commented that public sector funding made it crucial to have more diverse casting

in the subsidized theatre and public service television: ‘[i]f public funds are going to
be used to put on Shakespeare’s plays, or dramatise 19th-century European novels on
TV, it is only fair that a range of actors gets the chance to be in them’. It concluded
that ‘[a]s our understanding of identity and inequality becomes more complex’ such
casting could permit ‘drama [to] open the minds of audiences, as well as opportunities
for actors’ (Editorial).
This editorial brought to light a third, rather more hidden, factor: the lead taken by
British theatre companies in promoting colour-blind casting. Drawing on the testimony
of British actors working in film and television, Dickson ended his article by calling for
the ‘[c]olour-blind casting [which] is mainstream in theatre. Actors of various heritages appear in
Pinter or Chekhov and no one raises an eyebrow’. Commenting on
news that Dev Patel would play the lead in Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of
David Copperfield (2019), journalist Cath Clarke remarked that ‘perhaps we will look back
and say it redefined the casting status quo in British film’, contrasting the approach of
film and television to theatre where ‘audiences have been happily watching actors who
don’t match the ethnicity of their characters for years’. In the United Kingdom, the
Royal Shakespeare Company is widely recognized, though not without caveats, as the
theatre company which has led the way in this kind of casting. In 2013, its Head of
Casting, Hannah Miller, when asked about ‘non-culturally specific casting’, described
her practice: ‘I will always assume that I am bringing in the best actors for a particular
role regardless of their cultural background or ethnicity, unless I have had a discussion
with the director to the contrary’ (qtd. in Rogers and Thorpe, “Interview with the
RSC’s Hannah Miller” 489). In 2018, in response to a controversy over the casting
of a black actor, RSC’s artistic director, Gregory Doran, and its executive director,
Catherine Mallyon, responded in a similar fashion: ‘Our approach to casting is to seek
the most exciting individual for each role and in doing so to create a repertoire of the
highest quality’ (qtd. in Sidique).
Discussion of the implications of this kind of theatrical casting has been more advanced in the
United States than the United Kingdom, according to US scholar Ayanna
Thompson (“Interview” 59). Thompson defines colour-blind casting as ‘a meritocratic
model in which actors are cast without regard to race; the best actor for the best role’
(Passing Strange 76). For her, a key assumption of colour-blind casting rests with the
audience: ‘the onus of being blind to race is completely on the audience’ (“Practicing
a Theory” 6). UK productions may look ‘more integrated’ than US productions but
they are ‘always colorblind . . . ethnicity and their race are never supposed to impact
the production; you’re just supposed to ignore it’ (“Interview” 60). The success of such
a colour-blind strategy thus depends on the theatre audience understanding the conventions at
work. Audience members need to know that they should make a distinction
between actor and character and that, in this context and on this stage, ethnic origin
and colour of skin are not significant in creating meaning. Thompson uses an RSC production of
The Winter’s Tale as an example: ‘the audience was asked not to see or notice
blackness. More than an empty signifier, blackness—if noticed at all by the audience—
became a false signifier. It did NOT provide any semiotic, performative, or interpretative lenses
that enhanced, impacted, or even informed the production’ (“To No