Places! As Indhu Rubasingham readies for her entrance as the National’s new artistic director, Sarah Crompton meets theatre’s most powerful woman.
For a moment, Indhu Rubasingham stops speaking, catches her breath, blinks back tears. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “I get emotional. But I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my dad. He would be so blown away that I got this job.”
She pauses again, waving her hand in front of her face to chase away the emotion. The artistic director designate of the National Theatre, the first woman and the first person of colour ever to be appointed to the most important position in British theatre, is talking about her father, who died 14 years ago.
AS Rubasingham was an eye specialist who had moved to the UK from Sri Lanka and who had high hopes that his daughter might follow him into medicine. Born in Sheffield, she grew up in the East Midlands town of Mansfield; she was good at science and maths, and took all science A levels at Nottingham Girls’ High School, when suddenly theatre caught her heart….