Imogen Usherwood: Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence 2025-2026

Imogen Usherwood, the fourth Shaffer playwright-in-residence at Trinity, talks about her inspiration and plans for her time here. 

Please tell us a bit about yourself

I’m a playwright, theatre director, and fiction writer, originally from Shropshire but I mostly grew up in rural Hampshire. I read English Literature at Durham then completed an MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford. My plays include Bucket List (New Wimbledon Theatre Studio, Edinburgh Fringe), and Rosaline (Mountview).

What new ideas are you developing? 

I’m currently working on a play about the true story of Mary Toft, a young woman who became briefly famous in 1726 when she convinced the King of England and all of his doctors that she had given birth to rabbits – her case is a fascinating but little-known historical curio that prompts questions about women’s bodies, abuses of power, and how we treat people in the public eye.

During the year at Trinity, I hope to work on a few new ideas, including a three-hander about nuclear semiotics, which is a field of communication studies that aims to create warning signs about nuclear waste sites which may still be read and understood in thousands of years’ time, when our languages are obsolete. I also want to write a new, contemporary version of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, with a particular emphasis on his female characters and their relationship to the water.

What does the residency offer?

Above all it offers time and space, which any writer will tell you are their two most sought-after things. The chance to live in a beautiful place like Cambridge for a whole year, with access to fantastic libraries and a community of academics and creatives, is a rare opportunity indeed and one for which I am very grateful.

What inspires your work?

I try to be inspired by as many different types of media as possible; my Master’s course was very interdisciplinary so I’ve learnt to draw on prose and poetry as points of inspiration for drama, and since moving to London this year I’ve had the great joy of visiting lots of art galleries too. I also find music a really useful point of departure, and usually make a playlist of relevant songs when I am developing a new idea. Place has proved to be a big inspiration for me, as well – I’m very much from the countryside but there’s a really rich, complex contrast to be found between rural and urban landscapes.

Do you have a favourite playwright?

Probably James Graham – he writes big, sprawling plays that pull so many different characters and contexts together to tell a story to its fullest extent, which creates some delicious challenges for a director. I’m also very drawn to comedy or to drama that contains comedic elements, and for that reason really admire playwrights like Tom Basden, Laura Wade, Tom Stoppard, and the radio writer John Finnemore.

 

The Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence was established in 2022 in memory of the dramatist and alumnus Peter Shaffer (1926-2016), whose acclaimed works include Equus and Amadeus.