The White Plague: Why Stop at Training? Just Ban White Actors Entirely? By Richard Miller (Londonistan)
The National Theatre of Scotland, having bravely tackled centuries of colonial oppression with a £1,500 PowerPoint, has now found itself in hot water over its anti-oppression training, or, more accurately, over its selective application of said training. Apparently, if you're white, you must attend. If you're not, your presence is "welcomed," like a party invite with no RSVP required.
This bold new standard was applied to the cast of Make It Happen, a play about the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a tale of white-collar crime so toxically white it practically demands ritual purification through DEI workshops. White actors were required to confront their oppressive essence before stepping foot on stage, while black performers were assumed, by birthright, to be sufficiently unoppressive already.
Which, of course, raises the obvious question: Why have white actors at all?
Let's stop nibbling around the edges. If whiteness is the root of all systemic evil, from toxic boardrooms to the failure of subprime mortgage regulation, then why not excise the tumour altogether? Who needs Brando, Streep, or Gielgud when you can have a morally hygienic cast untouched by the Original Sin of Eurocentric pigmentation?
After all, if presence on stage requires a ritual unburdening of whiteness via high-cost consciousness-raising, then surely it's only a matter of time before the ideal solution reveals itself: just cut the white people.
Why stop at Make It Happen? Imagine King Lear recast entirely with the global majority, a Caribbean Lear raging against his three disappointing daughters from a colonial sugar plantation, perhaps. Or The Importance of Being Earnest, reimagined in Lagos, where Oscar Wilde is no longer problematic because he's been replaced with a community-devised ensemble script exploring postcolonial queerness in urban Africa.
You think I'm being ridiculous, but this is the logical endpoint of a movement that believes race is not only socially constructed, but morally graded, with whiteness at the bottom, just below "hedge fund manager" and "carbon dioxide."
Special mention goes to Jess Mally, the anti-racism educator at the heart of the story, whose publicly advertised rates charge "white folks" 50% more. Finally — a pricing model that aligns with moral worth. One wonders if this could be expanded to coffee shops and bus fares. Why stop at theatre training?
Should we have tiered seating in theatres? White patrons in the back. "Global majority" in the front. Think of it as reparations and good acoustics.
Of course, this isn't about theatre. It's about ritual humiliation. If a white actor wants to play a part, they must first undergo ideological hazing and pay for the privilege, a 21st-century form of indulgences, where sin is not forgiven but endlessly confessed, again and again, to remain employable.
But here's the kicker: it's still not enough. The moment you create a framework in which whiteness is always oppressive and blackness always virtuous, you doom the former to grovel forever and the latter to be infantilised by exemption.
Which is why, I say again: let's just ban white actors! Cut the drama. If whiteness is the problem, then cast it out, literally. Why perform oppression when you can erase it with one inclusive casting notice? And while we are at it, get rid of these plays as well!
"White actors in a Brian Cox play have been told to check their privilege and take mandatory anti-oppression training. The Times has the story.
The head of Scotland's national theatre has launched a review after white actors in the latest Brian Cox play were told they required misogyny and oppression awareness training while black performers were excused.
The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) now requires performers and production staff to attend "anti-oppression training" before rehearsals for new productions.
Training for the forthcoming play, Make it Happen, at the Dundee Rep, featuring the Succession star was intended to "examine how systemic inequality and discrimination manifest with a particular focus on anti-racism and anti-blackness".
It would also have explored themes "relevant to the production" — which dramatises the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008.
These included "misogyny, toxic boardroom politics, power structures, internal/ interpersonal/ institutional/and structure relations".
The training brief, seen by the Times, states: "This training is not compulsory for people of colour or from the global majority, though their participation is entirely voluntary and welcomed."
Jackie Wylie, artistic director and NTS chief executive, has ordered a review after the Free Speech Union complained the training treated "members of one racial group less favourably than members of others".
The union, founded by the journalist and Conservative peer Lord Young of Acton, said the specific exemption for black performers implied the "training is only mandatory for actors of white, European ancestry".
The £1,500 group training course was due to be provided by Jess Mally, a London-based anti-racism educator who charges "white folks" 50% more than people from "the global majority" in her publicly advertised training courses. …
The Free Speech Union has reported NTS to the UK equalities watchdog because the Equality Act prohibits employers from treating staff differently based on the protected characteristic of race, which includes skin colour, nationality and ethnic origin.
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