THE AUTHORS

Dave Buchanan lives and works in the Kingdom of Fife. He first came to the world of amateur drama playing in a local version of "Babes in the Wood" in 1971, and produced his first panto in 1976. In the mid-80s he wrote a suite of six pantomimes for his local club. In 1995 the six pantos were published by Pedersen Press of Cumbernauld, but he launched his own company two years later under the name Wonderful World of Panto.
All six pantos were updated or rewritten during this time, and he wrote a new version of "The Sleeping Beauty", which was premiered by Auchtermuchty Theatre Group in 1997. Since then he has written nine more pantomimes and six one act plays. His latest offering (2007) is a Sherlock Holmes mystery for youth groups, "The Baker Street Kids".

Gill Morrell has been involved in drama for as long as she can remember. She co-founded the Malford Players in Wiltshire some 20 years ago and wrote all the plays published here for the group. She has also directed and acted with them extensively and has recently begun working with Bath Drama. Professionally, Gill divides her time between teaching English for Business to foreign executives and politicians and with writing children's novels, published throughout Europe and North America by Stabenfeldt.
Gill has written two pantos for Spotlight, "Aladdin" and "Cinderella", a one act play "The Protest Meeting", and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind In the Willows".

Christine (Chris) Battison spent most of her younger days on or backstage rather than writing for it. She is a member of two local theatre companies and for several years, with some friends, ran a small toruing company where she discovered the challange of writing and directing revues and plays. Besides being very good experience it was a lot of fun and raised mmoney for locall cancer charities.
The two children's plays and one panto published by Spotlight were all successful in the Arts Council Awards For All Scheme and were performed at Guildford's Electric Theatre by two resident groups. Tom's Underwater Adentures and Rats' Tales were adapted from the Water Babies and Pied Piper Of Hamelin. There are two plays being currently written.
Chris also writes short stories and poetry. For the year 2000 she wrote the libretto for a classical choral work to celebrate the Millennium. Proceeds from her writing are shared between a cancer charity and a nearby dog rescue charity.

Richard Coleman has been writing for the stage for over thirteen years. Brought up in Colwyn Bay he graduated from Manchester University before teaching at Lymm in Cheshire. He is co-founder(with Fred Aylin) of the amateur theatre group, The Really Useless Theatre Company, based in Lymm.
Richard, a teacher for twenty-eight years has directed many original pantomimes, and is known for his quirky sense of humour. He has only recently completed "The Affairs at Meddler's Top", a spoof-murder mystery set in the 1920s. Other plays in his portfolio include "The Ghosts of Marvin Grange", and a series of pantomimes including "Stromboli the Puppetmaster" and "Captain Hook's Revenge".

Mark Rees trained at the Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff and worked for fourteen years as a professional actor in Wales and England, in Rep, TV and radio.
He moved to Scotland with his wife and set up the Lochside Youth Theatre in Castle Douglas, He began writing youth plays seven years ago,as there seemd to be a lack of contemporary plays for 11-17 year olds. He also began writing for adults and directing for Crossmichael Drama Club.He has written over 15 plays, full-length as well as one-act. In 2004 he took his play "Norman Is An Island" to the Scottish one-act play Finals in Inverness, where it won the play-writing competition (Play On Words).
Latterly he has finished his MA Liberal Arts at Glasgow University (as a mature student!) and is currently doing honours there.

Ron Nicol joined the Lyric Players in Belfast while he was a student at Queen’s University, and went on to spend several years in professional theatre. He’s worked in repertory at Perth Rep, Lincoln Theatre Royal, Harrogate Opera House and York Theatre Royal, with touring productions, and in musicals, pantomime, music hall and variety.
He trained radio broadcasters at Glenrothes College in Fife, produced and presented programmes on Radio Tay, lectured in theatre with the University of St Andrews, and was a drama adviser for the Scottish Community Drama Association. He’s a member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators and the Scottish Association of Speech and Drama Adjudicators. He co-founded Glenrothes Theatre Company with his wife Norma, a former professional actress, and has written and directed most of their senior, youth and children’s productions for twenty-five years.
His plays have won writing prizes and festival awards, he’s been produced in Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Luxembourg, and has even been published in a Dutch translation.

Maxine Linnell's lifelong passion for writing has been consistently interrupted by life making other plans. She is a Buddhist psychotherapist and trainer, and her ear for dialogue has been tuned by years of active listening. In her spare time she works in health promotion, edits a psychology magazine, sings and is steward of a magical garden in Leicester. She also had a hand in bringing Kate and Benn into the world and on to adulthood. Meanwhile she is working on a radio play and a full-length stage play.
"Thanks a Lot Elton" was born during a ten day workshop in Writing for Performance in Barnstaple, North Devon, and the earlier, less dark version of it was performed by North Devon College students as well as Taunton Amateur Dramatic Society in the Somerset One-Act Play Competition in 1999. Elton's most recent production was in Leicester, directed by Dana Bagshaw with Laurie Cusack and Helen Lynch.

Robin Bailes discovered the joys and abject miseries of writing comedy while at university and ‘Robin Hood’ grew from his experiences there appearing in one bad panto after another. He has since moved away from acting for the most part to concentrate on writing and direction for stage and screen. After nine years of writing everything from books to screenplays as an amateur he has finally bitten the bullet and given up all other work to live by writing alone. He currently has a short musical film in production and a sitcom in development for the BBC. His first feature film as screen writer, ‘Weekend Lovers’ has just finished being filmed by ‘Little Kieran Productions’ and is due out in December.

Jonathan Hales performed in many pantomimes before turning his hand to writing his own. His portrayal of Puddles the giant mute penguin was universally acclaimed and as a career highlight has been an influence on most of his work since. He now lives in London where he has swapped pantomimes for reality television.


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