South African-born actress, Janet Suzman, unleashed a storm of global protest and was branded racist when she remarked that theatre was “a white invention, a European invention and white people go to it”. Suzman was responding to actress Meera Syal’s plea for theatres to do more to cater to Asian audiences and those from diverse backgrounds. Calling the timing of her statement unlucky, Llyod Evans for the Spectator reports that “a day earlier, the head of Arts Council England, Peter Bazalgette, ordered the 670 arts bodies he supports to make a bigger push for ‘diversity’.” “For Suzman, a champion of black rights in apartheid South Africa, and niece of the great anti-apartheid champion Helen Suzman, to have stated that ‘white people go to the theatre, it’s in their DNA’ reminds us of the bad old days of eugenics, and worse,” writes Bonnie Greer for The Guardian. “It’s ridiculous.” Greer adds, “People of African and Asian descent have been making (plays) for thousands of years, in open spaces, in temples and on the road.” “Suzman’s statements are 99 per cent batty,” writes Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph’s chief theatre critic, “but there is a grain of truth as there’s no hiding the fact that outside London, audiences tend to be predominantly white. The mistake Suzman has made is to tangle up definitions of art with concerns about audiences.” “We can take huge pride in Shakespeare — a genius like no other; but no race can take credit for a whole genre,” Cavendish adds.
