.io

Ben and Max Ringham are multi-award-winning composers, sound designers, and writers.

In a career spanning more than two decades, they have created sound designs and scores for in excess of 200 productions in the United Kingdom, West End, and Broadway. Notable productions include Inter Alia (National Theatre), A Complicated Woman (Duke of Yorks), Elektra (Duke of Yorks), The Tempest/Much Ado About Nothing (Drury Lane, West End), Prima Facie (West End/Broadway), A Doll’s House (Broadway), Cyrano (West End), The Tempest (Drury Lane), Much Ado About Nothing (Drury Lane), and Blindness (Donmar and International).

Ben and Max have created a number of original works for, amongst others, the National Theatre (Anna, 2019, created in collaboration with Ella Hickson) and the BBC (Exemplar, 2022 – 25, co-written with Dan Rebellato). They are the recipients of five Olivier and two Tony nominations, two Drama Desk Awards, a Critics’ Circle nomination, a BBC Radio Drama Award, two Off West End Awards, and the H100 Award for Innovation in Theatre.

Rosanna Vize is a critically acclaimed, award-winning international designer, working across multiple platforms of design in opera and theater.

Credits include The Maids (Donmar Warehouse), Vanya (New York), Blank (Kungliga Dramatiska), The Other Place (National Theatre, London), Winter’s Tale (Dailes Theater, Latvia), Macbeth (Donmar Warehouse and West End), Vanya (Co-creator & Designer, West End), Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Company), Britannicus (Lyric Hammersmith), Glass Menagerie (Royal Exchange Manchester), Gulliver’s Travels (Unicorn Theatre), Camp Siegfried (The Old Vic), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Leicester Curve Theatre), The Enemy (Royal National Theatre of Scotland), Harm (Bush Theatre), Incantata (Galway Festival and Irish Rep Theatre, NYC), Hedda Gabler (Sherman Theatre), The Phlebotomist (Hampstead Theatre, Upstairs), The Audience (Nuffield Theatre, Southampton), Don Carlos (Exeter Northcott), and King Lear (Globe Theatre).

Opera Includes Giustino (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Turn of the Screw (Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen), Mavra and Pierrot Lunaire (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden).

Awards: Vanya – Olivier Award for Best Revival.

Seth Reiser (Lighting Designer) is a lighting and set designer for theater, opera, dance and music whose work has been seen throughout the United States and internationally. With Tin Drum Reiser designed the lighting for their acclaimed production of KAGAMI. Favorite collaborations include Alisa Weilerstein’s Fragments directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer currently touring the US and Europe; Wole Soyinka’s recent production of Swamp Dwellers at TFANA directed by Awoye Timpo; Esperanza Spalding’s Twelve Spells American Tour directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer; Peter Eotvos’s Tri Sestri at the Ural Opera (Golden Mask Nomination) directed by Christopher Alden; Henze’s El Cimarrón at Festival Impulso in Mexico City directed by Robert Castro; Vietgone at Oregon Shakespeare Festival directed by May Adrales; Hair at Dallas Theatre Center directed by Kevin Moriarty; Claude Vivier’s Copernicus directed by Peter Sellars; Come & Back Again, with David Dorfman Dance; The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs by Mike Daisey, directed by Jean Michele Gregory; Radio Play directed by Kip Fagan; Taylor Mac’s premier production of The Lily’s Revenge.

Reiser received his bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and MFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. www.sethreiserdesign.com

Working across film and television, Shaheen Baig has cast award-winning work with new and established directors in both film and television.

Film work includes multi-nominated and award-winning features Control, After Love, Mogul Mowgli, Ali & Ava, Calm with Horses, Lady Macbeth, and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Scrapper. Most recent features include Anemone starring Daniel Day Lewis; Urchin, Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut; and My Father’s Shadow shot in Nigeria.

In television Baig has cast all of Peaky Blinders and I Am, the female-led anthology series for CH4, as well as award-winning dramas Three Girls, Black Mirror (CH4), and Emmy Award–winning Adolescence (for which she won an Emmy).

Theater credits include Brokeback Mountain for Soho Place and soon to be at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Baig is a member of BAFTA, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Casting Directors Guild of Great Britain & Ireland. A trustee for Open Door, a nonprofit organization that helps young people access drama schools, and co-founder of the Casting Assistant Certificate course with the National Film & Television School, she works to encourage and support a more inclusive industry.

In 2023 Baig was awarded the Baird Medal by Royal Television Society for her contribution to screen.

Born out of years of research at INRIA in Grenoble, 4Dviews turns scientific innovation into artistic possibility. Its volumetric video system, HOLOSYS, captures people in full 3-D with cinematic realism which enables creators to tell stories that live beyond the screen.

From Ryuichi Sakamoto’s beautiful Kagami to Francis Ford Coppola’s visionary Megalopolis and the Cannes Immersive Award–winning Noire, 4Dviews technology has powered some of the most groundbreaking immersive works of all time.

Through the 4Dviews Creators Platform, artists and producers can explore sample volumetric data, tutorials, and plug-ins to prototype their ideas before the first frame is captured. Used by global brands including H&M and Prada, 4Dviews continues to bridge the worlds of entertainment and mixed reality.

Headquartered in Grenoble with partner studios around the world, 4Dviews is where creative vision meets technological precision. For more information, visit www.4dviews.com.