Indhu Rubasingham’s National Theatre appointment: It really does feel like a new beginning

The words used to describe Indhu Rubasingham, newly announced as artistic director designate at the National Theatre, are remarkably consistent. As she left London’s Kiln Theatre, which she has run for almost 12 years, her colleagues made a sound cloud of adjectives. Inspirational, brave, fearless, enthusiastic, caring, champion all featured in big print. Negroni also appeared, but in slighter smaller type.

On Instagram and in my emails, the words kind, visionary, passionate, clear-thinking, popped up. Sita McIntosh, former COO of WhatsOnStage, who worked with Rubasingham for six years as a trustee at the Kiln sent a text. “She’s simply brilliant, an amazing creative, a visionary artist and a truly kind woman who inspires all those around her. Her work ethic would exhaust most people but she’s relentless in her determination to make theatre for everyone.”

It’s the emphasis on warmth and the kindness that are unexpected. They would never ever have been applied to Laurence Olivier, the first man in the job some 60 years ago. They wouldn’t even have been regarded as an asset. Yet Rubasingham has combined an ability to unearth new talent and programme plays that entertain and challenge audiences, with a way of working that emphasises people’s humanity. In so many ways, she offers a new path for British theatre – and it will be thrilling to watch her take it.

The fact that her appointment has been so widely predicted shouldn’t obscure the sense of just how historic it is. She is the first woman, the first person of colour, and the first person born in Sheffield (of Sri Lankan heritage) and educated at Hull University to run an institution that has had seven white male directors, six of them Cambridge-educated.

But there is no sense of tokenism in her appointment. She is already a key player in British theatre, with a reputation for backing new writing and nurturing fresh talent. In a career that began at Theatre Royal Stratford East (as an assistant to Mike Leigh), and then encompassed the Gate Theatre, the Young Vic and Birmingham Rep, before her arrival at Kiln in 2012, she’s championed work by Lynn Nottage, Roy Williams, Lolita Chakrabarti, Ayad Akhtar and Florian Zeller among many others.

That’s quite a wide range of different voices, and her work with the Royal Court International programme and the Women’s Prize for Playwriting indicates a constant willingness to listen to different stories and extend access to theatre to everyone who wants to walk through the doors.

She’s transformed Kiln, shepherding it through a major rebuilding programme and riding a long storm of opposition when she changed its name from Tricycle. With productions such as the Florian Zeller trilogy (The Father, The Mother, The Son), Zadie Smith’s Chaucer adaptation The Wife of Willesden and Ryan Calais Cameron’s Retrograde, a brilliant play about Sidney Poitier, she has created a place with a strong sense of itself, a pride in its community and an ability to reach far beyond its small base into the wider world.

The National represents a different scale of challenge, but as a director Rubasingham has already proved herself up to its stages. Her production of Anupama Chandrasekhar’s The Father and the Assassin was that very rare thing – a new play with the scope and vision to fill the Olivier’s huge spaces. It must have been part of her calling card for the top job.

Rubasingham joins the theatre in spring next year and then has a year to get her feet under the desk and plan her first programme. Her immediate predecessor, Rufus Norris, who only leaves the job in spring 2025 after ten years, hands over a place that is enjoying exceptional success, with a strong sense of inclusive welcome. He’s had a tough time before this purple patch; all directors of the National do. It is both the best and most exposed role in British theatre.

Taking over at a time of financial stringency, Rubasingham might need a new coating of outer steel as well as her inner strength to carry her forward, but there’s no doubting the sense of anticipation that the announcement has caused. It really does feel like a new beginning, and there is universal pleasure that someone who patently has the qualities to lead the National Theatre into its next 60 years, has actually been given the job.