If we assume that there are only a fixed number of jobs going around, then yes, the bar must be raised slightly. There may be more competition of the existing jobs, just the same as when we encourage applications from, say, different economic classes. But I don't think anyone's ever going to get to the point of saying there are no jobs for white actors. A slight discouragement of the majority group is worth a big boost to the minorities.


Perhaps - in which case we wouldn't see the discrepancy between supply and demand that we currently do. Second and third generation immigrants are also far less likely to be beholden to ancestral tradition.

BIB: There's no colour bar in either direction. It's not as if you'd have to recruit anything but non-whites. It merely redresses an imbalance that currently exists. The problem is if you can't increase the size of the pie, a bigger slice for one group must mean a smaller slice for others. But why should that be a reason for maintaining the present (unfair) status quo?

At the moment people are not getting into acting school entirely on merit (maybe). Perhaps some are getting in because fewer non-whites are applying? (Potentially) poorer white actors taking up the places (potentially better) non-white actors didn't apply for.

You wanted the best possible actors, right?

The real problem is getting the kids to apply and that probably needs to start when they're rug rats and have schools/nurseries find those who are good at acting and give them and their parents a gentle nudge that this might be something worth doing. If theres more available for the producers of stuff to recruit from then it should slowly even out as we'll have a bigger pie.

The best thing would be for more of the cbeebies etc to use child actors of various ethnicity to get them into the system and have some sort of portfolio of work to be able to prove they can do it.

I saw Les Mis as a teenager originally and was saddened to think I'd never be cast in it as I'm mixed race, despite my love of acting, singing etc. I was the only non white in my year group at school but was still cast as the lead in our sixth form production of The Tempest. On merit, not through the school trying to be diverse or anything. Years later as a teacher, we took a trip down to see the latest Les Mis production. I was chuffed to see a black Javert, oriental Eponine and I think another black revolutionary. Did it spoil the musical? No, because they were all talented actors from around the world. I just wish I'd had more role models growing up and I hope that today's youth (whatever their ethnicity) have someone out there to look up to.

Live owls have been removed from the new London play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, after one of the birds escaped into the auditorium during the opening night

Hilarious !!!

It's just a shame most of those family members weren't nicer, the mothers especially were whiny and off putting. It seemed to be an RTD thing, making the companions' mothers unpleasant or frivolous characters, Martha's, Rani's and Donna's. I wasn't over impressed by Jackie, either. The solution being to see less of the families and more of the Doctor

I think that you may have hit the nail on the head here. I don't know much about theater, and I had never really thought about this much before, but, given what I have seen on stage and what y'all have said in this forum, I think that I will simply change my expectations when watching plays (as infrequently as I do - about once a decade).

Except for Wilf. Wilf could have taken over the entire show, and I wouldn't have minded.

In fact, he could have murdered the Doctor and stole his TARDIS to do so, while doing that mischievious chuckle of his, and I still couldn't dislike him.

That was when he seemed to be auditioning to write Eastenders.