Sarah Frankcom, the newly appointed director of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda), has said she will pursue “radical solutions” to recruit the next generation of actors from around the UK. Frankcom, who is currently the artistic director of Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre, warned that the “talent pipeline” is in a “pretty fragile” state and that “drama schools are still really, really monocultural places”.

In a new role that replaces the posts of principal and CEO at Lamda, Frankcom will be responsible for leading the creative vision for the oldest drama school in the UK. She will oversee the training of the next generation of actors, directors, designers and technicians.

Talking to the Guardian on Thursday, she said that world-class training is available for student actors in London “but it’s not equitable regionally” and that too many young people are unable to even contemplate relocating to the capital to train. The solution, she suggested, could be that the training is reimagined and takes place in different locations.

While Lamda currently holds auditions in cities around the UK, including Manchester, Frankcom stressed that she is keen to do even more to open up careers in acting for people around the country. “The journey from Rochdale to the centre of Manchester in terms of miles is not very much,” she said, “but in terms of mindset it can be an enormous journey for a lot of people.” The prospect of a vocational career as an actor remains hidden from view for a lot of people, she added. “The opportunity here is to look at how we can find innovative, creative and maybe quite radical solutions to recruit students.”

Frankcom also highlighted the limitations within some drama schools’ curriculums and spoke of the “deeply difficult” situation for actors of colour, for example, to leave their training without having played someone of their own ethnicity. “What excites me about leading this organisation is the opportunity to reimagine what is in the DNA of the repertoire that drama schools are exploring,” she said, adding that “a new repertoire to reflect a more diverse world” could be a real “gamechanger”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maxine Peake in Happy Days, directed by Frankcom, at the Royal Exchange in 2018. Photograph: Johan Persson

She will take up the role in November, as Lamda enters its first year as an independent higher-education provider. Lamda president Benedict Cumberbatch, who graduated from the academy in 2000 with an MA in classical acting, said he was “thrilled at the prospect of working with Sarah, who has a passion for finding the best talent from whatever background and increasing diversity on stage and screen”.

Frankcom and Shaun Woodward, the chair of Lamda and former Labour MP for St Helens South in Merseyside, addressed other challenges for the industry including the lack of performing arts opportunities in many schools, the impact of Brexit on the diversity of actors training in the UK and the debt accrued by student actors. “If you go back 10 or 20 years, people would come to Lamda with virtually no debt or a tiny amount,” said Woodward. “Now, as with all drama schools, if you have a first degree you could well walk in the door with £70-80,000 of debt, then you’ll run up further debt learning the craft and living in London. We’ve got ourselves into a place now where people might have a six-figure level of debt by the time they finish at drama school. What on earth does that do – if I think of my former constituency of St Helens – to a young man or woman who is 19 or 22? We have a responsibility to think about these issues.”

Many drama schools, said Frankcom, also placed “too much value on the success of getting an agent and a job” straight after graduation, rather than promoting the transferrable skills that training can offer. She stressed the importance of a more holistic approach.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ashley Zhangazha and Don Warrington in Death of a Salesman at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, directed by Sarah Frankcom. Photograph: Johan Persson

A former drama teacher, Frankcom joined the Royal Exchange as a literary manager. In 2005, she established the influential Bruntwood prize for playwriting. She became the theatre’s co-artistic director in 2008 and took sole control in 2014. She is best known for directing Maxine Peake in a series of plays including bold takes on Hamlet, Happy Days and A Streetcar Named Desire and shows for the Manchester international festival including The Skriker. Her recent acclaimed productions include Our Town, staged with a community choir in the wake of the Manchester arena bombing, and Death of a Salesman, starring Don Warrington.

The Royal Exchange is known for its spaceship-like, in-the-round auditorium situated in the great hall of a Grade II-listed building, once the world’s biggest cotton exchange. “Actors get a real workout in there,” Frankcom told the Guardian in 2017. “If you’re not in the moment, if you’re dialling it in, audiences find you out very quickly.”

Woodward said that Frankcom was “one of the outstanding directors in the UK” and that Lamda would encourage her to pursue outside projects that she was passionate about. Frankcom said she had no plans to stop directing, that her creative collaboration with Peake would continue and that she “can’t wait to get her hands on” the students.

She would miss the “swagger” and “cultural leadership” of Manchester, she said, and is looking forward to seeing what her successor will achieve. Her next production at the Royal Exchange will be a version of West Side Story with new choreography by Aletta Collins.