Maria Oshodi
British writer and theatre director (born 1964)
Maria Oshodi (born 1964) is a British writer and theatre director. A guide dog owner, she is Artistic director and CEO of Extant Theatre Company, Britain's only professional performing arts company of blind and partially sighted people.
Life
Maria Oshodi was born in South London in 1964.
Oshodi's play The 'S' Bend was chosen for the Young Writers' Festival at the Royal Court Festival in 1984. Produced by the Cockpit Youth Theatre in 1985, it was chosen for the first International Festival of Young Playwrights, Interplay '85, held in Sydney.
Blood, Sweat and Fears, a play treating sickle cell anaemia, was written in response to a request from a worker at the Sickle Cell Centre in Lambeth. Ben is a fast-food worker who has sickle cell anaemia, but resists pressure from his girlfriend Ashley to label himself as disabled. Once hospitalized, he has to attempt agency within a health-care system that is ill-informed and discriminatory. The play was first presented by Harmony Arts at the Battersea Arts Centre, with Steven Woodcock playing Ben and Winsome Pinnock also in the cast, before touring England.
Maria was the inspiration for one of the main characters in theatre maker Sheila Hill's 1995 work, Crocodile Looking At Birds, Lyric Hammersmith.
The public source identifies “Maria Oshodi” as british writer and theatre director (born 1964). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Maria, Oshodi and British.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q97626730. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1984, 1985 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maria Oshodi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.