A Little Princess

Amanda is a freelance playwright and poet based in West Yorkshire. She has written original dramas, drama documentaries and adaptations for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Sheffield Theatres, for BBC Radio 4 and 3, and for bespoke partnerships with Manchester Camerata, the Lithuanian Embassy and others.

Her previous adaptations include dramatisations of work by Jackie Kay, Tove Jansson, Henry James, Carson McCullers, Alfred Hitchcock, Marcelijus Martinaitis and of the silent movies Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

She loves creating theatre for families and children and is absolutely delighted to be working at Theatre By The Lake.

Her website is at amandadalton.co.uk

Liz Stevenson is Artistic Director and joint CEO of Theatre by the Lake. Liz was formerly the co-founder and Artistic Director of Junction 8 Theatre, making new productions with for and about the community in her hometown of Chorley, Lancashire. In 2018 she was the Associate Director on the UK and Ireland tour of the National Theatre’s production of Macbeth. In 2015 she won the JMK Young Director Award and directed Barbarians at the Young Vic. Barbarians was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre.

Other work as a director includes: Every Brilliant Thing (Theatre by the Lake); The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Theatre by the Lake); Tom’s Midnight Garden (Theatre by the Lake); Home I’m Darling (Theatre by the Lake, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Bolton Octagon); A Christmas Carol (Theatr Clwyd); Lancastrians (Lancashire tour, Junction 8 Theatre); The Secret Garden (York Theatre Royal, Theatre by the Lake); Under the Market Roof (Chorley Market, Junction 8 Theatre); Handbagged (Theatre by the Lake); How My Light is Spent (Royal Exchange Theatre, Sherman Theatre, Theatre by the Lake); Macbeth (Dukes Theatre, Lancaster); Barbarians (Young Vic).

Amanda Stoodley is an award-winning set and costume designer working in theatre, music, installation & exhibition.

Credits include: Jekyll & Hyde (National Theatre); Nora: A Doll’s House, Bloody Elle - A Gig Musical, (& Lyric, Soho &Traverse Theatres); Queen Margaret, Moments That Changed Our World, Hamlet, Black Roses (& UK Tour); All I Want Is One Night (& Wilton’s Music Hall); Two, Winterlong (& Soho Theatre) (Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre); Antigone (Guildhall School of Music & Drama); Decades – Stories From The City, Europe, Around The World In 80 Days, Be My Baby, Untold Stories (Leeds Playhouse); The Last Testament Of Lillian Bilocca (Hull UK City of Culture 2017); Here’s What She Said To Me, Tribes, A Raisin In The Sun, The Effect (Sheffield Theatres); The Patience Of Trees, The Masque Of Anarchy (MIF); Fireface (Young Vic Theatre); Manchester Sound: The Massacre, Manchester Lines (Manchester Library Theatre); ANON (Welsh National Opera); The Maw Broon Monologues (Tron Theatre, Glasgow); Faith Healer, North & South, Before The Party (Pitlochry Festival Theatre); The Rise & Fall Of Little Voice, Summer Holiday, The Big Corner, East Is East, Jane Eyre, Winter Hill, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, To Kill A Mockingbird, Private Lives, Duet For One, Separation, (Bolton Octagon Theatre); Dr Blighty (Nutkhut, 14-18 NOW, Brighton Festival).

Joshua Pharo works as a Lighting and Video Designer across theatre, opera, film and installation.

Work in theatre includes The Odyssey: The Underworld; Jekyll and Hyde (The National Theatre); Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play (Royal Exchange Manchester & Young Vic); In the Realms of Sorrow (London Handel Festival); Let The Right One In (The Royal Exchange, Manchester); I Am Kevin (Wildworks); Corrina, Corrina (Headlong); Kerbs (Graeae and the Belgrade, Coventry); Wolf Witch Giant Fairy (The Royal Opera House); Love and Other Acts of Violence (The Donmar Warehouse); Extinct (Theatre Royal Stratford East); The Litten Trees (Fuel and Crave at Chichester Festival Theatre).

Arun Ghosh is a British-Asian musician and composer.

Twice awarded 'Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year' at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, Ghosh leads his own ensembles, touring nationally and internationally. A renowned clarinetist and bandleader, he has released five albums on camoci records: Northern Namaste, Primal Odyssey, A South Asian Suite, but where are you really from? and most recently Seclused in Light.

Throughout 2022, Arun toured his new work, The Canticle of the Sun ; a Spiritual Jazz setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s sublime prayer to nature and the cosmos. A studio recording of the eleven-song suite is due to be released in 2024, with an accompanying national tour.

Previous theatre composition / sound design includes: Great Expectations, Hobson’s Choice, The Tempest, Antigone (Royal Exchange Theatre) ; Lions and Tigers (Shakespeare’s Globe) ; Child of the Divide, Blood, My Name Is, Approaching Empty (Tamasha) ; A Doll’s House, Closer (Lyric Theatre Hammersmith) ; Noughts and Crosses, The Bone Sparrow (Pilot Theatre) ; Run Sister Run (Paines Plough) ; Red Snapper, Nothello (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry) ; Much Ado About Nothing, Arms and the Man, The Deranged Marriage (Watford Palace Theatre).

Arun grew up in Lancashire, and has many childhood memories of walking all over The Lakes with his family, accompanied by Wainwright’s classic guides…and he is delighted to make his debut at Theatre by the Lake.

Movement credits include: Jungle Book (Chichester Festival Theatre); Never Have I Ever (Chichester Festival Theatre); Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors (National Theatre); The Pillowman (Duke of York, West End); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Southwark Playhouse Elephant); Private Lives (Donmar Warehouse); Faun (Cardboard Citizens/Theatre503); Beginning (Royal Exchange); Les Miserables (Sondheim Theatre, UK Tour, Netherlands/Belgium Tour); Betty! A Sort of Musical (Royal Exchange); O, Island (Royal Shakespeare Company); Ivy Tiller: Vicar’s Daughter, Squirrel Killer (Royal Shakespeare Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare North/Northern Stage); The Narcissist (Chichester Festival Theatre); Chasing Hares (Young Vic); That Is Not Who I Am/Rapture (Royal Court); Corrina, Corrina (Headlong/Liverpool Everyman); The Taxidermist’s Daughter (Chichester Festival Theatre); Anna Karenina (Sheffield Crucible); Two Billion Beats (Orange Tree Theatre); Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith); Milk and Gall (Theatre503); Arrival (Impossible Productions); Typical Girls (Clean Break/Sheffield Crucible); Glee and Me(Royal Exchange) Just So (Watermill Theatre) Home, I’m Darling (Theatre by the Lake/Bolton Octagon/Stephen Joseph Theatre) Harm (Bush Theatre) Living Newspaper Ed 5 (Royal Court), Sunnymeade Court (Defibrillator Theatre), The Effect (English Theatre Frankfurt) The Sugar Syndrome (Orange Tree Theatre), Oor Wullie (Dundee Rep/National Tour) Variations (Dorfman Theatre/NT Connections) Skellig (Nottingham Playhouse) Under the Umbrella (Belgrade Theatre/Yellow Earth/Tamasha) Describe the Night (Hampstead Theatre) Fairytale Revolution, In Event of Moone Disaster (Theatre503) Cosmic Scallies (Royal Exchange Manchester/Graeae), Moth (Hope Mill Theatre) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Scarlet; The Tempest (Southwark Playhouse) Homos, or Everyone in America; Bury the Dead and Adding Machine: A Musical (Finborough Theatre).

TV includes: Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares?! (HBO)

Film includes: Hurt by Paradise (Sulk Youth Films); Pretending - Orla Gartland Music Video (Spindle) I Wonder Why - Joesef Music Video (Spindle Productions) Birds of Paradise (Pemberton Films).

Marc is a puppetry director, designer, performer and maker. He is also the artistic director of theOBJECTproject, an organisation which creates puppetry and object-theatre performances for adults and ages 14+.

Marc is the associate director for Sally Cookson’s ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and he has previously created puppets and/or directed puppetry for Aardman Animations, BBC3, Leeds Playhouse, Green Ginger, Egg Theatre Bath and Bristol Old Vic.

Marc was the founder and former Artistic Director of Stuff and Nonsense Theatre Company. He is also a former owner of The Lyric Theatre in Bridport, Dorset.

https://www.objectproject.info/marc-parrett

Fi works costuming in theatre, opera some film and TV, up down and across the UK from Inverness to London, Belfast to Hull. At various places inside and outside.

Melina is an emerging theatre director preparing for her first professional production as an associate director with Theatre By The Lake’s - A Little Princess. Her community engagement and audience development background has been instrumental in her development into directing theatre.

She is also an associate artist for TBTL and has been in the research and development process of exploring how to reconnect communities with nature, through storytelling.

In addition to her directing and theatre-making endeavors, Melina also serves as the Associate Producer for Actors Touring Company's producing The Architect as part of 2023’s Greenwich and Dockland International Festival, Tambo & Bones (2023) at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and Family Tree Nationwide tour (2023) which went to theatre venues across the UK including, TBTL.

Olivia (Liv) is a Manchester-based Casting Director working in Theatre and TV.

Theatre includes: A Passionate Woman (Leeds Playhouse); Jeeves and Wooster: A Perfect Nonsense (Wiltshire Creative & Octagon Theatre); Around the World in 80 Days, Spring and Port Wine, An Adventure, Peter Pan (Octagon Theatre); The Book of Will (Queens Theatre Hornchurch, Octagon Theatre, Shakespeare Playhouse North); A Christmas Carol (Hull Truck Theatre and Leeds Playhouse); Pinocchio, Pop Music, Mumsy, Ladies Unleashed, Teechers Leavers ’22, The Railway Children (Hull Truck); Blow Down (Theatre Royal Wakefield); Around The World in 80 Days (Hull Theatre and Theatre by the Lake); A Little Princess, Tom's Midnight Garden (Theatre by the Lake); Run Rebel (Pilot Theatre, Mercury Theatre Colchester, York Theatre
Royal, Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre and Alnwick Playhouse); A Permanent State of Emergency (Hope Mill Theatre); One Man, Two Guvnors (Octagon Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse, Theatre by the Lake); Kabul Goes Pop (Brixton House, Harlow Playhouse, Mercury Theatre, New Wolsey;) KES (Octagon Theatre, Theatre by the Lake); Bliss (Menagerie Theatre Company/Finborough Theatre).

TV includes: As Casting Director; Casualty, Doctors. As Casting Assistant; EastEnders, The Sister Boniface Mysteries, Anfamol.

Francesca works as a casting associate/assistant and also as a director and dramaturg. She trained on the MFA in Theatre Directing at Birkbeck, University of London, during which she was resident assistant director at the Octagon Theatre Bolton.

As a casting associate/assistant: Around The World in Eighty Days (Hull Truck Theatre & Theatre by the Lake); Pinocchio; Mumsy; A Christmas Carol; Ladies Unleashed (Hull Truck Theatre); Run, Rebel (Pilot Theatre); A Permanent State of Emergency - R&D (Hope Mill Theatre).

As a director: We Must Live (Cellar Theatre); Are There Female Gorillas?; Laki in Love (Drayton Arms Theatre); It; Be Mine for Me (The Cockpit). Rehearsed readings: Late, A Cowboy Song (The Cockpit); Or, (Octagon Theatre Bolton); Oh Town of Little Bethlehem; Strike! (The Playground Theatre).

As a dramaturg: Moonbend (McNicol Ballet Collective); Joy Unspeakable (Ordinary Glory).

Anindita Ghosh is Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has been researching and teaching colonial history there since 1999. Anindita has published widely on the social and cultural history of colonial India, including monographs with major academic presses and several book chapters and journal articles. She regularly contributes to the BBC and has appeared in a range of programmes on national and international TV and Radio.

Anindita Ghosh, Professor of Modern Indian History
Head of Division, History
School of Arts Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities
University of Manchester
Chair, BASAS [British Association for South Asian Studies]