The headline in London Sunday Times was certain to make anyone who advocates for diversity in the arts sit up, take notice and get quite upset. It read, “Lack of diversity not a problem, says RSC boss.”

Since headlines are written by editors and not reporters, it was possible that the statement was deliberately hyperbolic. But the article by David Sanderson began with three paragraphs that seemed to support it entirely.

“The head of the Royal Shakespeare Company has said he is not worried about the lack of diversity in theatre audiences, adding that he did not want the white middle classes sidelined.

“Gregory Doran said that while it was important that theatres reflected society, he wanted to ensure that the traditional audience had equal rights.

“Doran, artistic director at the RSC where he has worked for nearly 30 years, said that black people would feel that they did not belong when they saw that the entire audience was white.”

That’s as far as people who haven’t subscribed to The Times online, or who couldn’t pick up a print edition could read, thanks to the paper’s paywall. But even those first few paragraphs, deeply troubling though they might be, perhaps should have given all readers pause, since they weren’t quotes, but rather paraphrases constructed by Sanderson, sans context. Even reading the entire piece, as photographs of the rest of the article circulated quickly to defeat the paywall, seemed to support the headline and the first paragraphs.

RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran speaking at The Hay Festival

It turns out that Sanderson hadn’t conducted an interview, but rather had been cherrypicking a handful of statements from a talk Doran had given at The Hay Festival, and indeed all came in response to a single question from an audience member. That isn’t acknowledged at all in Sanderson’s piece.

Through the RSC, Doran has issued a statement in response:

The Times headline not only willfully misrepresents my view, but entirely reverses it.

Lack of diversity is a huge challenge and one which we at the RSC have taken to the very heart of our programming. There is much more we need to do to address it, but we are at the forefront of efforts to do so.

I made the point that just as Hamlet holds the mirror up to nature, if we hold that mirror up and large parts of our audience do not see their community reflected on our stages, then we are not doing our job.

I want to see the whole of society represented on our stages and in our audiences and I don’t want anyone to feel excluded, whatever their age, class or ethnicity.

The RSC has championed inclusion for many years and I want our theatres to be as welcoming as possible for everyone.

For those who view at this as after the fact spin, it’s worth looking to the same material from which The Sunday Times drew selectively. The actual exchange with an audience member begins by Doran being asked “the recent black production of Hamlet” and the fact that “most of the audience was white. Does this worry you?”

“Does it worry me?” replies Doran. “No, I don’t think it worries me, but it is a really important thing. Hamlet, in the speech we were just talking about, talks about holding the mirror up to nature. Now if we, a national Shakespeare company, are holding the mirror up, and the audience see their reflection and that audience is entirely white, then a black kid watching that might go, ‘Well obviously I’m not meant to be there.” He then relates a story about a friend who had recently taken the train to Stratford, sharing a carriage with a group of black students who were “buzzing with excitement” to see the Hamlet, “Because somehow their faces were being reflected on that stage.”

“I think it’s really important that we have the whole community, that we reflect that community. That’s not just black actors. Actors of British East Asian origin have very much less visibility than the black actors do. But it’s growing and it’s really important that it does continue to grow.”

Ayesha Darker and Chris Clarke in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The RSC (Photo by Zuleika Henry)

After noting the casting of Ayesha Dharker as Titania in Erica Whyman’s recent RSC production of A Midsummer NIght’s Dream, Doran continued:

“I think it’s important that we reflect the communities that we want to enjoy our productions as well. That is not to say those of us who are white and middle class, or whatever our education backgrounds are, don’t have the equal right or shouldn’t feel that we’re somehow being sidelined, because it’s very important to make sure that the whole balance of the community is addressed.”

The moderator, unidentified in the video or on the BBC iPlayer site, wraps up Doran’s comments by saying that, “Cultural ownership belongs to everyone.”

Was Doran’s statement in support of diversity on stage and in his audience as definitive as some might like? No. He might have said that he was in fact worried about diversity, rather than parsing words. Should he have invoked the term “equal right” when speaking about sustaining his traditional core audience as he advances diversity? Those important words do not speak clearly to a wholly inclusive audience, but suggest that the existing audience has some ownership that they might be losing in the push towards diversity, playing to those who want to advance a racial divide. Could he have cited more examples of diversity on stage than the Hamlet production or the casting of Dharker? That would have been helpful, especially in light of his own 2012 production of The Orphan of Zhao, which saw an almost entirely white company performing an Asian story.

But the entire exchange on diversity took less than three minutes, because the event was only an hour long; the question came 56 minutes in, and on balance, it was supportive of diversity at The RSC. There’s no question that if Doran is committed to diversity, he needs to be better at expressing that commitment unequivocally every time it comes up, planned or by chance, in addition to demonstrating it at every turn with the choices he makes for the company, both in developing the audience and through the artists he chooses to create the company’s work.

In this case, it seems clear that David Sanderson and The Sunday Times were out to make trouble for Doran and The RSC. While they might have raised a stir, they spun it out from the thinnest of material and their insinuations and misrepresentations shouldn’t be allowed to stand as the final word on the subject.

Howard Sherman is director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College for Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

This morning, I was both annoyed and bemused to learn that Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi, two esteemed British actors, had just been given airtime by National Public Radio, to advance the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare’s true identity. This minority opinion about the authorship of the canon of works credited to Shakespeare holds that a commoner like Shakespeare couldn’t have possibly written the plays, and typically credits a British nobleman with having written them secretly. There’s a strong whiff of classism in the position, positing that genius can’t come from humble beginnings. But Rylance and Jacobi’s conspiracy theories on this subject are nothing new, and while I have to wonder at NPR’s decision to advance the theory without presenting any countervailing positions, at least they had the courtesy to wait until this weekend’s Shakespeare 400 anniversary and celebrations had passed.

As it turns out, this morning in England, The Telegraph gave another major British actor the opportunity to hold forth on another subject steeped in history. Simon Callow, who I have interviewed (and chatted with casually once, unexpectedly, on the tube), has announced that he doesn’t see what’s wrong with “blacking up,” an old theatre tradition. You say you don’t know the term? Well in America, it’s called blackface, and is widely held to be offensive, insensitive and wholly out of step with modern practice.

Starting with his opposition to the idea that transgender actors should have precedence in the casting of transgender roles, Callow moves on takes the standard argument against culturally specific casting, pursuing it to ridiculous ends. Quoting him, from The Telegraph:

“This is madness. The whole idea of acting has gone out of the window, if you follow the logic of that,” he says.

“To say it is offensive to transgendered people for non-trans people to play them is nonsense. Because you have to have been a murderer to play Macbeth, you have to be Jewish to play Shylock. It’s nonsense.

“The great point of acting is that it is an act of empathy about someone you don’t know or understand. I continue to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance as Othello.”

Later in the article, the following appears:

I ask if he’d ever consider playing Othello, even though blacking up is widely considered offensive. “Is it so offensive? I don’t know. People say it’s offensive because it reminds you of the Black & White Minstrel show. But, it’s a different thing altogether.”

He adds: “It would depend on the circumstances, absolutely. But, there is actually ban on it in my union. You can not do it. You can not black up,” he says this in a way that suggests he does not wholly approve.

Equity, the actors’ union, in fact has no veto. A spokesman says, “we don’t have the power to ban”, but does make clear that “we are absolutely opposed to blacking up” except in “very exceptional circumstances”.

Callow does contradict himself on the subject:

“I totally accept it was the right thing to do to put a moratorium on white actors playing Othello, to allow black actors to fill those giant boots.” However, he then adds: “I can not say that the principle is a correct one.”

It is impossible to know whether Callow’s opinion lurks in the psyches of other British actors of his generation, or whether he’s an outlier (the author of the article does conclude by slyly cautioning Callow away from playing Othello). His comparison of blackface to Robert de Niro gaining weight for Raging Bull borders on the absurd. But the fact remains that he is respected not only as an actor but as a historian (his multi-volume biography of Orson Welles, with three completed and one to go is an impressive work of scholarship).

Consequently, when Callow speaks, he generates headlines, and his position, while acknowledging the prevailing sentiment, advocates for and gives credence to sustaining a practice that is decried by artists of color and their allies, be it blacking up or being “yellowed-up,” as The Telegraph refers to Jonathan Pryce’s performance in Miss Saigon. That Callow, one of the first British actors to come out as gay, finds prioritizing transgender actors for transgender roles to be so much “nonsense” works against the efforts of the transgender creative community, though surely it offers Eddie Redmayne some comfort.

Is this “an English thing,” a difference between American and British racial, gender and cultural sensibilities? Certainly the outcry over the yellowface The Orphan of Zhao at the Royal Shakespeare Company several years ago would suggest that the two nations are fairly close on their evolution towards cultural sensitivity, with both missteps and voices ready to speak against them. I write that as someone who still sees reports of yellowface and brownface with some regularity in the U.S., as well as redface (looking at you, Wooster Group). How the performing arts welcome transgender actors in transgender roles is still evolving, but rapidly, and in the direction of authenticity in casting.

What I don’t see in the U.S. is a famous actor in a major media outlet yearning for a return to the time when Caucasians played black, Latino, Asian, Native American and other characters of color with impunity; I don’t see actors denying the legitimacy of the positions of their trans* colleagues. The voices supporting such positions in the U.S. tend to turn up in social media feeds and comments sections, often with fictitious names. I trust the UK advocacy organization Act For Change will be responding to Callow very soon.

“Is blacking up offensive survey,” as of April 25, 7 pm

In the meantime, Callow’s statements are a reminder that the idea and ideal of cultural diversity in the arts is still fighting an uphill battle, as evidenced by The Telegraph’s own online survey, embedded in the Callow story, which determined that 77% of their readers do not find blacking up to be offensive. Remarks like these must be challenged by diversity advocates, strongly, wherever they appear. If I happen to run into Callow again, I’ll be tempted to quote myself on this subject, though I need to expand my full statement, which spoke first and foremost to race, to embrace transgender actors as well:

The whole point of diversifying our theatre is not to give white artists yet more opportunities, but to try to address the systemic imbalance, and indeed exclusion, that artists of color, artists with disabilities and even non-male artists have experienced. Of course, when it comes to roles specifically written for POC, those roles should be played by actors of that race or ethnicity – and again, not reducing it to the level of only Italians should play Italians and only Jews should plays Jews, but that no one should be painting their faces to pretend to an ethnicity which is obviously not theirs, while denying that opportunity to people of that race.

In the meantime, perhaps Callow will get off the casting soapbox and throw in his lot with the Oxfordians, if he desires to publicly take on unpopular positions. I’m sure the late 17^th Earl of Oxford will be delighted with the effort.

Howard Sherman is interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game

As prestige movies open pell-mell in the next few weeks, and Oscar campaigns already underway blaze into full public awareness, one of the contenders will surely be The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It tells the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who is widely credited with breaking the Nazi’s “Enigma” code and whose name is regularly invoked in discussions of artificial intelligence, specifically over how or whether we might one day create a machine whose thoughts are indistinguishable from those of a human.

Alan Turing

As with any major film, especially one with Oscar hopes, there will be a near-avalanche of stories about the film: its director, its stars, its writer – and the man who inspired it. I don’t want to give much away for those unfamiliar with the tale, but Turing’s life truly encompassed World War II intrigue, intellectual triumph, reprehensible bias, persecution and injustice, and great tragedy. There’s going to be a cottage industry of stories on Turing – paeans, revisionist history, alternative views, and so on, right up through Oscar night.

For many, this may be their first encounter with the Turing story and they’ll be drawn in by the considerable glamour and talent of Cumberbatch and Knightley (I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m going solely on the advance word and promotion). There’s a cautionary part of the story that’s well worth being told many times over.

Broadway logo for Derek Jacobi in Breaking The Code

But for theatregoers with moderately long memories (I count myself among them), The Imitation Game will come as something less than a revelation historically, because the West End and Broadway beat the movies to the punch almost 30 years ago, with Derek Jacobi as Turing in Hugh Whitemore’s play Breaking The Code. Like The Imitation Game, it was based on Andrew Hodges’s book Alan Turing: The Enigma.

Breaking The Code played for six months in New York 1987-88, following on the heels of Jacobi’s triumphant performances in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s repertory of Cyrano de Bergerac and Much Ado About Nothing (both opposite Sinead Cusack); I was fortunate enough to have seen all three, and it cemented my deep admiration for Jacobi as one of the finest actors of his generation. As for the play, while I long believed that it was Jacobi who truly made the experience remarkable, and unrepeatable, I saw the show years later at the Berkshire Theatre Festival with Jamey Sheridan in the Turing role, and to my surprise I was once again fascinated and deeply moved.

Now of course vastly more people see most movies than see a play, but as Imitation Game launches, I was thrilled to discover that Jacobi’s performance has been preserved, in a 1996 BBC adaptation of the play by Hugh Whitemore, available online in its entirety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23yie-779k

While it is an adaptation, not simply a film of the play, the TV version will give us a chance to see two portrayals of one man by two superb actors, refracted through the views of different writers and directors – and societal growth and change regarding LGBTQ life and rights – at an interval of 30 years.