Broadcast live by the Society of Authors as part of the SoA @ Home Festival on 1 July 2020.

Excerpt from a panel discussion in which the SoA’s Theo Jones discussed the impact of the pandemic on theatre, with children’s author and playwright Piers Torday, and Unicorn Theatre’s artistic director Justin Audibert.

Justin Audibert – Artistic Director, Unicorn Theatre
Justin is Artistic Director of the Unicorn Theatre and a freelance director of Theatre and Film. Recent credits include: Enough of Him (NTS & BBC Scotland), Anansi Respun (Unicorn Theatre Online), The Taming of the Shrew (RSC); Snow in Midsummer, The Jew of Malta (RSC); Macbeth/Winter’s Tale (NT Learning); The Box of Delights by John Masefield; adapted by Piers Torday (Wilton’s Music Hall).
www.unicorntheatre.com | @Unicorn_Theatre

Holly Kendrick – Executive Director, Wilton’s
Holly has led Wilton’s for the last four and a half years before which she was CEO of the new writing festival HighTide, prior to which she was CEO of the National Student Drama Festival where she staged the first ever International Student Drama Festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Before NSDF she worked for Cameron Mackintosh, the National Theatre and founded and ran Caird Company. Holly sits of the board of: Peggy Ramsay Foundation and Act for Change. 
www.wiltons.org.uk

Piers Torday – Author/playwright
Piers Torday began his career in theatre and then television as a producer and writer. Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, multiple Book of the Year accolades and shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Award, his books for children include The Last Wild Trilogy, There May Be A Castle, The Lost Magician and its follow up, The Frozen Sea. Piers has also completed an unfinished novel by his late father Paul (author of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Death of an Owl) and adapted The Box of Delights and A Christmas Carol for the stage.
www.pierstorday.co.uk | @PiersTorday