For its six-decade-long history, London’s prestigious National Theatre has been exclusively led by white men: Laurence Olivier, its founding director; Peter Hall; Richard Eyre; Trevor Nunn; Nicholas Hytner; and Rufus Norris, the institution’s current head. But, on December 13, it was announced that Norris’s successor had been appointed: Indhu Rubasingham, a theater veteran who will be both the first woman and the first person of color to take the helm.
Born in Sheffield to Sri Lankan Tamil parents, the now 53-year-old Rubasingham had a different path into theater from many of her peers. After graduating from the University of Hull with a degree in drama, she worked as a trainee director at London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East, and then as a freelance theatre director for more than a decade, with a notable focus on championing new writing and emerging artists.
In 2012, she was appointed artistic director of Kiln Theatre, where she repositioned the company’s mission to bring previously marginalized or unheard voices into the mainstream. During her 10-year tenure, the work she oversaw included Lolita Chakrabarti’s multi-award-winning Red Velvet; Moira Buffini’s Handbagged; Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand; Florian Zeller’s The Father, The Mother, and The Son; and the stage adaptation of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth as well as the prolific novelist’s debut play, The Wife of Willesden. In 2017, in recognition of her long-standing efforts, Rubasingham was awarded an MBE for services to theater.
Crucially, she’s no stranger to the National either: She’s worked regularly at all three of the building’s auditoriums, and directed everything from Tanika Gupta’s The Waiting Room and Francis Turnly’s The Great Wave to April De Angelis’s Kerry Jackson and Anupama Chandrasekhar’s The Father and the Assassin.
“For me, this is the best job in the world,” Rubasingham said of her new appointment, in a statement. “The National has played an important part in my life—from tentative steps as a teenage theater-goer, to later as a theater-maker, and to have the opportunity to play a role in its history is an incredible privilege and responsibility. Theater has a transformative power—the ability to bring people together through shared experience and storytelling, and nowhere more so than the National. I’ve been fortunate to have directed on the National Theatre’s stages and to have witnessed firsthand the commitment, collaboration, brilliance, and pride of those who bring the magic to the building, both on stage and off. There’s nowhere like it, and it will be a joy to be a part of this iconic building’s next chapter.”