In 1985 Giles was appointed as artistic director of the Gate Theatre, London. In 1989 Giles joined the National Theatre as Literary Manager before becoming Artistic Director of the Palace Theatre, Watford in May 1995. Giles has been the Artistic Director of Nottingham Playhouse since 1999. His most recent productions include: Sleuth, The Glass Menagerie, Any Means Necessary, Tony’s Last Tape, Forever Young, Arcadia, The Second Minute, Charlie Peace: His Amazing Life and Astounding Legend and Of Mice and Men.

Giles is also a playwright and his work has been produced widely in the UK and Europe. He has a new play opening in Glasgow in the spring of 2017.

Damian trained at Oxford University (BA, English Literature & Language) and Arts Educational (MA, Creative Practice in Musical Theatre). Damian was the Resident Director for The Kite Runner for over a year, looking after three cast changes during its run at the Playhouse Theatre, London and its previous UK & Ireland Tour. He is currently Resident Director on the UK and International tour of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, starring Joe McFadden.

His directing credits include: When Midnight Strikes (nominated, Best Musical Production, Off West End Awards); Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast at Blackpool Grand (nominated, Best Director at the Great British Pantomime Awards 2018); the London revival of Tick, Tick…Boom! (Union Theatre), West Side Story (Theatre Royal Windsor for Bill Kenwright); You Know How To Love Me (The Other Palace); the world premiere of Equally (Cockpit Theatre); Aladdin (Malvern Theatre); Soho Cinders (Stanwix Theatre); Dick Whittington (Beck Theatre; Winner, Best Pantomime, 2014); Sister Act, Betty Blue Eyes and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Putney Arts Theatre); six seasons of NewsRevue (Canal Café Theatre); ten years of sell-out seasons of the EdFringe institution, Shakespeare For Breakfast (Winner, Best Comedy, 2017) and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (both Edinburgh Festival and subsequent London transfers); the world premiere of The Poltergeist of Cock Lane;  Dickens For Dinner (Winner – Best Comedy, 2018); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (for HM Queen Elizabeth II’s Birthday Celebrations); Hairspray and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (London Oratory); Sleeping Beauty (Anvil Arts); Twelve Angry Men; A Kind Of Loving. Over a period of sixteen years, he has directed and produced 55 productions at the Edinburgh Festival.

Assistant/Resident credits include: Gary Barlow and Tim Firth’s Calendar Girls – The Musical (UK & Ireland National Tour); the national tour of Oklahoma! (UK Productions); Associate / Resident on the UK premiere of Little Women the Musical (LOST Theatre); Me And My Girl (London Palladium); Legally Blonde (Aberystwyth Arts Centre); Kiss Of The Spider Woman (ArtsEd with Nikolai Foster & Drew McOnie); Mathilde (Comedy Theatre, London).

Damian has also worked with the directors on the world premiere of The Witches of Eastwick (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for Cameron Mackintosh) and Honk! (The Royal National Theatre’s tour). He has been Associate Director on the annual Whatsonstage Awards Concert for the last twelve years.

Twitter: @munchkindamo

Matthew’s adaptation of The Kite Runner earned five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards, including awards for Best Original Script and Overall Production.  His other plays include: Operation Ajax about the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran in 1953; Albatross, based on ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, produced off-Broadway and recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards; The Forgotten Empress; The Story of Zahra, based on the novel by Hanan al-Shaykh; Tortilla Curtain, based on the novel by T C Boyle; A Paradise It Seems, based on John Cheever’s short stories; Together Tea, based on the novel by Marjan Kamali; as well as adaptations of James Joyce’s and John Steinbeck’s fiction. His plays have been produced by theatres around the world including: Wyndham’s Theatre and the London Playhouse on the West End, 59E59 Theatre in New York, the Avignon Theatre Festival, Palestinian National Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, Theatre Calgary, Cleveland Play House, Actors Theatre of Louisville, San José Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Poets’ Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and theatres in Ireland, Germany, Pakistan, and India, among others. His book Staging Intercultural Ireland is a collection of plays and interviews with theatre artists working at the intersection of immigration and interculturalism in Ireland. Matthew is Professor of Performance Studies at San José State University in California. He is also director of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on literature and immigration. www.matthewspangler.org

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet Army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1988. The following year he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles and was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004.

In March 2001, while practicing medicine, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published by Riverhead Books in 2003. That debut went on to launch one of the biggest literary careers of our time. Today, Khaled Hosseini is one of the most recognized and bestselling authors in the world. His books, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed, have been published in over seventy countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

In 2006 Khaled was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.

Barney began his career as a model maker and set dresser in film and television and has credits that include Star Wars, The Mummy, The Da Vinci Code and Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  More recently, Barney has worked on Game of Thrones, a new film version of Roald Dahl’s The Witches directed by Robert Zemeckis, and created new interactive installations for the company Leaps and Strides.

Barney began designing for theatre in 2002 and his current and most recent credits include The Canterville Ghost (Tall Stories), Cinderella – The Rockin’ Panto (Arts Depot/London), Sense and Sensibility (Theatre by the Lake and Theatre Royal York), Mother Courage with Josie Lawrence directed by Hannah Chiswick (Southwark Playhouse), The Kite Runner (Nottingham Playhouse/West End/UK Tour), Little Baby Bum (world premiere of the live stage show with co-designer Timothy Bird), Great Expectations (Derby Playhouse), Red Riding Hood (New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich) and Wilde Creatures (Tall Stories as part of the Dominic Dromgoole and Nica Burns’ Oscar Wilde season/Vaudeville Theatre, West End and Australia).

Barney’s other theatre work includes Sleuth, Charlie Peace; His Amazing Life and Astounding Legend and Diary of a Football Nobody (Nottingham Playhouse, three Rock ‘n’ Roll pantomimes for director/writer Peter Rowe at the New Wolsey – Sinbad, Beauty and the Beast and The Sword in the Stone – Talking Heads, The Worm Collector, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Count of Monte Cristo, Mela and Full of Noises (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Life and Times of Mitchell and Kenyon – nomination for Manchester Theatre Awards Best Design Award – and The Hobbit – UK Theatre Award Winner of Best Show for Children and Young People (The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster), Solace of the Road, The Odyssey and Kes (Derby), Blue/Orange, See How They Run and Whatever Next! (Theatre Royal, York),The Mist in the Mirror adapted from the novel by Susan Hill (Oldham Coliseum), The Frozen Scream directed by Olivier award winning writer and performer Christopher Green and co-written by the novelist Sarah Waters (Wales Millenium Centre and Birmingham Hippodrome), Tiny Heroes (Daniel Bye and Sarah Punshon), Beep (Northern Bullits), The Enough Project (Dep Arts), Emergency Story Penguin, They Only Come at Night: Resurrection and Mapping the City (Slung Low), Thrive (Zest Theatre), Broken Time (Three Stones Media), Stig of the Dump and Treasure Island (Mind the Gap), The Woods (Jane Packman Company), Flit (Edinburgh International Festival), Remote (Camden People’s Theatre), Body Faded Blue (National Theatre of Cyprus) and Hanuman the Superhero Monkey  (Singapore Repertory Theatre).

Recent credits include: The Seven Acts of Mercy, The Alchemist, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Play for the Nation, Queen Anne (RSC), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (NT), The Suppliant Women (ATC/Edinburgh Lyceum), Torn (Royal Court), Hydrargyrum (Rambert Dance) and I Call My Brothers (Gate).

Other theatre includes: Richard III, Mojo, Posh, Through the Leaves (West End), The River (Broadway), Hecuba, The Christmas Truce, I’ll Be the Devil (RSC), Minetti (Edinburgh International Festival), The Events (ATC/Young Vic/New York), The River, Choir Boy, Chicken Soup With Barley, Now or Later, The Ugly One (Royal Court), Ah Wilderness, Dirty Butterfly, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Girlfriend Experience (Young Vic), The Accrington Pals, Orlando, To Kill a Mockingbird (Manchester Royal Exchange), Oh, What a Lovely War!, Look Back in Anger, The Borrowers (Northern Stage), Flint Street Nativity, The Tempest (Liverpool Playhouse), The Duchess of Malfi, Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and Angels in America (Headlong). Dance includes: 35 works for Richard Alston Dance Company (Sadler’s Wells and worldwide), Red Balloon, Magical Night (Aletta Collins/ROH2), Bloom, Labyrinth of Love (Rambert), Eden/Eden (Wayne McGregor/Stuttgart and San Francisco Ballets), Run for It (Scottish Ballet/Cultural Olympiad) and Four Seasons (Oliver Hindle/Birmingham Royal Ballet).

Music includes: La Bianca Notte (Hamburg Opera), OperaShots, La Voix Humaine (Royal Opera House), Carmen, Werther and Saul (Opera North). Charles won the 2013 Knight of Illumination Award (Drama) for The River, the 2013 TMA UK Theatre Best Design Award for The Accrington Pals and the BroadwayWorld.com Best Lighting Award 2014 for Richard III.

William Simpson is a filmmaker and video designer whose work appears on the stage, screen and in exhibition.

His video design, projection credits and work has appeared in shows such as Rocky Das Musical (Stuttgart, Stage Entertainment), Darkness Darkness (Nottingham Playhouse), Derren Brown – Miracle (UK tour), Theatre of Illumination (Light Night, Leeds), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (compositing and aerial filming) (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Rapunzel Rock ‘n Roll Panto (Liverpool Everyman), Freefall (Unit 23), Kes (Cast, Doncaster), Guantanamo Boy (Brolly/ Half Moon Theatre), Richard III and Charlie Peace (Nottingham Playhouse), Up and Down (GaGa Theatre), Treasure Island (Mind the Gap), The Noise (Unlimited Theatre), Kes (Derby Theatre), the original and European stage premiere of The Kite Runner (Nottingham Playhouse and UK tour), Diary of a Football Nobody (Nottingham Playhouse), the award-winning adaptation of Of Mice and Men by Mike Kenny (Mind the Gap), Clockwork (NT), Ragtime (LAOS), Mapping the City (Slunglow), The Mamba (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and Piano Circus – Trilogies (Kings Place).

Directing and film work includes: the award winning Soldiering On, Jump the Fire – Melt Yourself Down, Anish Kapoor Flashback, Born Survivor, It’s Not Over Yet – Middleman, Talking Transformations, Instructions for Films and Lear Settings.

Theatre credits include: The Jew of Malta, Anya, The American Pilot and White Out (all Royal Shakespeare Company), Sleuth, The Kite Runner, Charlie Peace and Families of Lockerbie (Nottingham Playhouse), Margaret Catchpole (Eastern Angles), Three Wheels (Birmingham REP/ ACE), Flight of Hope (People Show), Dreaming (BSA) and Nine Lives (Leeds Studio).

Jonathan won a Royal Television Society Award with Losing It (Channel 4), with other commissions including Gogmagog (English National Opera), Lights Out (New York Arts), Grimm Tales (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Radio 3), Flight to the Ford (CBSO), It’s Not a Game and The Long Lost Son (Evelyn Glennie), Black Heart and A Little Madness (BBC Singers), and O Rex Gentium (Ex Cathedra), winning national awards with The Ice Palace. His music is broadcast and played worldwide through Audio Network. Jonathan has achieved a first class honours in music (BA), and was awarded a doctorate in musical composition in 2006. He’s lectured and taught all over the world, and worked with groups such as the CBSO, ENO, Brodsky Quartet, Ensemble Bash and Kokuma African Dance Company in learning and participation projects throughout the UK. Jonathan is delighted to be bringing The Kite Giles Croft for a sixth time. Other current projects include Macbeth (director: Justin Audibert) at the National Theatre, reworking Anya (RSC) for puppet-theatre, and working with choreographers Anita Gonzalez and Joel Valentín-Martínez on Living Lakes in the United States. www.jonathangirling.co.uk

Drew trained at BristolE Old Vic Theatre School and was subsequently part of the Lighting and Sound Department at Nottingham Playhouse where he started designing for in-house productions. In 2014 he left to become a freelance sound designer.

Drew has designed extensively with Nottingham Playhouse on shows including: Time and the Conways, Of Mice and Men, Richard III, My Judy Garland Life, The Importance of Being Earnest, Forever Young and Grandpa in My Pocket:Teamwork. Also, The Threepenny Opera in collaboration with Graeae Theatre Company. Other sound designs include: Sweet Charity and Trevor Nunn’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich), Workshop Negative (Gate Theatre), Mary Shelley (Shared Experience), Sleeping Beauty (Cast, Doncaster), The Dissidents (Tricycle), The Crossing (Tangle), Darkness Darkness, Unforgettable (New Perspectives), Jack and the Beanstalk (Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds), The Wiz, Seance on a Sunday Afternoon, Empty Bed Blues, Smile (Lakeside Arts) and the 2015 UK tour of Miss Nightingale the Musical.

Kitty is a movement director, choreographer and director, she trained at Laban and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Recent movement credits include: The Wolf, The Duck and The Mouse (New Perspectives/Unicorn Theatre), Pinocchio (Nottingham Playhouse), The Fishermen (New Perspectives at The Trafalgar Studios), Queer Lady M (1623/Attenborough Arts), If All The World Were Paper (Big Window/Lakeside Arts Centre), Journeys of Destiny (Ava Hunt Theatre/Derby Theatre), Hansel and Gretel, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, A Christmas Carol and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Derby Theatre), Harvest (New Perspectives) Crossings (Pentabus/New Perspectives) Wolves are Coming for You, As the Crow Flies and Here I Belong (Pentabus), Blood (Tamasha/ Belgrade Theatre Coventry), Rapunzel, Jack and Tom’s Midnight Garden (Nottingham Playhouse), The Dog House, Puss in Boots and Women on the Verge of HRT (Derby LIVE), Dick Turpin’s Last Ride (Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds) Roots (Mercury Theatre Colchester) Gandhi and Coconuts (Kali at The Arcola) Tiny Treasures and The Night Pirates (Theatre Hullabaloo).

Recent directing credits include: Mark and the Marked, Feet First and Car Story (Box Clever Theatre) Whose Shoes? (Nottingham Playhouse) Spinning Yarns (Theatre Hullabaloo) and Awaking Durga (Kali Theatre/ Soho Theatre). For her own company, WinterWalker, Kitty has recently directed FIVE (The Hullabaloo/Derby Theatre/TakeOff Festival), The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (Watermans/Déda/Lincoln Drill Hall) and Three Keepers (UK tour).
Follow Kitty @KitWinterWalker

Philip is on the Equity Register of Fight Directors, and the examining staff of the BASSC. He teaches for RADA.

Recent theatre includes: Ariodante (Teatro Campoamor), Julius Caesar, I’ll Be the Devil (RSC), Der Rosenkavalier, LaScala Di Seta, Cosi Fan Tutte (JPYAP), Veneziana, L’Isola Disabitata, Der Rosenkavalier (ROH), L’Isola Disabitata (ROH international tour), Simon Boccanegra, La Traviata (re-cast), Faust, Ariodante (ENO), L’Olimpiade (Garsington Opera), Andrea Chenier, Stiffelio (Holland Park Opera), Mahabharata, Carrie’s War (Sadler’s Wells), Dedication, Noises Off (Nuffield, Southampton), Dial M for Murder (UK tour), King Lear (Northern Broadsides), Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (Theatre Clwyd), Noises Off (Royal Court, Liverpool), The Ladykillers (Hull Truck), The Mysteries, God of Soho, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, A New World, Othello (Shakespeare’s Globe), Sleuth, Noises Off, The Duchess of Malfi, A Skull in Connemara, Time and the Conways, Aladdin, The Kite Runner, Robin Hood and the Babes (Nottingham Playhouse), Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, Dial M for Murder, A View From the Bridge, The Grapes of Wrath, King David, Man of Blood, Tango, Romeo and Juliet, Lonesome West, IPH, Journey’s End, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Aladdin (Mercury Theatre, Colchester), Gaslight, Kiss Me Quickstep, Robin Hood and Marian, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Rivals, Hamlet, Bleak House, Humble Boy (New Vic, Stoke), As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Stig of the Dump, Macbeth, Othello, Cyrano de Bergerac, Romeo and Juliet, The Wind in the Willows, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Merlin and the Woods of Time, Masters Are You Mad? (Storyhouse Chester), Swimming With Sharks (Vaudeville), Macbeth (Hampton Court Palace), Gaslight, To Sir With Love, The Talented Mr Ripley, Humble Boy (Royal Theatre, Northampton), The Djinns of Eidgah, Piano/Forte, Sugar Mummies (Royal Court), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Theatre Royal Haymarket), King Lear, Breakfast With Mugabe (Theatre Royal, Bath), Corrie! (international tour), Carrie’s War (Apollo), Romeo and Juliet (Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds), Death and the Maiden, Arsenic and Old Lace, What the Butler Saw, People at Sea, The Herbal Bed, Robin Hood, Shadowlands, Sleeping Beauty, Playing for Time, To Kill a Mockingbird, Cinderella, Jamaica Inn, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, The Hired Man (Salisbury Playhouse), Oleanna, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Lord of the Flies, Looking for JJ, Hobson’s Choice (York Theatre Royal), Treasure Island, As You Like It, The Wind in the Willows, Macbeth, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, Dr Faustus, Rapunzel, Twelfth Night, Robin Hood, Macbeth, The Snow Queen, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors (Creation Theatre), Dial M for Murder (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Robin Hood (The Theatre, Chipping Norton), The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Canterbury Tales, Twelfth Night, Henry V, As You Like It, Macbeth, Richard III, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It (Guildford Shakespeare Co), Peter Pan, Cinderella (SECC, Glasgow and Venue Cymru), Jack and the Beanstalk (Theatre Royal, Plymouth), Bad Jazz (Drum Theatre, Plymouth), Aladdin (King’s Theatre, Edinburgh), Dial M for Murder, Suddenly At Home, Macbeth, Deadly Murder, Romy & Julian, Deadly Nightcap (Vienna’s English Theatre), The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, The Conquering Hero, The Conspirators, The Making of Moo, The Company Man, Nan, The Tinker’s Wedding, Adam Bede (Orange Tree Theatre), Dracula (Open Book Theatre), Honest (Theatre 6), Stone Cold Murder (Vienna’s English Theatre and Mill at Sonning Theatre), Peter Pan (High Wycombe Swan), Jack & the Beanstalk (Swansea Grand Theatre), Robin Hood, Merlin (The Dukes, Lancaster), Dick Whittington, Peter Pan (Orchard Theatre, Dartford), Corrie! (international tour), Jack & the Beanstalk (Lyceum Theatre, Crewe), Carthage (Finborough), Peter Pan (Cliff’s Pavilion, Southend), Hamlet (USA tour), Peter Pan (Buxton Opera House), Soul Man (Steven Joseph Theatre, Scarborough), Cool Hand Luke (Aldwych), Aladdin (New Theatre, Hull), Twelfth Night (cruise ship tour), Misery (Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon), Smash (Menier Chocolate Factory), Snake in the Grass (The Print Room) and Corrie! (UK tour).

Film includes: King Arthur, Pan, The Knife That Killed Me and Dark Signal.

Lucy and Sooki cast the original production of The Kite Runner at Nottingham, on tour and in the West End (Wyndhams / Playhouse)

Other recent theatre credits include: Magic Goes Wrong, Groan Ups, The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong, all for Mischief Theatre.  Stranger Things (Secret Cinema), The Snow Queen (Rose Theatre), Clear White Light (Live Theatre), Clybourne Park (Rapture Theatre), Close Quarters (Out of Joint / Sheffield), The Last Ship (Northern Stage & tour); The Red Lion and Bomber’s Moon (Trafalgar) War Horse (West End and Tour),  Jekyll & Hyde (Rose Theatre and tour), Cathy (Cardboard Citizens); Home Truths  and La Ronde (Bunker Theatre); A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and Mighty Atoms (Hull Truck), The Quiet House (Park Theatre); The Divided Laing (Arcola); Wet House (Soho Theatre),   Serpent’s Tooth (Almeida).

Film credits include:  Deus; Dark Encounter; For Love or Money; Widow’s Walk; The Comedian’s Guide to Survival; Bliss!,