Theatre gender ‘reparation’ call
Award-winning film director Phyllida Lloyd has said the European Union could force theatres to cast women in roles traditionally played by men.
Lloyd, who directed Mamma Mia! and the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, is currently running an all-female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
She told Radio 4’s Today Programme she decided on an all-female cast because she “felt the time had come for reparation”.
She said it was “iniquitous” that the Royal Shakespeare Company cast so few women “on the basis that ‘Well, there are only these roles in Shakespeare plays’.”