Biography

Writer and director Uzma Hameed has collaborated with Wayne McGregor as dramaturg on Woolf Works, Obsidian Tear, and Multiverse, all for the Royal Ballet. Most recently, she was dramaturg on Autobiography with Company Wayne McGregor, which premiered at Sadlers Wells in London in September.

Hameed gained a First in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge University and also trained in classical Indian dance. In 1997 she founded the Big Picture Company, an innovative theatre company combining new writing with choreography and film. Hameed’s credits with the Big Picture Company included writing and directing A Dark River, Taj and Prophetess, all of which toured extensively around the UK. Hameed was also Associate Director at Derby Playhouse where her directing credits included Shirley Valentine, Dracula, Frankenstein, and her own controversial adaptation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart, which drew parallels between the threat to Elizabethan England from Catholic Rome, and Islamist terrorism today.

Hameed has written reviews and features for Dance Theatre Journal, Dance Now, East, Animated and The Big Issue. Her first novel, The Kinship of Djinns (co-written with her sister Ambreen Hameed) is currently out on submission.