What is world drama?
However it is defined, Indhu Rubasingham’s job is to offer the best world drama as artistic director of the National Theatre.
Her appointment was announced in December 2023 and she joined as director designate in spring 2024 to work alongside Rufus Norris, from whom she will take over formally between now and July this year.
She is also working alongside Kate Varah, who is the joint chief executive of the National Theatre in a co-leadership model.
Rubasingham is taking over at a time when there has been an unhelpful intervention from playwright, Sir David Hare, who complained to BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life: “The National Theatre is meant to present the world’s drama. And it doesn’t at the moment. It does semi-commercial runs, angling for the West End, one play after another. That’s not repertory theatre. That’s not art theatre.”
That’s an odd comment to make, given Rubasingham directed The Father and the Assassin when it was first staged at the National in May 2022. This earned her the prize for best director in Eastern Eye’s Arts Culture & Theatre Awards (ACTA) in February 2023. Thes controversial play, looking at Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin from the point of view of his killer, Nathuram Godse, returned to the National in September last year when it was again directed by Rubasingham.
British Asian audiences also took note of Tanika Gupta’s play, A Tupperware of Ashes, directed by Pooja Ghai, in October last year.
Rubasingham first won an ACTA in 2019 when she was named best director for White Teeth, an adaptation of Zadie Smith’s best-selling novel, which was staged at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. In 2016 she had been nominated for an ACTA for directing Handbagged by Moira Buffini at the Kiln, where Rubasingham was artistic director before moving to the National.
And in last year’s ACTA ceremony, Rubasingham was recognised for her “outstanding contribution to the creative industry”, one of the evening’s top accolades.
At the National, Rubasingham follows in the footsteps of some of the most illustrious figures in theatre. Laurence Olivier was in charge from 1962–1973. He was followed as director by Peter Hall (1973–1988); Richard Eyre (1988–1997); Trevor Nunn (1997–2003); and Nicholas Hytner (2003–2015). Norris then took over.
Rubasingham was born in Sheffield in 1970 to Tamil parents who came to the UK from Sri Lanka. She graduated from Hull University with a BA Hons in drama.
In 2017, Rubasingham was awarded an MBE for services to theatre in the new year’s honours list and an honorary doctorate from Hull. She has previously held associate director positions at the Gate Theatre, Birmingham Rep and the Young Vic.
Rubasingham has never married and doesn’t have a partner or children. “I made this choice that work was going to be my passion,” she revealed in an interview. “A friend joked, ‘Who’s your partner?’ Its theatre. When I was leaving Kiln, it was like leaving a relationship.’ ”
What little spare time she has is spent with family and close friends or walking on Hampstead Heath, near her home in northwest London’s Kentish Town.
As for the responsibility she has taken on, she said: “We are living in this time of incredible polarised extremes. I think part of the role of the National is to be able to hold those different opinions, even opposing opinions, and ask how do we have a conversation, how do we respect these different voices without cancelling or attacking? How do we stop this absolutist black and white? Theatre sits beautifully in the grey area, in the nuance. That’s what I want to celebrate.”
She gets emotional when talking about her father, who died 14 years. He was an eye specialist who had high hopes his daughter would follow him into medicine. She grew up in the East Midlands town of Mansfield, was good at science and maths, and took all science A levels at Nottingham Girls’ High School.
“He was worried about me doing a drama degree, but he was really good at listening and was very broad-minded. Compared to other friends, looking back, I realise that I was allowed to be myself. We were always encouraged to have the discussion, though he was very apprehensive about the lack of jobs.
“My parents had an arranged marriage, but they were very happy. I think one reason I was so passionate about pursuing the stories I wanted to tell was that I got really fed up with the stereotypes and assumptions. It was just breaking down myths.”
She went on work experience at the Nottingham Playhouse in the mid-1980s, aged 16. “I was backstage with stage management and I absolutely fell in love with it. I loved sweeping the stage! I remember watching people come out of their offices and they all looked very grey. But this world of theatre felt very magical and colourful. That was when I thought, ‘Oooh, I need to work out what this is about.’ ”
The same year she saw a touring production of Larry Kramer’s crusading AIDs drama The Normal Heart – and another lightbulb went on. “It was the first contemporary play I had seen. It felt so relevant to the time. I didn’t realise theatre could be so visceral, political, emotional.”
Her path wasn’t been easy. “I do remember being told, with full kindness, that the best way for me to have a career was to start an Asian theatre company – and I didn’t want to do that. t was a different time. (People of colour) weren’t in the conversation as we are now. There weren’t people that I could naturally follow. I remember going home to talk to my dad and he’d laugh at me and say, ‘The only thing you can do is to be yourself.’”
Being a woman also led to resistance. “I remember cutting my hair. I had long, curly hair and in my 20s I decided that if I wanted to be taken seriously as a director, I would have to cut it, so I had a pixie cut. What’s lovely to see is that, within 20-odd years, things have changed in terms of female artistic directors. When I started out, assumptions were made, representations or politics were always being put on my shoulders whether I’d been asked or not. We are equal when everyone is being treated as an individual artist, not as a representative of something.”
She has allowed her hair to grow.
