In Vogue: ‘Theatre’s most powerful woman’

Indhu Rubasingham is the first University of Hull graduate to be profiled in the prestigious fashion magazine, Vogue.

A remarkable career in theatre that began with a prize in the National Student Drama Festival while she was studying at the University of Hull, will reach new heights next year for Indhu Rubasingham MBE (BA Hons Drama, 1992).

A theatre trailblazer, in 2025 Indhu will become the first woman and the first person of colour to become Artistic Director at the National Theatre. Ahead of this new and exciting stage in her career, Indhu has been profiled in British Vogue in an article that charts her life, career, and her influences. This is the first time a University of Hull graduate has been profiled in the pages of the prestigious magazine.

You can read the piece, which details what influenced Indhu to study Drama at Hull here (insert link Meet Indhu Rubasingham, Now The Most Powerful Woman In British Theatre | British Vogue)

Indhu’s achievements have long been a source of pride for the University of Hull community. In 2017, the same year as her MBE award, she received an Honorary Doctorate. The next year, in 2018, Indhu returned to campus to take part in a ‘Women in Leadership’ event and for the opening of a newly refurbished lecture theatre in the Larkin Building named in her honour.

Speaking at the Women in Leadership event about her own experiences in leadership, Indhu said: “An important element is your friends and your tribe. No one does it on their own. It’s scary! It’s also not just about how good you are. It’s about how tenacious and hardworking you are and importantly, it’s okay to be yourself and be the best version of yourself!”

These themes are definitely present in the Vogue profile which references a word cloud projected at her leaving party at London’s Kiln theatre in Kilburn, where she has been Artistic Director for over a decade: brave, fearless, enthusiastic, caring and champion were the most significant words her colleagues chose to describe her. For the students studying and learning in that lecture theatre named after her, this leadership profile must surely stand as an inspirational guide to getting on and succeeding in all walks of life.

The article also reveals how her words about ‘your tribe’ are an authentic reflection of her lived experience. The importance of her family is made clear, especially through touching words about her father, and the friendships and professional relationships she has made are clearly important in her career development, with people recognising her work ethic and drive as well as her talent.

The profile emphasises that as Indhu prepares to take on the biggest role in theatre, her advice to those who had gathered in Middleton Hall on Monday 3 December 2018 about being yourself and being the best version of yourself is advice that she herself has taken and will need to continue taking as she tackles the challenges ahead.

In the interview, we are offered an insight into the two main influences that inspired her to choose Drama and which, would, eventually lead to her beginning her journey here at Hull. She enjoyed work experience at Nottingham Playhouse followed by the opportunity to see a contemporary play, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart.

“It felt so relevant to the time. I didn’t realise theatre could be so visceral, political, emotional,” she says in the interview.

If that initial epiphany that sparked her love of theatre is the thread that runs through her work to today, then surely with her approach to leadership, British theatre will be in good hands as Indhu gets to work delivering a theatre than can play an integral role in shaping the national conversation.

At a time when discussing issues across the political divide is both risky and contentious, the difficulty will lie in finding the between spaces and navigating subtleties that lie beneath the big, challenging stories. For Indhu, those challenges may prove to be less a problem and more an opportunity. As she says: “Theatre sits beautifully in the grey area, in the nuance. That’s what I want to celebrate.”