Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster
OBE
Born
Yvonne Clarke

(1938-10-07) 7 October 1938
Kingston, Jamaica
Education
Occupations
  • Actress
  • theatre director
  • writer
Known forCo-founder of Talawa Theatre Company

Yvonne Jones Brewster OBE (née Clarke; born 7 October 1938) is a Jamaican actress, theatre director and writer. She co-founded the theatre companies Talawa in the UK and the Barn in Jamaica. From 2000 to 2001, she portrayed Ruth Harding in the BBC television soap opera Doctors.

Early and personal life

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a upper-middle-class family,[1] Brewster said she was inspired to become an actress at the age of 16, when her father took her to the Ward Theatre "to see a French play, called Huis Clos, written by Jean Paul Sartre. And in it was Mona Chin, who I thought looked just like me. She was fantastic. I looked at this woman and I said, 'Hey, Daddy, I want to be like her.'"[2] In 1956, Brewster went to the UK to study drama at Rose Bruford College – where she was the UK's first Black woman drama student,[3] being told on her first day that she was unlikely to find theatrical work in Britain[2] – and also attended the Royal Academy of Music, receiving a distinction in drama and mime.[4]

She married after returning to England from Jamaica in 1971, and she and her husband now live in Florence, Italy.[2][5]

Career

Brewster returned to Jamaica to teach drama and in 1965, she co-founded (with Trevor Rhone) the Barn in Kingston, Jamaica's first professional theatre company.[6] Upon her return to England in the early 1970s,[5] she worked extensively in radio, television, and directing for stage productions, including starring in Maybury for the BBC in 1981.[7] Between 1982 and 1984, she was Drama Officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain.[4]

In 1985, she co-founded Talawa Theatre Company with Mona Hammond, Carmen Munroe and Inigo Espejel,[8] using funding from the Greater London Council, then led by Ken Livingstone. Brewster was Talawa's artistic director until 2003,[9] directing a production of C. L. R. James's play The Black Jacobins in 1986 at the Riverside Studios as the first play to be staged by the black-led company, with Norman Beaton in the principal role of Toussaint L'Ouverture.[10] Another landmark came in 1991, when Brewster directed the first all-black production of William Shakespeare`s Antony and Cleopatra, starring Doña Croll and Jeffery Kissoon.[11] Brewster then became a patron of the Clive Barker Centre for Theatrical Innovation.[12]

From 2000 to 2001, Brewster portrayed Ruth Harding on the BBC television soap opera Doctors. Her character, a nurse, departed from the series unexpectedly after Brewster suffered a heart illness in real life.[5] In 2004, Brewster published her memoirs, entitled The Undertaker’s Daughter: The Colourful Life of a Theatre Director (Arcadia Books).[13] She has also edited five collections of plays, including Black Plays (Methuen Publishing, 1987, ISBN 978-0413157102), Barry Reckord's For the Reckord (Oberon Books, 2010)[14] and Mixed Company: Three Early Jamaican Plays, published by Oberon Books in 2012.[15] In 2018, she published Vaulting Ambition: Jamaica's Barn Theatre 1966–2005.[16]

Awards and recognition

In the 1993 New Year Honours, Brewster was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).[17] In 2001, she was granted an honorary doctorate from the Open University.[5]

Brewster received a living legend award from the National Black Theatre Festival in 2001.[5] Brewster then featured on the 2003 list of 100 Great Black Britons.[18] In 2005, the University of London's Central School of Speech and Drama conferred an honorary fellowship on Brewster in acknowledgement of her involvement in the development of British theatre.[4] In 2013, she was named one of the BBC's 100 Women.[19]

Selected bibliography

  • The Undertaker's Daughter: The Colourful Life of a Theatre Director (BlackAmber/Arcadia Books, 2004, ISBN 978-1901969245)
  • Vaulting Ambition: Jamaica’s Barn Theatre 1965–2005 (Peepal Tree Press, 2017, ISBN 9781845233600)

Further reading

  • Rodreguez King-Dorset, Black British Theatre Pioneers: Yvonne Brewster and the First Generation of Actors, Playwrights and Other Practitioners, McFarland & Co, 2014, ISBN 978-0786494859.

References

  1. ^ "Yvonne Brewster OBE", 100 Great Black Britons, Every Generation. Archived 10 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ a b c Muller, Nazma (January–February 2004). "Yvonne Brewster: 'I only do what I want to do now'". Caribbean Beat Magazine. No. 65. MEP Publishers. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  3. ^ Reade, Simon (23 August 1992), "Pioneer with a vision of black theatre" Archived 8 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine, New Straits Times.
  4. ^ a b c "Biography – Yvonne Brewster" Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Historical Geographies, 14 September 2011.
  5. ^ a b c d e Thompson, Tosin (2 March 2021). "Yvonne Brewster: 'I wasn't going to faff around the edges of the fringe'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  6. ^ Notes on contributors, in Geoffrey V. Davis, Anne Fuchs (eds), Staging New Britain: Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice, Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2006, p. 337.
  7. ^ "Maybury". BBC. Archived from the original on 27 July 2022. Retrieved 8 April 2025.
  8. ^ "Black & Asian Performance in Britain 1970 onwards – Talawa Theatre Company". V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum).
  9. ^ Iqbal, Nosheen (29 May 2011). "Talawa theatre company: the fights of our lives". The Guardian.
  10. ^ Brewster, Yvonne, "Directing The Black Jacobins" Archived 26 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Discovering Literature: 20th century, British Library, 7 September 2017). Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  11. ^ "Antony & Cleopatra: A Theatre First" Archived 7 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Talawa, 1991.
  12. ^ "Patron of the Clive Barker Centre – Yvonne Brewster OBE" Archived 28 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Clive Barker Centre for Theatrical Innovation.
  13. ^ Scafe, Suzanne (1 December 2009). "The Embracing 'I': Mothers and Daughters in Contemporary Black Women's Auto/biography". Women: A Cultural Review. 20 (3): 287–298. doi:10.1080/09574040903285750. ISSN 0957-4042. S2CID 161460788.
  14. ^ "Yvonne Brewster - Reckord Celebrations", News - Talawa Theatre Company, 7 September 2012.
  15. ^ "RBC Fellow Yvonne Brewster OBE edits new Jamaican play anthology", Rose Bruford College, 9 August 2012. Archived 28 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ^ "Vaulting ambition" Archived 27 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, JamaicaTradingNetwork, 31 March 2018.
  17. ^ UK list: "No. 53153". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 31 December 1992. p. 10.
  18. ^ Burrell, Ian (2 October 2003). "Into the limelight at last: search begins for the hundred greatest black Britons of all time". The Independent. Archived from the original on 28 May 2022. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  19. ^ "100 Women: Who took part?" Archived 2 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine BBC News, 22 November 2013.
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