An Actor, Director and Writer, SANDIE ELDRIDGE is a WAAPA acting graduate and has a Master of Arts (Practice) for Directing CSU. She is one of the co-founders of Monkey Baa where she co-adapted over 20 works for the stage and directed, acted, created and facilitated workshops throughout Australia and overseas. Writer adaptations include Wilfrid, Gordon, McDonald, Partridge, How to Catch a Star for the Australian Chamber Orchestra. For MB over twenty works with adaptations of Thursday’s Child, Hitler’s Daughter, Pete the Sheep, Peasant Prince all published by Currency Press and Worry Warts, The Unknown Soldier her original work, for PlayLab. An anthology of short plays for Primary Schools, Blake Publishing Directing credits include Possum Magic, Goodbye Jamie Boyd, The Prospector's, I am Jack, Hitler's Daughter and Thursday’s Child, 2007 & 2009 Helpmann Award for Best Children's Presentation, MB. Kindertransport and Maggie Stone; Darlinghurst TC. Sydney Theatre Award winning, Wilfrid, Gordon, McDonald, Partridge & How to Catch a Star ACO. Being Beethoven CDP, The Actors Centre, WAAPA and JMC. She has numerous and extensive acting credits in Theatre, TV and Film. In 2017 The Sydney Theatre Critics special award for Excellence and Extraordinary Service to the Young People of Australia.

Passionate about interrogating and developing new Australian work, TIM MCGARRY trained in theatre at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. His writing credits include – for Brisbane Festival/QPAC Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, for CDP Theatre Producers Being Beethoven,  Queensland Theatre/QPAC Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Christine Dunstan Productions Colleen McCullough’s Tim, Australian Chamber Orchestra There’s A Sea In My Bedroom, Sydney Opera House Families Unit Music for the Dreaming, The Nutcracker, Swing Baby Swing, Monkey Baa Thursday’s Child, Hitler’s Daughter, I Am Jack, Goodbye Jamie Boyd, The Peasant Prince, True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer, Pete the Sheep, Sydney Symphony Who Needs A Conductor Anyway.  Between 2005-2017 Tim was a Creative Director of Monkey Baa Theatre Company, one of Australia’s largest touring companies for young audiences, where he co-wrote over 20 new Australian works, touring nationally and internationally, receiving multiple Helpmann, Glug, and Sydney Theatre awards.Tim also works as a theatre director, actor and dramaturg.

EVA DI CESARE graduated from Victorian College of the Arts in 1989 and is one of the founding members of Monkey Baa Theatre Company. She directed Jackie French and Bruce Whatley’s Diary of a Wombat, which won the Glug Award for Outstanding Presentation for Children. Cesare also wrote and directed Where the Streets Had a Name, based on the novel by Randa Abdel-Fattah. She has co-adapted Sydney Theatre Award winning play Li Cunxin’s The Peasant Prince, Helpmann award winning plays Jackie French's Hitler’s Daughter and Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child, Tim Winton's The Bugalugs Bum Thief, Morris Gleitzman's Worry Warts, Gillian Rubinstein's The Fairy's Wings, Stephen Michael King's Milli, Jack and the Dancing Cat, Susanne Gervay’s I Am Jack, Elizabeth Fensham's Goodbye Jamie Boyd, Duncan Ball's Emily Eyefinger, and Jackie French and Bruce Whatley’s Pete the Sheep and Josephine Wants to Dance. She also co-wrote and directed the 2013 Opera House show Babies Proms Series and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (with Sandra Eldridge) for CDP Theatre Producers and Simon Tedeschi Pianist and Prankster for Monkey Baa. In 2017 Cesare was awarded a Sydney Theatre Award for 20 years of excellence and extraordinary service to the children and young people of Australia.

JACKIE FRENCH AM is an Australian author, historian, ecologist and 2014-2015 Australian Children' Laureate and 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. French’s books have sold millions of copies and won over 60 awards in Australia and internationally. French’s writing career spans 25 years, 148 wombats, over 140 books, 36 languages, 3,721 bush rats, and over 60 awards in Australia and overseas. Hitler's Daughter spent a decade on most of Australia’s kid’s choice award shortlists; among other awards it won the 2000 CBC Book of the Year for Younger Readers, the UK Wow! Award, a Semi Grand Prix Award in Japan and has been listed as a "blue ribbon' book in the USA. Monkey Baa’s production of Jackie French’s Hitler’s Daughter: the play won both the Helpmann and Drover’s Awards and toured the USA in 2013. Diary of a Wombat, created with Bruce Whatley, is also one of Australia’s best-loved picture books. It has been on bestseller lists across the world, with a still increasing number of awards and translations. French’s vast body of work contains both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the last 60,000 years of Australian history, with books like Nanberry: black brother white; The Girl from Snowy River, Tom Appleby: Convict Boy; The Night They Stormed Eureka; A Day to Remember created with Mark Wilson; and Flood, created with Bruce Whatley. Her non-fiction also includes an eight volume history of Australia for young people (The Dinkum History series).