By: Chloe Xiao

Most people in this world have heard about the famous plays of Shakespeare. Would it surprise you that only now, years after the Global Shakespeare theater was created, are they casting for a disabled man to play a disabled character?

As Arthur Hughes appears on stage, a loud applause rings out around the whole of the theatre. He takes a bow before smiling, moving upstage in practiced steps. Arthur has radial dysplasia, which means that he has a shorter right arm and is missing a thumb. He is also the first disabled person to play Richard III who in one of his lines describes himself as “deformed.”

In many more plays nowadays, people are petitioning for plays to have people of that actual race or physical features to play some specific roles in plays, however, on the other side of the coin, another group’s ideals completely differentiate from each other. This group wants casting choices to be made for those who fit it with no regard to gender, ethnicity, or physical features.

For example, Bradley Cooper faced extreme criticism for putting on a prosthetic nose to play a Jewish conductor, while in another Shakespeare play they cast Danai Guria, an African American woman, for an originally white male role. Still, controversy rises over this situation, with Eddie Remendyne regretting his choices of playing a trans character, and with Tom Hanks saying that nowadays he correctly wouldn’t be casted as a gay attorney who was dying from aid.

Right now, some directors of shows prefer to do something known as “color blind” casting, which is where directors choose people best suited for the role without looking at race, gender or physical appearance. This is helping women and people of color join in on theatre, but some believe that this is cutting off diversity or limiting how their creators envisioned them.