Colour-blind casting

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Colour-blind casting, non-traditional casting or integrated casting is the practice in the casting a role without considering the actor's ethnicity. It derives its name from the medical condition of colour blindness.

Examples include:

I, Claudius cast Darien Angadi and Sam Dastor in key roles with Renu Setna and Roy Stewart in smaller speaking roles.
David Oyelowo's playing of Henry VI of England in the RSC's This England: The Histories cycle in 2000. Oyelowo was the first black actor to play an English king in a major production of Shakespeare^[1]^[2]^[3] and his performance won the Ian Charleson Award.^[4]
Josette Simon playing Maggie in Arthur Miller's After the Fall at the London National Theatre in 1990. The role is widely supposed to have been based on Miller's former wife, Marilyn Monroe.^[5] Simon's performance gained the Evening Standard's Best Actress award.^[6]
The November 1997 production of Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington, D.C. starring British actor Patrick Stewart as a white Othello, the outsider in a totally black society. It was initiated by Stewart himself and, in the words of its British director Jude Kelly, was:

"a deliberate attempt . . . to make white audiences experience some of the feelings of isolation and discomfort that black people experience all of the time in their lives."^[7]
Grey's Anatomy, during the creation of which none of the characters were assigned racial roles and the best actors were chosen, which led to a racially diverse cast.^[8]

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