Roland Schimmelpfennig was born in Gottingen in 1967. He has been working as a freelance author since 1996. Schimmelpfennig worked as a dramaturg at the Schaubuhne Berlin from 1999 to 2001. In the season of 2001/2002 he was author-in-residence at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Since 2000 he has been commissioned to write plays for the State Theatres in Stuttgart and Hannover, the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Burgtheater Vienna, the Schauspielhaus Zurich, the German Theatre Berlin and others. In 2010, Schimmelpfennig was awarded the Muhlheimer Dramatists Award for The Golden Dragon. Schimmelpfennig also received the highest playwriting award in Germany, the Else-Lasker-Schuler-Prize, to honour his entire oeuvre. He lives in Berlin.

David Tushingham works as a dramaturg and curator for the Salzburg Festival and the Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus. He has adapted Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories for The National Theatre, London and translated plays by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Dea Loher, Falk Richter and numerous other contemporary German playwrights. His recent translation of Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon has been performed in London, Edinburgh, Washington D.C., Toronto, Pittsburgh, Melbourne and on tour in India, Kurdistan and Ireland.