or as long as Amy Trigg can remember, she wanted to be a performer. Growing up in Essex, she fell in love with musical theatre and began ballet classes at five. She was born with spina bifida and did not see a single actor on stage using a wheelchair but that didn’t deter her. Now 28, she has proven herself as a writer and actor with a rich, broad talent. Speaking on Zoom, Trigg is charming, funny and disarmingly warm. As a performer, she has shown a dizzying range across dance, musicals and improvised comedy. She won acclaim for her parts in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, starred in the rock musical Tommy, and appeared in the Waterloo dance sequence for the hit film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, alongside Lily James and Hugh Skinner. “It was intense but so hilarious,” she remembers. She was one of two winners of the inaugural Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2020 and has also become a writer for the TV drama Ralph and Katie, which is Peter Bowker’s spin-off to The A-Word. What came first, the writing or acting? “I knew I wanted to do something in theatre one way or another. If I’m honest, I always wanted to be an actress first of all. But I also looked into directing, stage makeup and stage management.” In 2013, she became the first wheelchair user to graduate from a performance course at Mountview, after which she found herself under-employed. “There were very few jobs for actresses in wheelchairs. Most of the theatres in London were not accessible. I felt I had the skillset for it [an acting career] but also that I was in an industry that wasn’t ready for me.” So she started writing in the lull. She made a video of her talk Rearranging My Molecules, about being inspired to write and perform improvised comedy, which captured her warm and sparky personality. It led to the writer Scarlett Curtis approaching her to contribute to the book Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and Other Lies), alongside the likes of Keira Knightley and Gemma Arterton. Trigg has seen greater inclusivity in recent times but there is some way to go on representation, she says, especially in the light of Sia’s controversial film on autism. “I think deaf and disabled characters should be played by deaf and disabled actors. We should also be able to play characters who are not specifically written as being D/deaf and disabled … People argue that it’s impossible for disabled actors to play certain roles but there are clever ways to make someone look like they are walking, for example. If we can do crazy things with avatars, I think we can do this. And there needs to be more D/deaf and disabled creatives in powerful positions within the industry to enable this change.” Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me features a character with spina bifida and Trigg says she is caught in the paradox of wanting to feature disability in her work but being expected never to write beyond it. “I have been in pitching meetings where you can see they are waiting for the mention of a disabled character, and I say ‘No, it’s just a story about time travel.’” There will always be a character who is disabled in her dramatic world, she says, “but I don’t think all my work will be about disability. I want to write science fiction, and about superheroes. I would love to go into a writers’ room where the projects are across genres and have as many different voices in there as possible.” From the CV 2021: Ralph and Katie, ITV Studios 2020: Winner of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting with Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me, to be produced by Ellie Keel Productions and Paines Plough 2019: Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure, Royal Shakespeare Company 2018: Fusion, Sadler’s Wells 2018: Mamma Mia! Here we Go Again 2018: The Sonnet Walks and Shakespeare in the Abbey, Shakespeare’s Globe 2017: Goth Weekend, Stephen Joseph theatre in Scarborough and Live theatre in Newcastle 2017: Tommy, UK tour for Ramps on the Moon 2016: The Glass Menagerie, Nottingham Playhouse