David Salter is a freelance theatre director. His productions include Life of Galileo (Studio Theatre, Washington DC and Battersea Arts Centre), The Comedy of Errors (Cambridge Shakespeare Festival), Playing Sinatra (New End Theatre) and Ghetto (Pleasance Theatre).

He is a regular director at various drama schools including the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Drama Centre, London.

Jeremy Sams has translated for many productions for the National Theatre, ENO and Royal Opera House. He has directed numerous plays at the National Theatre, in the West End and on Broadway, and is a multi-award-winning composer, arranger and musical director.

Ursula Rani Sarma is of Irish/Indian descent. She burst onto the theatrical scene with …touched… at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1999 and since then has gone on to write for companies such as The National Theatre London, The Abbey Theatre Dublin, The Traverse Theatre Scotland, Origin Theatre Company New York and The American Conservatory Theatre San Francisco amongst others.

Dominic Savage is a multi‐award‐winning documentary, film and television maker. Writing and directing credits include BBC drama Nice Girl (winning the BAFTA Award for New Director Fiction 2001), When I Was 12 (BBC Screen Two, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Single Film), Out of Control in 2002 (BBC One), the feature film LOVE + HATE, single dramas Born Equal (BBC One) starring Colin Firth, Anne Marie Duff, and Robert Carlyle and Freefall�(BBC Two) starring Dominic Cooper, Anna Maxwell Martin and Aiden Gillan.

Simon�Scardifield is an actor with Ed Hall's Propeller company, amongst other. He has directed at drama schools in London, and has taught Shakespeare in the US, Germany, Italy and Spain. He translates and adapts from French, German and Spanish.

Bogusław�Schaeffer is a Polish composer, musicologist, and graphic artist. Schaeffer has written 46 plays (translated into 17 languages) and is widely regarded as a pioneer of avant‐garde theatre. Schaeffer’s Era, was staged as part of the 2010 Edinburgh Festival and described as “one of the best productions since the festival was launched”.�

Aleksey Sherbak lives in Latvia and is the author of 11 plays which have been performed in Belarus, Latvia, Russia and Sweden. He developed Remembrance Day�as part of the Royal Court's Moscow workshops in 2008-2009.

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) ranks as one of the greatest figures in European drama and literature. That Verdi based four of his operas on Schiller's plays is not surprising (I masnadieri, Giovanna d'Arco, Luisa Miller, Don Carlos). Both men were deeply preoccupied with the battle for political freedon, projecting the moral victory of the doomed individual over the power of the immutable State as potent historical drama. Schiller's nobility of theatrical concept perfectly suited the energy and majesty of Verdi's scores. Yet in the English-speaking world Schiller's works are comparatively little known to theatregoers. The dedication of the renowned Glasgow-based Citizens' Company and the inspired decision to present the plays alongside Verdi's operas at the Edinburgh International Festival have gone a long way to remedy this neglect. The fifth play included in this edition was the source fro the opera by Donizetti (Maria Stuarda). Also translated for the Citizens' Company by Robert David MacDonald, Schiller's 'Mary Stuart' is acknowldged masterpiece.

Award-winning playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of the most exciting voices in European drama. He has worked as a journalist, translator and dramaturg, and is currently writer in residence at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Schimmelpfennig's widely performed plays include Vorher/Nachher, Push Up, Vor Ianger Zeit im Mai, MEZ, Keine Arbeit fur die junge Frau im Fruhlingskleid, Fisch um Fisch and Aus den Stadten in die Walder, Aus den Waldern in die Stadten.

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1930), the Austrian author and doctor, is probably best known for his plays 'La Ronde' and 'Liebelei'. His early years were marked by a particular interest in the emergent science of psychology and his writings anticipate Freud's psychopathological theories.