Drama school apology for teacher’s N-word

A LEADING drama school has apologised to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first black Hamlet after a teacher used the N-word during an improvisation class.

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama said it was “unreservedly” sorry for the “appalling” racism experienced by Paapa Essiedu, who graduated from Guildhall in 2012.

Essiedu, who became the RSC’S first black Hamlet in 2016, said that a teacher at the institution used a racial slur in an improvisation.

“Suddenly she shouted: ‘Hey you, N-word, what have you got behind you?’” he said in an interview with the Saturday magazine of The Guardian.

Essiedu and Michaela Coel, the writer and actress, were the only two black students in the group.

The slur was used by a teacher who played a prison officer hunting for drugs among prisoners who were played by students.

“We were so shocked we just stayed in the improvisation, so we were like ‘No, we haven’t got anything behind us’. We were shell-shocked by what had happened and shocked that it had come out of the mouth of a teacher,” he said.

Essiedu claimed he was told by the same teacher that he spoke as if his mouth “was full of chocolate cake”.