British Asian artistic director wants people of colour in senior theatre roles

• Sattwik Biswal
• 11 January, 2022

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By: Sattwik Biswal

BRITAIN’S leading theatre companies should appoint more people of colour and from working-class backgrounds to bring in a creative change, a British Asian artistic director has said.

Pravesh Kumar, founder of Rifco Theatre Company, which does productions aimed at British Asian audiences, said: “The leadership is what we really need to look at: it’s the big jobs where we need to have more diverse voices, more representative voices.

“The boards need to change and the senior executive roles need to change. Then you’ll start seeing creative change.”

“Change is starting to happen, but it’s not going fast enough. The pandemic will make it more difficult because [organisations] will be even more risk averse and sadly people of colour are often seen as risky.

“We haven’t reached anywhere near equality yet. Theatre remains a mostly white and middle-class-led industry where voices like mine are still rare,” Kumar, who received an OBE in the new year honours was quoted as saying.

However, he says the Black Lives Matter movement had given “real impetus to [the arts community] to sort things out, but my fear is how long will this momentum last.”