London Thespian Renu Arora

Guest Interview: A life more, and more able.

Renu Arora, actor, singer and (song) writer, based in London.

The Royal Shakespeare Company, The New Vic Theatre, Royal Festival Hall, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Soho Theatre, The BBC, Italia Conti, Central School of Speech and Drama. The list goes on of the spaces she has worked in, in a life of performing arts, that started aged 17.

With my own children in performing arts, I have made a point to delve into inclusion in this world.  My investigations, which have spanned nearly two years, reveal that it is ableist, beauty obsessed, for the time rich, and there is discrimination, predictability, appeasement and appropriation.

So, when Renu Arora featured in the Guardian, in October 2021, in an interview with Claire Armistead regarding her appearing in the RSC’s Christmas Musical, The Magician’s Elephant, my interest in her grew. The Magician’s Elephant is the best-selling children’s book by Kate DiCamillo. In the RSC’s musical adaptation, Renu played Madame LaVaughn, whose legs are crushed in the story.

I began to track Renu’s career. Ten months later, we sat down over FaceTime to talk. Her in London and myself in Auckland.

What makes Renu’s role in the Magician’s Elephant, playing a woman in a wheelchair, powerfully fateful though, is that in 2017, Renu had her own foot crushed by a London bus in a near death experience.

I consider how to write about this event that took place, one evening in March as she “popped out” from her London flat, crossing a road, to get an item for a dinner she was hosting at home. But it really is quite simplistically horrifying. She walked out, and saw her leg go under a bus.

Listening to Renu’s experience from going from “able” performer, to a “disabled” performer, has been humbling. She owns her space in this area. She is proud to wear the label of “disabled” and it is clear that owning the label, has helped her come to peace with her horrid experience, and heightened her artistry.

SCHOOL

Another reason I began to follow Renu, was because we were at school together in Wales, and so I know some things about her that make her even more remarkable.

I remember Renu as tiny and slight. When I read the Guardian article detailing her accident, all I could think of is how delicate she was, adding to the excruciating pain she must have experienced. Without a doubt this is testament to the sheer strength she has within. But of course, Renu has always been a fighter. Because Renu, was never given a main part in any of our school productions. Carousel, Grease, Oliver. Oh yes, finally in Grease she was given the role of “Riz”, but otherwise, she was barely recognised. I didn't want to probe Renu about how she feels about what it was like being overlooked compared to where she is now. However she addressed the issue herself and it's clear that she is at peace with her past. She tells me that as that young girl she always knew that she had the talent and that the talent was there then. But she also shares that she knew the system, namely that it was geared in favour of those who shout the loudest, which was not who she is.

And for me, this makes her a hero. Look at her now.  Our conversation involves her referring to many well-known people, all whose names she asks me to keep confidential. She has an agent.  She is an artist. She has all the professionalism associated with someone classically trained.

In addition to her work, she is also part of the Freelance Consultation Group, a group of seven people at the RSC working on “making change” in diversity. We discuss how wonderful the RSC have been to her and her disabled needs, and how she won an award at London’s Non Resident Indian Awards Ceremony for “most empowered and courageous artist”– she accepted her award in a wheelchair. Over five years on, she still feels immense pain in her limbs from her accident, and this necessitates aid. When she mentions the wheelchair, I remarked how my recent trip to London and using the tube left me feeling how inaccessible the tube was. She agreed.

I share with her my disappointment that the next generation are still getting an “able-ist” view of performing arts, and that I struggle with directors across the genres, who do not choose performers who are their authentic self. If I watch any show, I want to see diversity, diversity of everything, including talent. Authenticity is therefore a precursor to diversity. If everyone looks, acts and performs the same, there ain’t no diversity.

This leads Renu to narrating her own experiences before her accident. She does not take roles where auditions require her to “take her kit off,” for example. But the saddest story is when she tells me of an experience meeting a “visiting artistic director,” aged eighteen, when attending one of the best drama schools in the world. As she tells me the story, she recalls it with a feeling that she knew meeting the director would not be a good idea.

The artistic director asked the group which role they each aspired to play. At the time, she was obsessed with Belle of Beauty and the Beast, which was about to show in the West End. She answered Belle. 

And the artistic director answered that it would never happen, because she was “brown” and Belle could not be brown. 

It was the first experience of racism in her life. I shared with Renu, my own research and findings about “challenged directors” working with youth dancers, and shared with her the pioneering work of the Urdang academy in London, who go out of their way to teach professionals out of such stupidity, and suggest those with power, cast the role, not the skin colour, for example.

SOUND

Her crushed foot, is not the only part of herself, she has had to learn to live with. I learn that her voice was “Disney”, but she left Disney singing desires behind, as her voice was not Disney enough.

Did you know that your cultural heritage will influence how you speak, sound and sing? Despite her British and Received Pronunciation accent therefore, Renu’s upbringing in a South Asian family affected how she sang and how she produced sound. It meant she did not sound quite like other British singers. Quite some learning for me!

But I do not sense bitterness from Renu about walking away from Disney singing roles.  More in fact, the acceptance and awareness of her voice, for what it was, marked a new journey for her.  Whilst, her London voice teachers kept trying to alter her sound, and her inability to create that sound frustrated her, it was her longstanding singing coach from theatre school in Wales, who said that the changes the London teachers wanted her to make were not possible – that her pronunciation and authentic sound were in her DNA and being South Asian, she would never be able to create the sound they were requiring!  

It is clear that this helped Renu, and she tells me that… "in coming home to my voice and integrating it and embracing it, I came home to its authenticity, and realised that the tone of my voice was very pure and lends itself very well to musical theatre. And in embracing my pure tone, the parts began to fly in because I went on a journey to embracing my gifts…..including my tone…"

This entire conversation reminded me of a Shakespeare performance I attended recently that showcased and celebrated the diverse accents of the actors barding away. Children who spoke with differing accents delivering Shakespeare. To me it didn't affect the delivery of Shakespeare but enhanced and confirmed Shakespeare’s reach.

COHESION

I am curious to tap in to Renu’s South Asian heritage, as, growing up, neither of us went to school with many people who looked like us. But I want to be clear that we came from a cohesive ethnic community. Our parents role modelled cohesion with people from South Asian heritage and as such, although school was not diverse, we did not come from homes where we were encouraged to shun diversity.

It really made me happy to hear that Renu has met many actors who share her heritage, and that that has helped her progress. She cheekily then tells me how she loves doing auditions, in mimicking the Indian aunties we grew up with in Wales. I find this hilarious, as this is a woman who is a stalwart stage actor, and she is still daring to mix it up a bit, embracing who she is, when for some, the easier option is to shun one’s heritage.

I realise that whilst I chose Law in London at a very international European school, and she chose a world class performing arts school, we both soaked up the tiniest bit or overwhelming amount of diversity that was available. I credit this to our parents who raised us to value our ethnicity when growing up as minorities.

GIFTS

What sets Renu apart is how she has reacted to her trauma, not her disability.

Renu describes the aftermath of her accident as “lockdown”, as one may imagine, watching one’s leg being crushed, immobile, wondering if one will ever walk again, let alone be back on stage. In that lockdown, she had to come to terms with everything in her life, past present and future. And I learn that this connected her to writing culminating in a podcast, The Burgundy Book.

So when the COVID  lockdown came, she said she was already ahead of the game, and so took to helping others resolve all the issues they faced, being locked down, confronting themselves! As she gives me this spin on what is essentially the worst thing that has happened to her, I listen in awe. I do not think many, who have been what she had experienced in 2017, would have the strength to have dealt with the pressures of COVID so effortlessly, so soon after being hit by a bus.

It seems that embracing writing after her accident, was the match that lit her soul leading her, eventually, back to the stage. And whilst Renu does not revere herself as a writer, she is very keen to share a quote with me, that she had just read the morning of our interview that resonated with her; “publish when you are no longer bleeding, write when you are”.

Renu sums up that to have arrived to where she has, you have to have artistic integrity, make bold choices and accept and embrace who you are. She adds, "do what makes your heart sing".

I think of the little girl who was never chosen to let her heart sing at school.

Well it is certainly singing now.

I hope this Substack informs your personal and professional outlook!