Joe is a writer and performer from Stockport and was awarded a scholarship to attend ALRA South. Joe first premiered Rum at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 and was awarded The Bobby Award by Broadway Baby. TV credits include Coronation Street, Endeavour, Hollyoaks and I Hate You. Stage credits include Band of Gold by Kay Mellor (UK tour), Canned Goods (Southwark Playhouse).

Tess Seddon is a director, writer and dramaturg. Directing credits include; A Passionate Woman, Decades, The Things We Wouldn’t Otherwise Find (Leeds Playhouse), Cinderella, Jack and th Beanstalk, Beauty and the Beast (CAST Doncaster), How A City Can Change the World (Sheffield Theatres) Kailey (Bradford City of Culture 2025 and on tour), Blow Down (Theatre Royal Wakefield and on tour), The Last Dinosaur (The Herd, on tour), How To Fly Like A Reindeer (Hull Truck). Writing and directing credits include Something Old Something New (Sheffield Theatres), Say Yes to Tess (Leeds Playhouse), Tribute Acts (Assembly and on tour) and On the Benefit of Being a Troll (The Yard). Dramaturgy includes RIDE! (Spin Arts and Bradford City of Culture 2025), Kailey (Bradford 2025 and Northern Tour), The Fossil Kids (Sheffield Theatres). Tess ran the National Theatres' Northern Hubs for New Views playwrighting course 2016-24. She was Resident Director at Leeds Playhouse 2016-17. She trained on the National Theatre Studio Directors Course and with The Wooster Group in New York and Maxim Gorky Theatre in Berlin.

Rūta is a London-based performance designer. She trained in Performance Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, graduating with a First Class Diploma in 2013. Rūta was a shortlisted finalist for the LinburyPrize for Stage Design 2013.

In response to the Climate Emergency, Rūta continued her education at the MA Material Futures at Central Saint Martins College, graduating in 2021.

Her performance design work focuses on socially and environmentally engaged projects, devised work, and new writing, often in unconventional spaces. Cross-disciplinary collaboration, materiality, and sustainability are at the core of her practice.

Recent design work includes TESTO by Wet Mess (BAC), REPLAY - A Limitless Recycled Playground (Southbank Centre), Say Yes to Tess (Leeds Playhouse), We Could All Be Perfect (Sheffield Theatres), Pink Lemonade (Bush Theatre), And The Rest of Me Floats (Rose Lipman Building / Bush Theatre)

Training: University of Winchester - BA (Hons) in Stage Management and Performing Arts. RADA - Postgraduate Diploma in Stage Electrics and Lighting. Amy won the Scotsman Edinburgh Fringe First Award in 2022 and the Knight of Illumination award in 2015.

Recent Credits: Milima’s Tale, Retrograde (also West End), The Frogs, Girl on an Altar (Kiln Theatre); They ( MIF) Falkland Sound ( RSC) A Passionate, Woman, Say Yes to Tess, There Are No Beginnings (Leeds Playhouse) How A City Can Save the World & Wildfire Road (Sheffield Theatres); The Boy with Two Hearts (National Theatre & Wales Millennium Centre); Rockets and Blue Lights (National Theatre & Royal Exchange); Mountains: The Dreams Of Lily Kwok (Royal Exchange); Two Trains Running (Royal & Derngate / ETT / RTST); Noises Off (Lyric Hammersmith); [Un]Leashed: Sense Of Time (Birmingham Royal Ballet); The Memory Of Water (Nottingham Playhouse); Sweeney Todd (Harringtons Pie And Mash Shop, West End and Off-Broadway).

Lee is a composer, music producer and sound designer. His extensive record of high quality, creative content includes production for theatre, dance, film and radio. Lee is a director of The Bare Project and an Associate Artist with Box of Tricks Theatre and Utopia Theatre.

Lee’s credits include: Eureka Day (Nottingham Playhouse), Ripples (SBC Theatre), Kiss Me Quickstep (Derby Theatre), Death and the Kings Horseman (Sheffield Theatres), Something Old, Something New (Sheffield Theatres), Calmer (Lolita Chakrabarti, BBC Radio 3), Anna Hibiscus’ Song (Utopia Theatre), Where Two Rivers Meet (The British Library), Jadek (Imagine If), The War Within (Fallen Angels & Birmingham Royal Ballet),Lines (Sheffield Theatres & Remote Theatre Project), Never Look Back (Roots Mbili & Sheffield Theatres), Driftwood (Thick Skin & Pentabus), Too Much World at Once (Box of Tricks), Birdsand Bees & Human Nurture (Theatre Centre), The People’s Palace of Possibility (The Bare Project), Who Are Yer? (Cardboard Citizens), Othello (Demi-Paradise Productions), Hansel and Gretel (Paperfinch & Theatr Clwyd), The Box (Hawkdance Theatre), Outside the Igloo (The Knotted Project). Original live scores for Metropolis, Nosferatu and The Passion of Joan of Arc (The Dukes Theatre), Climbing Everest (Kendal Mountain Festival, University of Central Lancashire).

Tom started his professional career working with bands in and around North London and then touring Europe with Chris Barber’s Jazz and Blues Band and Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen. He moved north and became Technical Manager at City Varieties Music Hall before continuing his freelance career and working for various production and theatre companies including Production Light and Sound, Red Ladder Theatre Company, Firefly, Phoenix Dance, Wrongsemble, and Theatre by the Lake.

Grant Archer is a visual artist based in Manchester, working in photography, filmmaking and live performance. In 2015 Grant founded Take Back Theatre with Julie Hesmondhalgh and Rebekah Harrison and has recently been Associate Artist at Oldham Coliseum.

Sasha made her professional debut as a Production Assistant on RUM’s 2025 Tour and is thrilled to be returning this year as an Assistant Producer. She has previously produced The Manchester Revue Goes Abroad (Just The Tonic, The Edinburgh Fringe) and The Sunday Sillies (Fuse FM), as well as directing Strange Bedfellows (Partisan Collective) and operating technical production for RUNNING OUT OF TIME! (The Hen and Chickens Theatre).

Emmerson & Ward was founded in Manchester in 2018 by Max Emmerson and Rob Ward as a new writing company to champion the underdog and the outsider. Over the past few years, they have toured nationally and internationally with the following shows: Gypsy Queen by Rob Ward (2019), Riot Act by Alexis Gregory (2019-22) and The MP, Aunty Mandy & Me by Rob Ward (2022-23), Rotten by Josie White (2024), Love It If We Beat Them by Rob Ward (2023 & 2024) and BUFF by Ben Fensome (2025). They have been co-producers on Alexis Gregory’s Sex/Crime at Soho Theatre in 2020 and a digital production of Rob Ward’s Conversations (2021) co-produced with Curve.