“IMOGEN SURPASSES EVERYTHING”

- Tim Crouch

Imogen Stirling is a Scottish artist. She is a playwright, performance poet and producer. Imogen creates startling and expressive hybrid work straddling the worlds of poetry, theatre and electronic music.

Imogen has performed her work extensively around the UK and Europe, with partners including Glastonbury, Latitude Festival, Anniki Runofestivaali, Secret Garden Party and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She features as a writer and performer on Sky Arts' BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes where she performed alongside Benjamin Zephaniah and Hollie McNish. Imogen was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Paisley Book Festival, led Wigtown Book Festival’s youth development programme and was shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry. She is an alumna of the BBC Words First talent development scheme and Short Circuit’s Convergence programme. She was a performer in Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree during the Edinburgh Fringe (2023).

Imogen’s show Love The Sinner fuses poetry, visual theatre and electronic music to present a modern retelling of the seven deadly sins. It was commissioned and produced by Vanishing Point Theatre Company and premiered at the Tron Theatre and Traverse Theatre to five-star reviews across the board. It will tour Scotland in Autumn 2024. The book of Love The Sinner was published by Verve Poetry Press in January 2022. Her first show #Hypocrisy was longlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award.

Imogen represented Scotland at Transpoesie in Brussels (Scottish Government, 2023), was commissioned to open the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival with new show The Boulders We Carry and was commissioned to create a poetry/drum&bass reinterpretation of the myth of Persephone by the National Theatre of Scotland and Push The Boat Out Festival. Her first play Starving was presented by Oran Mor and Traverse Theatre as part of the Spring 2024 season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint in association with Raw Material. Her monologue play She Says No was longlisted for the Richard Jenkinson Commission.

As a dramaturg, Imogen specialises in work that exists at the intersection of poetry, theatre and music. She was Associate Dramaturg to Jeanie O’Hare at Dundee Rep’s International Musical Theatre Writing Residency (Cove Park/Playwrights’ Studio Scotland).

Imogen was the Artist Development Coordinator at Tron Theatre. She is Development and Producing Lead at Summerhall Arts, and produces Summerhall Surgeries in partnership with The Fringe Society. For the past two years, she has produced the Glasgow heat of the Roundhouse Poetry Slam. She is part of The Lowry’s Artist Development Advisory Group.

Imogen has worked with organisations and events including: BBC, Sky Arts, 404 Ink, Latitude Festival, Lindisfarne Festival, Eden Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Prague Fringe Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Theatre503, Tron Theatre, Traverse Theatre, CCA, Dundee Rep Theatre, Middle Child Theatre, LUNG Theatre, Ayr Gaiety, Creative Scotland, Paisley Book Festival, Renfrewshire Council, South Ayrshire Council, Aye! Write, Sofar Sounds, Neu! Reekie!, Toonspeak, Vanishing Point, Apples and Snakes, Scottish Poetry Library, Extinction Rebellion, Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, McClellan Poetry Fringe, Short Circuit, Out-Spoken, Soutar Festival of Words, Roundhouse, Francesca Moody Productions, Raw Material, Cove Park, The Lowry.