Stephen MacDonald was a British actor, director, and playwright best known for his play Not About Heroes, which explores the relationship between World War I poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Originally trained as an actor in Birmingham, he later built a significant career in Scottish theatre as both director and artistic leader. MacDonald directed at the Leicester Phoenix Theatre before revitalizing the Dundee Repertory Theatre in the early 1970s, championing new plays by contemporary Scottish writers. He later served as artistic director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, where he continued to focus on historically rooted drama.