\n\tThe buzzy play debuted at the Bush Theatre in 2024 before transferring to the West End, picking up Olivier Award nominations in 2025 for best new play and best actress for Agyepong. Idris Elba, Little Simz and Danai Gurira joined the producing team for the show\u2019s New York run, slated through the end of August.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere are cultural nuances in Black British storytelling that we didn\u2019t really recognize at the time,\u201d says Agyepong, asked about the experience of bringing \u201cShifters\u201d Stateside. \u201cBut because there are so many universal themes like love and heartbreak and what home means, it feels like they are starting to connect that with their own lives, which feels really great.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDirector Lynette Linton reached out to Agyepong about \u201cShifters\u201d after seeing her in a production of Jocelyn Bioh\u2019s play \u201cSchool Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen I read the script [for \u2018Shifters\u2019] \u2014 it was about people in love, these two Black characters \u2014 I\u2019d never gotten a script like that in my life,\u201d says Agyepong. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like a play about struggle. It felt very hopeful and truthful and nuanced, and that really excited me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWritten by Benedict Lombe, the play traces the friendship and romantic entanglement of Des and Dre, who meet as teenagers in London and reconnect years later as adults in their 30s. Their story is told in a nonlinear fashion, with the actors jumping between time frames throughout the nearly two-hour runtime. Agyepong shares the stage with costar Daniel Ezra for the majority of that time, a bare-bones set contained within a clear box.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe wanted the intimacy of feeling like a fly on the wall,\u201d says Agyepong of the unusual theater setup, with audiences seated both in front and back of the stage. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to give people a point of view of our internal dialogue.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile Agyepong and director Lynette Linton have been involved with all three productions, Ezra joins the latest staging as Dre, the show\u2019s romantic co-lead. Agyepong was excited to discover that Ezra\u2019s presence unveiled new dynamics between the characters on stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere are different parts to [Des\u2019] humor and her personality being triggered,\u201d she says. \u201cShe\u2019s using humor way more to mask stuff. And maybe because I\u2019m also just older, there is a more groundedness in her at 32.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe play explores the nuance of memory, as the characters revisit their teenage years and relationship through physical artifacts like music and artwork that defined their younger years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMemory can be distorted, and it\u2019s about perception. One person can look at a situation and think that\u2019s what happened, and the other person\u2019s like, \u2018No, I thought something completely different happened.\u2019 It\u2019s interesting how memory in relationships can cause new stories, and those stories might not even be true,\u201d she says. \u201cI always want the show to feel cathartic, but also healing. I feel like Des forgives herself when she keeps looking back at her past.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOffstage, Agyepong interrogates her own past through her fine art photography practice, which is centered around themes of mental health and visibility.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI always use the camera to express the rawest parts of myself, parts of myself that I hide or bury or wanna show love and support,\u201d she says, adding that her photography work supports the vulnerability that she brings to the stage and screen. \u201cWhen I\u2019m acting, I\u2019m putting on a character and empathizing with a character, and then when I\u2019m doing the art I\u2019m empathizing with myself. It\u2019s two different entry points, but they\u2019re kind of flowing around each other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAgyepong was initially drawn to acting, her \u201cfirst love,\u201d through a school play when she was 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere was something about transformation \u2014 I couldn\u2019t believe people could become something else. It felt like alchemy,\u201d she says, adding that she was fully committed after acting in a production of \u201cMacbeth\u201d a few years later. But she first pursued a degree in psychology, which led her into photography.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cLoads of actors who I was watching at the time were like, \u2018try to do anything else but acting, because it\u2019s so difficult.\u2019 So I did, and focused on photography for a while, which I loved. I was making money, I was surviving off it, but I dearly missed acting, and wondered: could I do both?\u201d she says. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m just being an artist, and I\u2019m using different mediums.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAgyepong has witnessed the lingering impact of \u201cShifters\u201d through interactions with audience members after the show, who have been eager to share the ways in which Des feels like a reflection of themselves.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMy hope with all the work I make is that it\u2019s not just about me, that it allows someone to process their own emotions and their own histories,\u201d Agyepong adds. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the gift you leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Heather](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-wwd-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tHeather Agyepong<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of David Reiss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the morning before the opening night of \u201cShifters\u201d at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and British actress Heather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[60106,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-298104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-eye-interview","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}