ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

A white theatre director given public money from a project to help ethnic minorities in the arts was under growing pressure today to step down from the scheme.

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon, who identifies as black despite being born to white parents, was given a paid traineeship in Arts Council-funded programme for “theatre practitioners of colour”.

The revelation prompted calls today for his two-year residency as a trainee artistic director at leading black-led theatre company Talawa to be reconsidered.

Lennon has identified as mixed race since he was bullied for his appearance as a teenager, and adopted an African name. But leading figures in black theatre have demanded a rethink.

Vijay Shaunak, of Tara Arts, which leads the Black Theatre Live national consortium, said: “Diversity needs to be looked at consistently, that’s fundamental.

"If the role was advertised for a person of colour, then it has been given under a false pretext, and I think it should be overturned to give someone else an opportunity.”

Mr Lennon was born in 1965 to white Irish parents in Paddington, he wrote in an e-book 10 years ago.

He began to identify as a person of colour after being bullied by people who thought he was mixed race, but has always been honest about his white background.

In comments made in 2012, Mr Lennon added: “Although I am white, with white parents, I have gone through the struggles of a black man, a black actor.”

His involvement with Talawa began in the Nineties as an actor, before he was awarded the residency last year.

A spokesman for the Bethnal Green-based theatre company said Mr Lennon was “an artist of mixed heritage”.

An Arts Council spokesman defended the funding, saying it was “a very unusual case”.

Mr Lennon could not be reached for comment.