Indhu Rubasingham is the best person to run the National Theatre – her gender isn’t the reason why

Laurence Olivier. Peter Hall. Richard Eyre. Trevor Nunn. Nicholas Hytner. Rufus Norris. For all of its 60-year history, the National Theatre has been led by white men. So it’s about time for Indhu Rubasingham, who has just been appointed its seventh artistic director. Most agreed that the next leader should be a woman: the National’s own deputy artistic director, Clint Dyer, said that a woman would be “the best person for the job”, and departing Royal Court artistic director Vicky Featherstone suggested recently that “of course it is time there is another sort of view at the National”. In the end, Rubasingham’s appointment was a no-brainer – but not because she is a woman (and the first person of colour at that). It is because she has the nerve to see through change in the face of opposition, a daunting but necessary aspect of the biggest job in British theatre.

When Norris announced he would stand down from the National earlier this year (his term will officially end in 2025), Rubasingham – herself departing from a decade running North London’s Kiln Theatre – emerged as the most serious contender. She has impressive leadership experience, a great track record for directing shows at the National (her recent production of The Father and the Assassin, about the man who killed Gandhi, had a second run after strong reviews), and is well liked and respected in the theatre community.

Plus, her taste speaks for itself: she is a champion of new writing, particularly that which is alive to social and political issues. She is the woman who persuaded Zadie Smith to write her first play, The Wife of Willesden, which has since transferred to Broadway. She also brought Florian Zeller’s work to the UK, many years before The Father became an Oscar-winning film starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.

Her first production at the Kiln – then the Tricycle – was Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet, about Ira Aldridge, the first Black actor to play Othello; it would win multiple awards and transfer to the West End. And her stunning 2020 production of Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, a mash-up of Waiting for Godot and the Exodus story starring Paapa Essiedu, proved to be tragically prescient, exposing how police brutality destroys young Black men’s dreams of a better life just months before the murder of George Floyd shook the world. It’s intriguing to imagine the inaugural season she will dream up for the National – she once told me her dream project would be “a big f*** off musical with Viola Davis as the lead”.

But running the National is an all-consuming job that, naturally, comes with an unenviable amount of scrutiny. You are required not just to programme work for the London building’s three auditoriums, but to also ensure it reaches national audiences, and be a de facto spokesperson for British theatre. Norris, despite making the NT’s output far more inclusive than it has ever been and delivering award-winning hit shows from Follies to Small Island to Angels in America, has come in for plenty of flak throughout his tenure. Damon Buffini, the theatre’s chairman, apparently told him, “You’re a bit like Nelson’s Column. You get shat on by everyone.” Upon announcing his departure, Norris joked about his future plans: “I’d like to go outside for a bit.”

Rubasingham is accustomed to criticism and sleepless nights. When she became artistic director of the Tricycle in 2013, she launched a capital funding project to modernise the building – despite a recent £350k arts council cut. The theatre was closed for two years for a £7m revamp, that made the building wheelchair accessible and improved audience seating, as well as adding a welcoming new café. It went right up to the wire. But it was her choice to change the theatre’s name from the Tricycle to the Kiln, however, that prompted vehement local opposition, from petitions to protests. A letter to the Guardian, whose signatories included her direct predecessor Nicolas Kent, said the name change “[threw] away a valuable legacy and history”.

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“Legacy” was a thing she kept being accused of trashing – as though it was not something she could be a valid custodian of, trusted to make the right choices to take the theatre into the future. When I interviewed her around that time, she admitted she regarded it as “a male word”. “My emotional response is it makes me think of empire, colonialism, slavery, patriarchy,” she told me. “There’s a real importance of celebrating where you’ve come from, and the past. Legacy is really important if it helps you grow. I’m not interested in it if it’s about constraints.”

With her vision and bold decision-making for the Kiln, Rubasingham showed her mettle. It suggests that she will do things her way at the National, even if it ruffles feathers – and that’s exactly why she’s the right person for the job. She’s a director who loves to be in the rehearsal room, but she’s also a brave leader prepared to shoulder private anxieties for the sake of moving theatre forward. “When I was starting 20 years ago I never thought I’d be an artistic director. Most of them were white men who went to Oxbridge,” she said to me once. Rubasingham believes in change, but she is also change. And change is good.