The black actor boom

"Casting is always based on the quality of performance and there are fantastic black actors out there," he says. "This is partly because over the past 25 years there has been lots done to encourage, grow and develop that talent. The [theatre industry] must take that seriously. More work has to be put in because we still need to go much further." He is talking about the need for change in the more commercially driven West End venues.

"You've got to look at mainstream theatres and what their priorities are. The bottom line in the West End is always the bottom line, and the audiences of those shows tend to be very white," he says.

Lan has a point. Record-breaking success despite — or even because of — the prolonged recession meant that box office sales topped the half-billion pound mark for the first time ever last year, yet much of that theatre fever has arguably been down to revivals of safe old classics with conventional casting, and a handful of star names. "But when [the Novello theatre] did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," says Lan, "it showed that [a black] audience for the West End is there. It's true of any play that has relevance in the same way — if you put it on, people will come."

It is a simple philosophy, and one he believes will ensure that the ones-to-watch on his list will establish long-term careers as actors and not just become part of a theatrical fling with multiculturalism.

Leading by example, Lan's programme at the Young Vic this season includes Clint Dyer starring in a revival of Barrie Keeffe's seminal 1979 play Sus, a savage drama about institutional racism within the police force before it was even officially recognised as a problem.

Lan also directs Joe Turner's Come and Gone at the Young Vic, opening on June 5, a widely acknowledged masterpiece by the late August Wilson. It is the second in a 10-play cycle chronicling the journey of black Americans in the 20th century by the most revered of African American playwrights. Set in 1911, 50 years after slavery was abolished in the US, Joe Turner offers ample opportunity for promising new actors to earn their chops against three, heavily in demand homegrown talents: 57-year-old Hollywood screen star Delroy Lindo (who moved to the US in his teens), Adjoa Andoh, 47, and Danny Sapani, 39. Andoh, a stage regular who recently starred in Clint Eastwood's film Invictus, was recently described by one critic as "one of [Britain's] most talented and unsung actors"; Sapani has just finished a run playing Danish fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen at the Hampstead Theatre.

But who else should we be keeping an eye on? Jenny Jules, currently leading the Almeida's production of the Pulitzer-prize-winning drama Ruined, is making significant waves; her co-star, Michelle Asante, is another one to watch. The critically acclaimed play, which has been playing to full houses, is loosely based on Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children but the action has been deftly transported to late Nineties Congo, amid a brutal and savage war, where the rape of women and children is used as a weapon.

Pat Cumper, artistic director of Talawa, London's oldest black theatre company, is keen to pay tribute to the pioneering success of three established stars — Adrian Lester (41), David Oyelowo (34) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (34) — London's first black Hamlet, Shakespearean English king and Romeo respectively. The three have crossed over to prime-time television, and in the case of the latter two, banked a fortune working in America. So what about future talent?

"Supply will always outstrip demand," says Cumper. "It's a harsh business but young black men in particular can build reputations quicker because a lot of black' drama at the moment focuses on young, black urban life."

It's not an unfair grouch. The experience the black British diaspora is obviously multifaceted, much like any other section of society, and far broader than the parameters of television and theatre scripts would often have us believe. As long as imaginative casting and confidence in the country's black talent continues, however, it seems black British actors have everything to play for.