Rebecca Bradshaw is a theatre director and producer in the Boston area. Directing credits include: Rebecca Gilman’s LUNA GALE (Stoneham Theatre), Joshua Harmon’s BAD JEWS (SpeakEasy Stage), Charles Mee’s BIG LOVE (Brandeis University), Stephen Karam’s SPEECH AND DEBATE (Bad Habit Productions), David Mamet’s OLEANNA and John Logan’s RED (The Umbrella), William Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST and Mary Zimmerman’s THE SECRET IN THE WINGS (Weston Drama Workshop), Obehi Janice’s FUFU & OREOS and MJ Halberstadt’s NOT JENNY (Bridge Rep), Timberlake Wertenbaker’s THE LOVE OF THE NIGHTINGALE (Hub Theatre of Boston), MJ Halberstadt’s THE DA VINCI COMMISSION (Can’t Wait Productions), Patrick Gabridge’s FIRE ON EARTH (Fresh Ink Theatre), and Mark Mazzenga’s A FEEBLE MIND (Brown Box Theatre Project). She has directed for other local institutions, including Huntington Theatre Company, Gloucester Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Boston University, New England Conservatory, Emerson College, and Harvard University. Ms. Bradshaw holds a BA from Emerson College in Theatre Studies. rebeccalynnbradshaw.com

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as ‘singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind’. Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five semi-related siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually electric household.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised ‘the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings’. Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

A ghost-writing contest on a stormy June night in 1816 inspired Frankenstein, often called the first true work of science-fiction. Superficially a Gothic novel, and influenced by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, it was concerned with the destructive nature of power when allied to wealth. It was an instant wonder, and spawned a mythology all its own that endures to this day.

After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, she returned to London and pursued a very successful writing career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She also edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other writings.

David R. Gammons (Director & Scenic Designer) Previous Central Square Theatre productions include Frankenstein and Vanity Fair (2020 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Design).  David is a director, designer, visual artist, and theatre educator, and enjoys working with bold and adventurous collaborators.  His directing and design work has been seen in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and abroad with SpeakEasy Stage, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, The New Rep, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Cambridge Chamber Ensemble, The American Repertory Theatre, The Poets’ Theatre, Headlong Dance Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre, and many others.  David is a graduate of the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.  His varied academic posts have included teaching courses at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, MIT, Virginia Tech, Suffolk University, Northeastern University, and Concord Academy, where he served as Director of the Theatre Program for 15 years.  He is a three-time winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director.

Playwright Caryl Churchill was born on 3 September 1938 in London and grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read English. Downstairs, her first play, was written while she was still at university, and was first staged in 1958, winning an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge’s Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year.

She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups ‘Joint Stock’ and ‘Monstrous Regiment’. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980.

Top Girls (1982) brings together five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant given by Marlene, the new managing director of ‘Top Girls’ employment agency. The play was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, and transferred to Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994). Her plays for television include The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca’s Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her new version of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005. Her plays since then have included Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (2009), Love and Information (2012), Ding Dong the Wicked (2013), Here We Go (2015) and Escaped Alone (2016).

Caryl Churchill lives in London.

Nick was born in Portsmouth, England, and grew up along the coast in Southampton. In 1977 he graduated from the University of Essex with a BA in Comparative European Literature.

Whilst at Essex, Nick became interested in theatre, beginning with a career-defining role as the Second Murderer in Macbeth. He soon realised he was not going to be an actor, and by the time he left Essex, he had written his first play.

Between 1978 and 1986 he lived in Yorkshire, where he held down a variety of unlikely jobs whilst embarking on a series of plays for BBC Radio, and early outings in the theatre.

He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Essex in 1985, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1987-8.

His breakthrough came in 1986 with the production of The Art of Success at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Subsequently he has sustained a full-time career as a playwright and screenwriter.

Nick’s work has been directed by, amongst others, Danny Boyle, Declan Donnellan, Adrian Noble, Lindsay Posner, Trevor Nunn, Roger Michel, Richard Eyre, and Richard Jones.

In 1991-2 he was attached to Peter Brook’s C.I.C.T. Company in Paris. They collaborated on Brook’s production of Qui est lá? (Bouffes du Nord, Paris, 1996).

In 1995 his first film for TV, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, won a BAFTA award, and was subsequently screened in cinemas around the world.

His adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle at the National Theatre, became one of the first successes of NT Live, and has since been seen by a vast audience internationally.

In 2003 he began a series of adaptations for ITV of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. His scripts for the show include “The Hollow”, “Cards on the Table”, “Mrs McGinty’s Dead”, “Three Act Tragedy”, “Elephants Can Remember and Dead Man’s Folly”. “Dead Man’s Folly” was the last Poirot to be shot with David Suchet in the title role, filmed at Christie’s own house ‘Greenway’ in Devon.

Nick lives in London with his wife, Penny Downie.

April 2018.