Kareen Pennefather is the artistic director of Monkeyshine Theatre. She is also a writer, director, performer and arts facilitator.

After graduating with a degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Ulster in 1999, Kareen founded Monkeyshine with a group of fellow students. She took sole charge of the company in 2003 and has been creating theatre for young audiences since that time. Her work is based on a love of stories, a passion for making things, and a desire to work collaboratively with artists from a variety of art forms.
Kareen began writing for theatre in 2004, when her first play Meg’s Head was produced by Replay productions. She is currently Writer-in-residence on the Write Now project with Replay were she is working on a new play called 'The School Underneath'

David Wood OBE (born 21 February 1944 in Sutton, Surrey, England) is an English-born actor and writer, called "the National Children's Dramatist" by The Times.

Wood has been actor, composer, producer, director, lyric writer, magician, author and playwright. Wood is a leading writer and director of plays and musicals for children, with a host of successes to his name, including Fantastic Mr Fox, BFG, The See-Saw Tree, The Twits, The Witches, Noddy, Meg and Mog, Spot, Rupert the Bear and Babe the Sheep Pig. His most famous story, The Gingerbread Man, has been all around the world since it was first performed at London’s Old Vic in 1977.

David is a writer, composer, musician, performer, teacher  and theatre-maker. 

A recipient of the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Performing Arts Fellowship, his innovative theatre works for children including Backseat Drivers, Ukulele Mekulele, Show, and Lily Can’t Sleep have played at venues around Australia and overseas. He has contributed to a number of other works for young audiences as a dramaturg.

Amaranta Leyva was born in Mexico in 1973. She is an actor, puppeteer and playwright. Puppet theatre has been her means of expression, in particular, writing and directing for children’s audiences. In her own words: “to explore a child’s world allows me to find my most hidden, profound and intense emotions of being human.”

She comes from a theatre family and has been exposed to puppetry from a very early age. Her early relationship with the puppetry world inspired her to explore and develop this art form. Since then, puppets of all styles have influenced her life and writing. She has become a leading playwright in Mexico, writing for children’s theatre and puppet theatre. Her stories speak of children and their dreams, desires, fears and happiness.

Originally from England, and having a classically-based actor training from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Susanna discovered the Pochinko clown method while in Toronto (now her home). For the past several years she has delightedly explored the application of clown in all aspects of theatrical performance and creation, as an artist-educator and, most recently, in adapting Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. 'Nearly Lear' is her first full-length solo play, created with Edith Tankus, and has toured throughout Canada and the UK, to the New Victory Theater in New York and the Sydney Opera House, delighting audiences of all ages.

Paul Meade is a writer, director, actor and Artistic Director of Gúna Nua theatre. Paul trained at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College, and later received an M.A. in modern drama from U.C.D.

Work as a writer includes Meltdown, Trousers, Mushroom and Scenes from a Water Cooler with David Parnell (winner Best Production 2001 Dublin Fringe Festival), Skin Deep (for which he received the Stewart Parker Award) and Thesis with Gerry Dukes and David Parnell as well as Begotten Not Made for the Irish Council for Bioethics. Work for young people includes Light Signals for Team Educational theatre company in Dublin.

As a professor of theatre at San Diego State University (previously at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa), Margaret Larlham has choreographed, devised, directed, and/or written new plays with and for theatre students to perform for young audiences. The plays are scripted and have a strong physical theatre base, oftentimes with musical emphasis and interest in cultural diversity.