Jessica Swale is a writer and director, and the Artistic Director of Red Handed Theatre Company.

Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe and won her a nomination for Most Promising Playwright in the Evening Standard Awards 2013. Other plays include Nell Gwynn and Thomas Tallis (both Shakespeare's Globe); All's Will That Ends Will (Bremer Shakespeare Company); adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, Sense and Sensibility (Watermill Theatre), The Secret Garden (Grosvenor Park) and The Jungle Book (UK tour 2017 & 2018); and an original play, The Mission, about illegal adoptions in the 1920s.

She wrote the book for Paddington: The Musical (Savoy Theatre, West End, 2025), which won Best New Musical at the 2026 Olivier Awards.

She has directed a number of award-winning productions for Red Handed, which is dedicated to creating new work and rediscovering forgotten plays. Recent productions include The Rivals starring Celia Imrie, the London premiere of Palace of the End by Judith Thompson, and the first major revival of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem, which won her a nomination for Best Director at the Evening Standard Awards.

Other direction includes Bedlam (Shakespeare's Globe); Sleuth (Watermill); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); Winter (TNL, Canada); The Busy Body, Someone to Watch Over Me (Southwark), The School for Scandal (Park Theatre); and productions at RADA and LAMDA. She was Max Stafford-Clark's Associate Director at Out of Joint from 2007-2010.

She is an associate artist with Youth Bridge Global, an international NGO which uses theatre as a tool for promoting social change in war-torn and developing nations.

She is the author of A Year of Creative Thinking: 366 Daily Inspirations for Writers and Artists (Nick Hern Books, 2025) and has written three titles in Nick Hern Books' popular Drama Games series: Drama Games for Classrooms and Workshops, Drama Games for Devising, and Drama Games for Rehearsals.

Author photo by Michael Wharley

Joe Stilgoe is a singer, pianist and songwriter. As composer and lyricist, he wrote music and lyrics for The Jungle Book, adapted from Rudyard Kipling by Jessica Swale (UK tour, 2017 & 2018), and The Midnight Gang, an adaption of the David Walliams novel (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2018). 

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India, which inspired much of his work.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), and many short stories. His poems include 'Gunga Din' (1890) and 'If-' (1910).

His relationship with his son, who was killed during the First World War, is explored in David Haig's play My Boy Jack (1997), published by Nick Hern Books.