Internationalist Theatre is a London theatre company founded by South African Greek actress Angelique Rockas in September 1980. [1] The company was originally named New Internationalist Theatre, [2] [3] with an intention to pursue an internationalist approach in its choice of plays as well as "a multi-racial drama policy, with an even mix of performers drawn from different cultural groups", The Stage, April 1981. [1] [4]
The theatre has received coverage from stage papers around the world. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] It received charity status in 1986. [10]
The Internationalist Theatre has put on plays by Jean Genet ( The Balcony), [11] Griselda Gambaro ( The Camp), [12] [13] [14] Brecht ( Mother Courage and Her Children), [15] [16] Luigi Pirandello ( Liolà), [17] [18] [19] Tennessee Williams ( In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel), [20] [21] August Strindberg ( Miss Julie) [22] and Maxim Gorky ( Enemies). [23] Their critical reception was generally favourable, [11] [24] [20] [25] [26] [27] although not universally. Time Out magazine disliked their production of Mother Courage: "the casting only inspires a whole host of irreverent questions: what on earth, say, is an American sergeant doing in seventeenth century Europe? And how did a Pakistani chaplain get into the Swedish army?" [28] an example of the resistance to diversity casting at this point of time to a theatre first of a multi-racial Mother Courage production. The Pakistani actor referred to by Malcolm Hay was the veteran Asian Parsi actor Renu Setna. The Financial Times found Liolà`s multi-national casting problematic: "do we really need this peculiar medley of Italian accents for the English premiere? The problem is compounded by the commitment ... to a multi-national cast ... English, German, Sicilian, and Italian actors produce widely differing versions of the Latin lilt" [29]