It's very easy to feel downtrodden with relentless news of budget cuts, dwindling audience numbers and growing arguments over so-called ‘culture wars’. When I look back on this issue though, it's heartening to see so many organisations, theatres and companies pushing for radical change against all odds.
We celebrate the return of the Globe's Shakespeare and Race Festival, now in its fourth year running. While it's inevitable that Shakespeare will continue to figure in our Drama curriculum (and rightly so), it's right that we are aware of – and interrogate – the role race plays in his work. The festival seeks to address these discussions, asking how we should engage with Shakespeare within a racial context. PhD student and Shakespeare's Globe researcher Lydia Valentine joins us this issue to explain why we need to question the way we approach racial difference in Shakespeare's texts in the classroom.
Meanwhile, the RSC is helping bring much-needed East Asian representation to young audiences with its new adaptation of Studio Ghibli's My Neighbour Totoro. Our editorial assistant Hattie Fisk went along to the Barbican to watch this highly talked-about production and meet the creative team behind it.
When diversity and inclusion is talked about in regards to theatre, it's usually the subject of race that leads the conversations. For this issue, I met Maria Oshodi, the brilliant brain behind Extant Theatre Company, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2022. She told me all about how this pioneering collective of blind and visually impaired artists began making work together in an industry that overlooked them. While much has improved for these performers and creative teams, Oshodi didn't shy away from telling me about the challenges still facing artists like her – and why we need to make sure that these diverse spaces and groups maintain their radicalism and keep lived experience at the centre of everything they do.
While many of these organisations work on a global scale, it's important to continue to value and shine a light on grassroots theatre making in communities around the UK. We sent Freddie Machin along to Boury Academy's glitzy new studios, which will use funds from professional bookings to provide training, inspiration and pathways for young people in its local Lambeth neighbourhood.
We hope this issue instils some hope in you as a reader and offers a few discussion points and different ways of thinking into the classroom. Perhaps you reevaluate the way you introduce knotty themes within Shakespeare's texts to your students. You might like to take a trip to the Barbican to see how Japanese anime can be translated onto the stage, or discuss audio description with students and the role it can play within accessible theatre making.
You can only hope that despite the Arts Council's dwindling budgets and a general tightening of the purse strings in households across the country, these projects can continue bringing diverse, agenda-setting theatre for everyone.
Freya Parr, Editor