The best way to nurture a love of the theatre

SIR – Congratulations to the playwright James Graham for winning the best new play award for Dear England at the Laurence Olivier Awards (report, April 15). Congratulations, also, to the drama teachers at his Nottingham comprehensive school for encouraging working-class children such as him to study drama in the first place.

It will take more than a play about football to encourage a more diverse theatregoing demographic, however. After all, Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Beautiful Game did not achieve this, while also receiving mixed reviews from the critics.

The key to attracting new audiences is education. We should enable every school to teach drama and take its pupils to the theatre. Stan Labovitch

Windsor, Berkshire

SIR – I have some sympathy with Sarah Leggat’s view (Letters, April 17) that a non-disabled actor cannot know what being disabled feels like. However, I fear that such an attitude will reduce the chance for those who are not disabled to learn about disability.

Moreover, if we follow the argument to its full conclusion, couldn’t it be claimed that nobody apart from Richard III could ever portray Richard III adequately because they cannot know what being Richard III feels like?

William Fay

Sherfield on Loddon, Hampshire

SIR – As far as I know, the Oscarwinning actor Eddie Redmayne has no disability, yet his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything was absolutely superb. The whole art of acting is to portray a different person, disabled or otherwise.

Tim Pope

Weybridge, Surrey

An actor prepares: a pupil at a drama outreach performance in Truro, Cornwall