Talawa Theatre Company at 25

Black-led theatre company Talawa is 25 this year. It has an impressive legacy: bringing non-white artists into the mainstream; growing talents like Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Cathy Tyson; and above all making theatre that pepole of any colour would queue round the block to see.

But what of the future? Talawa is celebrating its birthday cheekily, by performing George C Wolfe's burlesque of black stereotypes, 'The Colored Museum', at the V&A. But ethnic-minority theatre was hit hard in recent funding cuts: Talawa lost 22 per cent of its funding; London's Rich Mix, Watermans and Yaa Asantewaa lost more than half.

It's often argued that non-white art has penetrated the mainstream and racial identity is more fluid. And it's true that there is a new porousness, reflected in Talawa restyling itself as 'black-led' rather than 'black' theatre. But the mission isn't accomplished.

Hillingdon-born Kwei-Armah, whose drama 'Elmina's Kitchen' was the only play by a black Briton in the West End in the last 15 years, has just moved to Baltimore. And the two major plays I saw about race last year in London, Bruce Norris's 'Clybourne Park' and Vivienne Franzmann's 'Mogadishu', were penned by white writers, one of whom is American.

Twenty-five years ago, writer and critic Bonnie Greer left a job with Joe Papp at the Public Theater in New York and moved to London to be part of the Talawa scene. London's diversity was the big draw.

'Theatre that dealt with Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean was where I wanted to be,' she remembers. 'There was a black renaissance here in the '80s'' argues Greer - until recession and public cuts cut it down.

'Black people are last to be hired and first to be fired. So black theatre was the first to go.' Times have got better for non-white artists: colour-blind casting has become a familiar sight. But, as Patricia Cumper, Talawa's artistic director, drily points out, 'There's a difference between better and good. Nearly four in ten Londoners are ethnic minorities. But the power structures are remarkably uneven.'

Debates about theatre are necessarily political, partly because it is subsidised by the state and partly because it engages with the state of the state, more than other public artforms. But, at the highest level of art-making, decision-making and budget-control - and at the crucial crowd-sourcing level of audience makeup - London's theatre doesn't come close to representing London's ethnicity.

Furthermore, writer, rapper and music producer Courttia Newland thinks that black writers of his generation and younger are 'failing to commentate on the society around us' because of that imbalance. 'It's to do with what we feel is acceptable and what venues are producing,' he says. 'If you had an all-black Arts Council you'd get a polemic as well. The way not to get a polemic is to have a mixed workforce.'

Talawa supports new writing through 'Flipping the Script', its annual play-reading season. But why choose to revive a 25-year-old American play for its anniversary, instead of commissioning a new British one? Is it a sign that cultural conversations about race have greater traction and respect in the US, especially post-Obama.

Cumper says not: '“The Colored Museum” is 25 years old, so it's a way of celebrating 25 years of Talawa. I thought initially, I can't do it, it's American. But it's confrontational and very very funny. And the questions it asks about stereotypes and history are present and painful in the black British experience. What do we take pride in? What do we leave behind?'

It is true that Wolfe's play is seriously witty - and ideal for the V&A, as it mocks the way in which black identity is represented in the mainstream through a 'museum' of powerful cliches: the young black man who's violent for no reason; the sensual rather than the intellectual, or the all-forgiving mother. 'We're not all like that!' laughs Cumper. But look on stage or screen and you see those same undead stereotypes, zombieing black identity in the mainstream.

So what is the outlook for the next 25 years? Greer sees storm clouds in the form of a brain-drain which, she says, is 'a huge, huge problem bordering on catastrophe', with mature talent heading for the US.

'If you're a black writer here, you're a new writer, a writer who's in development,' she argues. 'When Kwame wanted to move on after “Elmina's Kitchen”, which was the play people would have expected him to write as a black writer, he went somewhere else and wasn't allowed to be there. If you don't get produced as a playwright then you aren't a playwright.'

Cumper takes a longer, more optimistic view: 'Since the world began, there has been a conversation going on between Europe and Africa,' she says. 'With the diaspora, that is a long and subtle conversation.' Hard times and a right-wing backlash are here. But if any European city can produce the voices of the new diaspora, that city should surely be London.