absolutely fed up with theatre casting wokery for the sake of it

[grumpyandiknowit]

I'm so fed up with every single theatre company and production house straining to make theatre that forces into everything DEI, LGBTQI, race and left wing politics.

Casting now disproportionately represents all minorities out of all comparison with the population. As an example, feels like every single play will have a least one transgender member of the cast and one who is using 'they' pronouns and one person with a visible disability. This feels like forced tick-box quotas to me even in the acting world.

I just saw that Jonathan Groff who I've seen on stage many times and I think is fantastic is going to be in the new RSC season so eagerly went to look and it turns out he is playing a female character Rosalind in an all male production of As You Like It. I really don't want to see that and I was so disappointed. I know that this was how productions were traditionally performed but that's not what this is about it is it? It's about being seen to be promoting DEI constantly without actually looking for the best actors for the role. I think the fact this is so noticeable speaks for itself. If you went to the theatre and all the actors were brilliant and there was no casting that jarred with the meaning of the play, you'd never notice.

I just want to go and see some normal classic theatre where constantly men aren't being played by women, women aren't being played by men and where the real themes aren't being over ridden by politics forced into the play by casting decisions taken not because of talent or ability but because someone wants to demonstrate how modern and woke their production is. All too often the impact on the story and the real themes of a classic drama isn't thought through.

Maybe I'm alone but I'm fed up with it.

Well Anne Boleyn was supposed to be dark haired and olive skinned, so I think this view only holds water if you'd also not be able to accept a production where she is fair skinned and white blonde. But i reckon you'd be fine with that. I just think 'i don't think Anne boleyn really looked like that, but most of the cast aren't historically accurate either, because this is a work of fiction"

I’ve seen Six a few times and loved it but this has killed it for me. Just why?

Yes -

Olivier Award-winning actress Harriet Walter returns to the RSC to play Brutus in a revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s landmark, all-female Julius Caesar at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon from 5-28 November, following an RSC associate schools tour.
First performed at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012 under Artistic Director Josie Rourke and Executive Director Kate Pakenham as part of a trilogy of all-female Shakespeare plays, the production follows a group of female prisoners who choose to perform Shakespeare's play to express their preoccupations with freedom and justice. The original production was famously described by The Observer as “one of the most important theatrical events of the last 20 years” and remains a seminal event in theatre history.

https://www.westendbestfriend.co.uk/news/harriet-walter-all-female-cast-phyllida-lloyd-revival-julius-caesar-rsc

I've never understood this argument because how do you know that wasnthe case? The best person from those available may have been chosen.

My personal bugbear is the environment and DEI in art galleries. Every single exhibition at my local art gallery in the last few years is about these topics or tied imto these topics.

Sometimes I just want to see a traditional exhibition that's just about the artwork.

I watched an Agatha Christie adaptation a while ago .I was a bit nonplussed by the actor playing Luke Fitzwilliam as a black actor in an all white cast .However he was such a good actor I didnt notice after a while.

I do think there’s a difference between a white woman with different colouring from the actual Anne Boleyn (As far as we know anyway) and a black woman. A black woman simply wouldn’t have been in that position at that time, so even if you only have the very loosest grasp of the history and culture of 16th-century English royalty and nobility, it is going to be jarring in a way that someone having lighter hair than you thought she had is.

Am totally with you (especially when plays like the lion king, which I love, is all non white actors......)
For me, particularly in an historical play, non white actors are as jarring as the costumes or set not being right for the period. (If it's obviously a Western production).
For other productions, it's fine but the tick box exercise is actually quite insulting to everyone.....

It's everywhere though. Adverts really grate for me even though it that context it doesn't really matter because it's just adverts. Also any type of game show, or Great British something. An Alien from outer space viewing TV at the moment would assume the majority of the UK are black, gay, trans or drag. It's just boring now. What you don't see much of is middle aged white blond women...... Me!

The Lion King is set in Africa. It should have non-white actors!

There are few enough roles for older women as it is; seeing Madame Fidiola played by a bloke, and also the now-expectation that Miss Trunchbull must also be played by a man, diminishes further the roles open to showcase strong, feisty, gender non-conforming older women.

Ha ha. I saw Macbeth at the Royal Exchange in Manchester a few years ago. I don’t actually know the play (didn’t do it at school).

Macbeth and lead male characters were played by women. They did tweak some of the dialogue eg someone’s mother died rather than father. However it was odd hearing a woman saying ‘Am I not a man?’ Well, no …

How can we prove any process isn't fair? Usually we look at outcomes. Statistics suggest that certain groups are underrepresented and other groups are overrepresented. So whilst we can't necessarily prove that a particular trans person for example wasn't the best for a role in a specific circumstance, we can prove that this group is overrepresented in general and this indicates a level of inequality that we should want to eradicate.

It's like white middle aged men in well paid jobs. You can't necessarily point to individuals and suggest that they weren't the best candidate for a specific role but you can prove that the system is biased and leading to unequal outcomes at a population level.

The question is are people so keen to tackle over representation of minorities in the way that they are keen to tackle over representation of majorities? For example if there is a black woman in every or almost all renditions of Six then they are statistically significantly overrepresented. They make up only 4% of the population. I think statically white women would be underrepresented in that show. Is that a problem? Personally I would suggest it is but others might disagree.

Exactly, this is what really pissed me off - as well as the fact that it assumes that older women are a pantomime dame style joke. See also Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell…

I assume the poster was pointing out that the principle of 'colour blind' casting is not being applied in all productions.

Oh no, is this the current casting? DD wants to see it for her birthday but that really doesn’t appeal as a prospect…

The problem is the majority of famous fiction in the UK features primarily white characters. This immediately excludes people of colour from so many roles, so to me it makes sense that they should be modernised for our world and I really don't care if Anne Boleyn is played by a black woman. It really makes no difference to the story.

I have to hard disagree. As others have said, if it makes a story factually inaccurate it's massively distracting for people who value a sense of historical accuracy and it can be confusing for young people from an educational point of view.

Theatres and production companies need to seek out more of the good stories which accurately represent the under-represented groups they want to highlight, not shoehorn them into existing stories where they ruin the cohesion of the narrative.
The problem is there are too many of the 'my journey' type stories where the diversity is positioned first and foremost, and while cathartic for the writer, they tend not to put bums on seats in the theatre (i.e. people aren't really interested for £75 a time...)

As someone mentioned, Mr. Loverman was a great TV show, with accurate casting.
Small Island at the National Theatre a few years ago was also a brilliant production.
But to put things in perspective, imagine if they'd cast all the actors playing the characters of the Windrush generation as white LGBT and disabled characters - it would simply have destroyed the point of the story, and caused uproar!

@LivingonbananabreadYes! I’d forgotten the Lady Bracknell. Older women are just there to be laughed at, and men do Woman soooo much better than we do …

It's quite different though isn't it? Whether she was blonde or brunette doesn't matter in terms of this particular historical context. Henry VIII marrying a non-white woman would have been quite remarkable though. I just think if you want to cast in a completely anachronistic way, the way to make the story coherent is to re-tell it in a different context.

At the moment there is an overwhelming trend towards stripping artworks of their original context, or interpreting them through a lens of 21st century values. A bit of this is fine but when everyone is doing it, it indicates a real lack of diversity of thought and originality in the arts.

I think it’s on Broadway.

it just really pissed me off - the play is about women being erased from their own stories FFS! 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

But anyone who objects is a ‘bully’.

Ah, thanks @bondipam - just checked the London cast list and I think you must be right. Absolutely agree - ditto the non-binary Joan of Arc play a year or two ago. Because obviously if a woman’s THAT courageous it’s because she’s not really a woman.

I’ve noticed that and think it’s racist, too. I’m all for colour blind casting, as long as it’s fully representative and black and Asian and all other ethnicities actors have an equal chance of a lead role, based on ability, but often the leads are white and the DEI hires are in the background and are usually afrocaribbean. Then, I get really annoyed.

Oh he’s fucking awful from the clips I’ve seen. Even the trans allies are unimpressed. And he, a white man, has taken a broadway role from an actual woman.

It does depend on the piece and how well it’s done, of course. We’ve been lucky enough to see a few shows recently.
Last year there was Cymbeline in which the ‘Britons’ were a black matriarchal tribe … I thought it was fine, it’s not exactly a historically accurate play so why not! In The Tempest with Sigourney Weaver, her performance was a bit underwhelming (though not because of her sex) but the nonbinary Ariel was imo excellent - that’s a part which is better for not being sexed, the (male) actor got both the vulnerability of this bound spirit but also the raw power.

And in touring companies with their small casts, people playing parts regardless of sex or anything else can be absolutely fine - you just suspend disbelief and go with it. I saw Operation Mincemeat this week, really brilliant the way they switch character at the drop (or donning) of a hat.

otoh some casting really is foolish. I haven’t seen Fry’s Lady Bracknell but was deeply disappointed by David Suchet when he did it some years ago. Usually great actor squandering his talent parodying a woman, when so many older women coukd have done it properly.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/feb/26/conservative-theatre-making-kill-industry-national-director-indhu-rubasingham

This from the National Theatre artistic director Indhu Rubasingham yesterday:
She has warned "that ’conservative’ theatremaking will ’kill’ the industry in the long term, even if it gives venues immediate financial relief".

She's basically saying people will only pay for the more recognisable and traditional stuff.
She also bemoans the decline in new writing - this is hardly surprising since every writing award/ prize/ opportunity makes it clear that they will prioritise so-called under-represented groups. My DS says his playwriting friends simply don't bother applying, as they feel the odds are stacked against them, so they are now grouping together to produce their own work.

This whole diversity dominant approach has become so counterproductive - rather than encouraging an integrated industry it's channelling creatives into silos based on identity politics.