Who gets to fall in love on stage?
I first saw Constellations by Nick Payne tucked into a row at student run theatre, Nottingham New Theatre. It was my first theatre production, and what brought me there was my love for messy, beautiful love stories.
Constellations follows a relationship through countless versions of reality, where the tiniest changes lead to different outcomes in their story. One moment they’re falling in love; the next, they’re drifting apart. It’s a play about choice, fate, and all the little moments that make up a life and a relationship–and how easily everything can change.
Constellations has been revived many times since its 2012 debut, including a Black-led production starring Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah. This version carried the same delicate, tangled love story once shared by two white characters, now portrayed by two dark-skinned Black leads with the same tenderness and complexity.
In recent years, colour-blind casting - where actors are cast in roles without considering their race, has become more common in theatre. And while love at its core is universal, Black love often carries added textures; shaped by our cultures, histories, and lived experiences. So when we see it on stage, it’s worth asking, who gets to authentically fall in love on stage?
“True accessibility in theatre requires a fundamental reimagining of who theatre is for and how it operates — pushing the boundaries beyond discounted tickets or occasional specialised performances.”
After all, to truly reflect the fullness of Black love, theatre must invest in stories that centre Black lives. This kind of storytelling however remains rare, largely due to the long standing exclusion of Black creatives from key decision-making roles.
According to Arts Council England (ACE), only 5% of the UK theatre workforce identifies as Black. Leadership and creative decision-making roles are even less diverse, with a sharp drop-off when it comes to Black, disabled, and queer Black creatives. This lack of diversity behind the curtain inevitably shapes which stories are told, and whose experiences are left out.
The ongoing imbalance has real consequences: theatre can feel out of touch for many, and audiences remain strikingly homogenous. A 2021 ACE report also found that 93% of audiences at National Portfolio Organisations were white, with only 7% from Black, Asian, or ethnically diverse backgrounds, highlighting persistent barriers around access, affordability, and cultural connection.
These barriers are reflected not only in who gets to watch theatre but also in who gets to experience love on stage. Colourism continues to shape who is deemed desirable in romantic roles, influencing both the portrayal of love and who is afforded love in its fullest, most tender form.
The 2021 controversy surrounding Romeo and Juliet at the Duke of York’s Theatre highlights the ongoing challenges dark-skinned Black actresses face in being seen as “desirable” in mainstream romantic roles. When Francesca Amewudah-Rivers was cast as Juliet, she faced a wave of racist abuse online, much of it questioning whether she was “pretty enough” to play the role.
This reaction revealed more than just racism - it exposed the deep-rooted colourism that shapes how Black women are received on stage.
The response also reveals the often unspoken expectation that Black women, when cast, conform to a more “acceptable” version of Blackness, one that aligns with Eurocentric beauty standards. Amewudah-Rivers’s presence challenged that norm by presenting a dark-skinned Black woman as the object of affection in a timeless romance. It underscored just how narrow the definition of "desirable" still is.
It’s telling that lighter-skinned actresses such as Sophie Okonedo and Gugu Mbatha-Raw have had lead roles in Shakespearean theatre without facing the same level of public vitriol. Yet when Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, a darker-skinned actress with 4c textured hair, was cast as Juliet, she became a target.
The online reception to her casting also revealed the lingering discomfort with interracial love stories where a Black woman is the object of a white man’s affection; as if she is somehow unworthy of it.
This discomfort extends beyond casting choices and into how love itself is portrayed on stage.
Intimacy, tenderness, and affection are key to performing love convincingly and helping audiences buy into relationships. Yet for Black performers, these moments are often cut short, awkwardly handled, or overshadowed by trauma-driven roles. That’s why culturally aware intimacy professionals are crucial to producing a play where every character is allowed to experience a love that feels genuine.
When cultural awareness is missing from the creative process, even well-meaning diversity efforts can fall short, leaving relationships on stage feeling hollow and disconnected from the communities they are meant to reflect. Dunn urges productions to think more carefully about how identity is framed in casting: “Is ‘queer’ part of the character description or is it a descriptor? There’s a difference.” If queer is part of the character description,it shapes the role and influences how and to whom affection is expressed on stage. This issue isn’t limited to queer representation; it also manifests in how Black characters are often stereotyped or reduced to one-dimensional tropes.
Casting briefs often contain coded language that reinforces stereotypes. A report conducted by the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity found that 64% of actors from ethnic minorities experienced racist stereotyping during auditions, with 79% feeling that roles continued to stereotype their ethnicities. Afro-Caribbean actors are sometimes directed to "play it more sassy, urban, and street" perpetuating negative and limiting portrayals of Black people.This stereotyping not only affects who gets to play which roles, but also how love is represented, often failing to show the full, complex range of Black lives and relationships.
One of the few spaces where change has felt more tangible is within the rise of African diasporic theatre in recent years. Here, we’re seeing the industry begin to hand over not just the stage, but also the pen, the director’s chair, and the producer’s desk to a wider range of Black voices.
African diaspora theatre refers to plays created by writers from across the African diaspora that centre Black lives, histories, and cultures. Their injection into the theatre scene has offered a significant corrective to the often flattened, surface-level representation that colour-blind casting can produce.
Plays I’ve loved, like Three Sisters by Inua Ellams, By Their Fruits by DKFash, and Shifters by Benedict Lombe, show how Black love and storytelling come to life when grounded in lived experiences.
When the theatre industry embraces narratives and the creatives behind them that celebrate joy, playfulness, and the everyday, African diaspora theatre expands the representation of Black experiences on stage, proving that Black love, in all its forms, is not only worthy of representation but also deserving of celebration.
But love on stage must be more than just visible, it has to be real, permeating every aspect of production to ensure actors have the best opportunities and audiences in any theatre can experience the messy, joyful, vulnerable, and free love that belongs to all Black individuals.
