I read the article by Hannah Simpson (‘I’m done with pretenders’: disabled actors on reclaiming Richard III, 30 January) with interest. I have a severe scoliosis and was born on the day Richard III was killed, 493 years later, so have always felt an affinity with him. Yet I have no problem with a non-disabled actor playing him. It does not offend me at all. I don’t get this idea that you can only play him if you have “lived experience”. If this was so important, it would mean only actors with scoliosis could take the part, because not all disabilities are the same, and people with different disabilities have different lived experiences. To suggest that any disabled actor can play him because all disabilities are experienced the same is surely more offensive than the tradition of non-disabled actors playing him.
I agree it is important that disabled actors get more roles – preferably roles where disability is irrelevant – but I disagree that a character with a disability should only be played by an actor with any disability.
Edie May-Bedell
Leeds
• As a disabled performer and director, I was profoundly disappointed by the decision of the Globe to announce the casting of Michelle Terry as Richard III, especially with no communications that recognised the wider significance of this casting for disabled people. Richard III is one of the few disabled roles in the theatrical canon.
While anti-literalism is a valuable approach – and one reflected in the casting of the deaf actor Nadia Nadarajah as Cleopatra, roles written for disabled people are very limited. Whether I’m performing or directing, many (if not most) stages are inaccessible to me as wheelchair user. To see this role given to a non-disabled actor represents the exclusion of disabled people even from those roles that explore the interiority of our lived experience.
The lack of opportunities for disabled people in theatre affects people in all roles and career trajectories. I hope to discover that disabled people are taking on significant parts in the wider play, on stage and off. It would be artistically fascinating to have Richard III played by the only non‑disabled performer in the cast, while all other roles were played by disabled performers.
Jamie Hale
Artistic director, CRIPtic Arts
• While I’m completely on side with Robert Softley Gale’s assertion that “acting, theatre, is about authenticity; it’s about believability”, I struggle with the notion that only appropriately experienced actors can play specific roles.
Apart from the rather rude presumption that “not all disabilities are visible” doesn’t apply to Michelle Terry (incidentally, one of the finest Henry Vs to have graced the modern stage), I look forward to seeing the results from casting directors who in future can only draw their Hamlets from aristocratic Danes who are overweight or prone to laboured sweating (“he’s fat, and scant of breath”), or Prosperos and Pucks who have yet to abjure their rough magic and can still conjure up tempests and fogs “as black as Acheron”, without the special effects that belie the performer’s ability to, er, pretend convincingly.
Richard Lee
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
• I read with confusion about disabled actors being upset that a non-disabled actor is playing Richard III (Non-disabled Richard III actor to press on despite calls for recast, 31 January). Hasn’t anyone noticed that Richard III was a man? If to have a woman play him is apparently acceptable, then it must be so to have an able-bodied woman play him. Surely we are beyond the stage where the only roles for disabled people are disabled characters? The theatrical world is bigger than that.
Gary Osborne
Keighley, West Yorkshire
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