Yusra Warsama (born 9 July 1987) is a British playwright, theatre director, and stage, film and television actress.
Early and personal life
Warsama was born in the United Arab Emirates to a Somali Islamic family displaced by the civil war in the country. As a young child her family moved from Abu Dhabi to England. She has a younger sister. She studied for a degree in criminology and sociology. She became a mother living in Manchester in her early twenties.[2][3]
Career
Stage
She became involved with the Contact Theatre in Manchester whilst a student. In 2015, she appeared at the Donmar Warehouse in James Graham's play The Vote, appearing alongside Judi Dench, amongst others. That year, a play she wrote based on female experience of genital mutilation, Rites, toured Great Britain.[2][3]
She was a writer on the triple-bill of short plays Everywhere with her short play Gestation; the plays united in their exploration of similar socio-political themes such as race and class, as well as gender-based prejudice and discrimination, and toured in 2025.[6]
Film and television
She could be seen in Call the Midwife on BBC One in 2017, playing a Somali woman who underwent a traumatic childbirth after suffering genital mutilation as a child.[7] In 2019, she joined the cast for the second series of the Stephen King supernatural horror adaptation Castle Rock.[8][9]