Indhu Rubasingham: I was told to start an Asian theatre company to find success

Indhu Rubasingham has revealed how she was once advised to start an Asian theatre company if she wanted to succeed in the industry.

The incoming artistic director of the National Theatre told British Vogue that when she began her career there were few people of colour to look up to – and that she felt pressure to wear her hair short to be taken seriously as a woman.

Rubasingham told the magazine: “I do remember being told, with full kindness, that the best way for me to have a career was to start an Asian theatre company – and I didn’t want to do that.

“It was a different time. [People of colour] weren’t in the conversation as we are now. There weren’t people that I could naturally follow.”

In early 2025, Rubasingham will take over from departing National Theatre leader Rufus Norris.

In doing so, she will become the first woman and first person of colour to take on the coveted artistic directorship.

Reflecting on her decades-long career, she told Vogue she had felt so scrutised as a young female director that she had decided to change her appearance, saying: “I remember cutting my hair. I had long, curly hair and in my 20s I decided that if I wanted to be taken seriously as a director, I would have to cut [it], so I had a pixie cut.”

But Rubasingham said that within “20-odd years” things had changed for female theatremakers, adding: “We are equal when everyone is being treated as an individual artist not as a representative of something.”