Rare Earth Mettle, Royal Court from 10th Nov

The Royal Court's report into Rare Earth Mettle has now been published:
drive.google.com/file/d/17i-bOR3TNiouQ8v2W4YYGp1hqx_r7paO/view
Essentially, they accept that they messed up, context about the character was removed during drafting at which point the name no longer had relevance; and not enough people were involved in the development process who could have stepped in, and the concerns of those who did were ignored.

I follow a number of other Jewish artists on social media and there’s some anger over the report. From reading the report it appears the main point of contact between the Court and “Jewish artists” was one Jewish writer who was already under commission from the Court who first tipped off the Court about private conversations going on in a whatsapp group and volunteered to act as an intermediary, despite having a clear conflict of interest. I have read elsewhere that the writer in question also lives with REM’s director (accused of mishandling or ignoring complaints from Jewish workshop participants), which raises more questions about conflict of interest and ethics.

No one has come out of this looking great.


The Court need to talk to Jewish artists they don’t have pre-existing relationships with, or even to Jewish people who don’t work in new writing theatre and don’t have to worry about keeping in the Court’s good books.