(Gardner’s article appeared in the Guardian, 7/5.)
The theatre industry is eager to increase diversity, and so it should be. As the Bush’s Madani Younis has observed, the days when notions of diversity are discussed in rooms full of almost all-white artistic directors should be long over, but are sadly not.
We need to change access to the industry and understand that who is running our theatres and making the work – writing the plays, directing them, designing them and stage-managing them – is intimately connected with who is seeing those plays. This is one of the issues addressed at Central St Martins art school this week as part of London writers’ week, an initiative that looks at the business of writing plays, who gets the chance to do so, how the theatre industry can better work with schools and colleges, and what to do about the decline in the number of those studying arts subjects at school, as a result of the introduction of the EBacc, and university level.
Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http2015:// www.stagevoices.com/ . If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related theater, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com.