New Associate Directors Revealed By Royal Exchange Theatre

Selina Cartmell, Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre, has announced that Emma Baggott and Katie Greenall will join the company as Associate Directors in 2026-2027. In this anniversary year Cartmell places artistic voices firmly at the forefront of the Royal Exchange Theatres artistic leadership.

  

Selina Cartmell said: Next year we celebrate our 50th anniversary and one of my first acts as artistic director, is to welcome artists Emma and Katie into the Exchange's core team, placing exceptional  talent at the centre of our theatre and creating a culture of artist-led initiatives across our programme.  Embedding artistic voices at the heart of this theatre is vital and essential and they will help us to develop a fiercely distinctive artistic future that is local, national and international in ambition. We look forward to them shaping our artistic programme, creating deeply rooted community engagement projects and influencing our theatre's commitment to supporting artists and developing new work for our stage.”

  

Emily McLaughlin will continue her work as the theatres New Work Consultant and Rosie Thackeray, who has been working as Literary Coordinator for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, will take on the newly created role as New Work Deputy. 

  

Emma Baggott is a director and educator who has worked in major theatres and drama schools across the UK. Her recent credits include A Taste of Honey at Royal Exchange; Dracula at Lyric Hammersmith; The Wonderful World of Dissocia at Theatre Royal Stratford East; Neville's Island, Misfits and Stiletto Beach at Queens Theatre Hornchurch and Under Milk Wood for National Youth Theatre of Wales. She is a co-chair of the JMK Award and is a trustee of Bold Elephant and Work Up.

  

Katie Greenall is a director, theatre maker, and writer specialising in new writing, autobiographical performance, and work with Young People & Communities. She was the Associate Director at the Bush Theatre, where they established the Bush Young Companies and directed productions including COMMUNION, ANTHEM and Offie-nominated As We Face The Sun. Her acclaimed solo show FATTY FAT FAT won the VAULT Origins Award, and her new piece BLUBBER—runner-up for the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award—tours in 2026. 

  

Emily McLaughlin is a senior creative leader, dramaturg and script executive across both stage and screen who has played a defining role in shaping the UK's new writing landscape. She was the first Head of New Work for The National Theatre, where she led both Literary and the NT Studio in the newly formed New Work Department. Emily commissioned and dramaturgically developed multiple award-winning new plays for all three NT stages, with future life including West End, NT at Home and Sky Arts.  Prior to this Emily was Associate Director/Artistic Associate at The Royal Court Theatre, working with three successive Artistic Directors across twelve years to discover and produce the work of a new generation of playwrights.  Emily is co-editor of The Royal Court Theatre Inside Out, published by Oberon Books.

Rosie Thackeray is a theatre director and dramaturg. She is an Associate Director of Red Brick Theatre Company and was previously the Literary Coordinator for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, where she supported the development of playwrights nationally and delivered the Prize's 20th anniversary reading process. Rosie has previously made new work with Bloomsbury Festival, Claybody Theatre, Contact, Factory International, Good Chance Theatre, Outside Edge Theatre Company, The Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Exchange Theatre and Tramshed.

  

The appointment of these new associates puts artistic voices firmly at the forefront of the Royal Exchange Theatres artistic leadership.

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