Heather Agyepong brings her own artistic instinct, South London perspective, and understanding of Black womanhood to Benedict Lombe’s acclaimed romance.

Heather Agyepong Finds Herself in Des, the Painter at the Heart of Shifters

Arts & Entertainment   |   Theatre   |   Maison Adoré

Heather Agyepong brings the role of Des to life in Benedict Lombe’s Shifters.

There are certain characters an actor plays, and then there are characters an actor seems to recognize.

For Heather Agyepong, Des in Benedict Lombe’s Shifters belongs firmly to the second category.

Des is a painter. She is intelligent, independent, emotionally complicated and unapologetically herself. She has a strong sense of her own gaze and appears far less interested in being understood by everyone else than in understanding herself.

That quality is one Agyepong knows intimately.

Growing up in South London, she developed an instinct for looking at the world through her own perspective—an instinct that would eventually become central not only to her acting career, but to her work as a visual artist.

“She doesn’t really care about other people’s opinions,” Agyepong says of Des. “She’s into her own gaze.”

Then comes the recognition.

“In my artwork—that’s me all over.”

A Character Built Around Her Own Gaze

There is something especially revealing about Agyepong identifying herself through Des’s relationship with looking.

Des is a painter, and painting is fundamentally an act of choosing what deserves attention. An artist decides what enters the frame, what remains outside it, what is enlarged and what is allowed to disappear into the background.

That same principle can be applied to Agyepong’s work as a performer and visual artist. Her creative practice has often been concerned with identity, memory, psychology and the ways Black women are seen—or not seen—by the world around them.

Rather than allowing other people’s expectations to determine the image, Agyepong has developed a practice rooted in self-definition.

That makes Des feel less like a conventional fictional artist and more like someone Agyepong can approach from an instinctive place.

She understands the character’s need to protect the private world inside her while still wanting to be seen by someone capable of seeing her properly.

Shifters Is a Love Story—But Not Only a Love Story

At first glance, Shifters appears to be a romance.

Written by Benedict Lombe, the play follows Des and Dre, two young Black people who knew one another when they were younger and whose lives intersect again years after they separated. He stayed. She left. Time, memory and everything that happened in between become part of the relationship they are forced to reconsider.

The production moves between past and present, allowing memories to sit beside the people Des and Dre have become. The result is a love story that is as interested in time, grief, ambition and personal history as it is in romance.

That complexity is one of the reasons the play has resonated so strongly.

Agyepong has described the relationship as being about more than simply whether two people end up together. It is also about life happening around them—success, disappointment, family, loss, uncertainty and the question of whether two people can find their way back to one another after becoming different versions of themselves.

In that sense, Des is not simply a romantic lead.

She is a woman trying to remain herself while negotiating the possibility of allowing somebody else back into her life.

The Artist Behind the Artist

Agyepong’s connection to Des becomes even more compelling when viewed through the actress’s own creative history.

She is not an actor who discovered visual art after becoming established onscreen. Art has been part of the way she understands herself and the world for years.

Her photography and visual-art projects have explored themes including identity, representation, mental health and the complicated ways Black women are constructed through other people’s expectations.

That background gives her an unusual understanding of a character whose identity is inseparable from her creative work.

Des does not simply happen to be a painter because the script requires her to have a profession. Her artistic identity is part of how she experiences the world.

She sees.

She interprets.

She decides what matters.

And she does not need everybody else to agree with what she sees.

South London, Identity and Finding Her Voice

Agyepong’s upbringing in South London is another important part of the connection between performer and character.

She has spoken about growing up in a Ghanaian immigrant family and about the influence of her parents’ work ethic. Her father worked as a manager in Harrods’ seafood department, while her mother worked for the NHS.

Her path toward the arts was not necessarily obvious from the beginning.

A pivotal moment came when she was fifteen and encountered a drama teacher who recognized something in her. Agyepong has credited that teacher, Mr. Lord, with encouraging her talent and giving her confidence at an important point in her life.

It is striking that transformation became such an important idea so early in her story.

Years later, she would build a career around transformation—not only by stepping into characters, but by using photography, theatre and performance to examine identity from different angles.

Des feels like another extension of that journey.

A Different Kind of Black Love Story

One of Shifters‘ most significant qualities is its refusal to treat Black romance as a secondary subject.

The central relationship is allowed to be tender, messy, funny, sensual and complicated. Des and Dre are not defined solely by hardship. They are young, gifted people with ambitions, memories, flaws and an unmistakable history together.

That matters.

Black British characters are too often asked to carry the weight of representation before they are allowed to simply be human. Shifters gives its characters room to fall in love, make mistakes, remember the past and wrestle with adulthood.

The play’s emotional power comes partly from that freedom.

The romance is not perfect.

Neither are the people inside it.

And that is precisely why it feels recognizable.

From London to New York

Shifters began at London’s Bush Theatre in 2024, where the production developed a strong response before transferring to the West End. Agyepong’s performance as Des earned her an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

In 2026, the production crossed the Atlantic for its North American premiere at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre, with Agyepong reprising her role and Daniel Ezra joining the production as Dre.

Directed by Lynette Linton, the New York production brings the same intimate two-person structure to an American audience while preserving the play’s central focus on memory, first love and the lives people build after they separate.

That transition feels particularly appropriate for Agyepong.

Des is a woman whose identity has been shaped by movement—between past and present, between vulnerability and independence, between the person she once was and the person she has chosen to become.

Now the character has made the same journey herself, moving from London to New York with the artist who created her close enough to understand exactly what she means.

Shifters brings its intimate story of memory and first love to the New York stage.

Learning to Be Seen

There is a quiet irony in Agyepong playing a character who cares so little about other people’s opinions while working in an industry built around being watched.

Actors are constantly observed. Their faces are photographed. Their performances are reviewed. Their choices are interpreted. Their bodies and appearances are discussed.

Des exists almost in opposition to that pressure.

She is interested in her own gaze.

That distinction is powerful because it does not mean Des is indifferent to everything around her. It means she does not surrender her definition of herself to everyone else.

Agyepong understands that tension.

Her career has developed across acting and visual art, two disciplines that require both exposure and control. The artist reveals something while simultaneously deciding what remains private.

That is perhaps the deepest connection between Agyepong and Des.

Both understand that being seen is not the same thing as giving yourself away.

Why Des Feels So Personal

When Agyepong says that Des’s relationship to her own gaze is reflected in her artwork, she reveals something important about the performance.

She isn’t approaching Des from the outside.

She recognizes the character’s instinct.

That recognition gives the performance room to breathe. Des can be confident without becoming cold. She can be vulnerable without losing her strength. She can love somebody deeply without making that person the center of her identity.

And she can make art because she has something inside herself that needs to be expressed.

That makes her more than the woman in a romantic two-hander.

She is a woman with her own interior world.

The Beauty of Being Unapologetically Yourself

Perhaps that is what makes Des such a fitting role for Agyepong at this stage of her career.

The character does not ask permission to be herself.

Neither does the artist playing her.

From South London to the international stage, Agyepong has built a creative life that moves freely between performance and visual expression. She has found ways to use both disciplines to question identity, challenge expectations and examine the complicated process of becoming comfortable inside your own skin.

Des understands that process.

She has her own gaze.

And she trusts it.

Sometimes the most powerful thing an artist can do is stop asking the world how she should be seen—and decide for herself.