Claire Luckham's career as a playwright was launched in 1976, when the feminist theatre group Monstrous Regiment selected Scum (a play on which she and her husband collaborated) to open their first season. Her plays often make use of songs and monologues. Her best-known piece, Trafford Tanzi, which began its life in Liverpool pubs two years after Scum, features a theatrical wrestling match between husband and wife over social and domestic roles. Other, historical plays take famous women as their subjects: Fanny Kemble (1990), Anne Boleyn (1998), and Catherine Cookson (2005).