Renu Arora joins The RSC Freelance Committee

Renu Arora became a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Freelance Consultation Group, contributing the perspective of a working disabled artist to conversations about the organisation’s future.

Freelancers are central to theatre, yet the structures that shape the sector do not always include them in decision-making, and consultation offers a route for their lived experience to inform how major organisations develop their practice, relationships and working cultures.

Renu joined the group with a particular commitment to ensuring that disabled artists are heard, since access is not an optional addition to creative work, nor a favour granted after the important decisions have already been made, but part of the infrastructure that allows talented people to enter, contribute and lead.

Renu’s relationship with the RSC also includes her critically acclaimed performance as Madame LaVaughn in The Magician’s Elephant, a role that came after the accident that changed her mobility and creative career and became a significant example of what is possible when an artist’s skill is recognised without requiring her disabled body to disappear.

Her contribution to the consultation group draws on more than 20 years across theatre, television, radio, music and writing, and it also reflects her experience of navigating an industry whose systems can either enable disabled artists to work or actively place their careers out of reach.

By taking part, Renu hoped to help create a future in which disabled artists’ voices are present not only on stage, but wherever policies, processes and artistic priorities are formed.