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Yvonne Brewster

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Yvonne Brewster
OBE
Born
Yvonne Clarke

(1938-10-07) 7 October 1938 (age 86)
Kingston, Jamaica
EducationRose Bruford College,
Royal Academy of Music
Occupations
  • Actress
  • theatre director
  • businesswoman
Known forCo-founder of Talawa Theatre Company

Yvonne Jones Brewster OBE (née Clarke; born 7 October 1938) is a Jamaican actress, theatre director and businesswoman, known for her role as Ruth Harding in the BBC television soap opera Doctors. She co-founded the theatre companies Talawa in the UK and The Barn in Jamaica.

Biography

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Born in Kingston, Jamaica,[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 returned to Jamaica to teach Drama and in 1965 she also jointly founded (with Trevor Rhone) The Barn in Kingston, Jamaica's first professional theatre company.[5]

Upon her return to England in the early 1970s,[6] she worked extensively in radio, television, and directing for stage productions. 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,[7] using funding from the Greater London Council (then led by Ken Livingstone). Brewster was Talawa's artistic director until 2003,[8] 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.[9] Another landmark came in 1991 when she directed the first all-black production of William Shakespeare`s Antony and Cleopatra, starring Doña Croll and Jeffery Kissoon.[10]

Brewster is a patron of the Clive Barker Centre for Theatrical Innovation.[11]

Personal life

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She married after returning to England from Jamaica in 1971, and she and her husband now live in Florence.[2][6]

Awards and recognition

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In the 1993 New Year Honours, Brewster was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).[12] In 2001 she was granted an honorary doctorate from the Open University.[6] She received a living legend award from the National Black Theatre Festival in 2001.[6]

She featured on the 2003 list of 100 Great Black Britons.[13] In 2005, the University of London's Central School of Speech and Drama conferred an honorary fellowship on Brewster in acknowledgment of her involvement in the development of British theatre.[4] In 2013, she was named one of the BBC's 100 Women.[14]

Publications

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In 2004, Brewster published her memoirs, entitled The Undertaker’s Daughter: The Colourful Life of a Theatre Director (Arcadia Books).[15] She has also edited five collections of plays, including Barry Reckord's For the Reckord (Oberon Books, 2010)[16] and Mixed Company: Three Early Jamaican Plays, published by Oberon Books in 2012.[17] In 2018 she published Vaulting Ambition: Jamaica's Barn Theatre 1966–2005.[18]

Selected bibliography

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  1. ^ Profile of Yvonne Brewster Archived 10 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine at 100 Great Black Britons.
  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. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  3. ^ Reade, Simon (23 August 1992), "Pioneer with a vision of black theatre", New Straits Times.
  4. ^ a b c "Biography – Yvonne Brewster", Historical Geographies, 14 September 2011.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ a b c d 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.
  7. ^ "Black & Asian Performance in Britain 1970 onwards – Talawa Theatre Company". V&A.
  8. ^ Iqbal, Nosheen (29 May 2011). "Talawa theatre company: the fights of our lives". The Guardian.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ "Antony & Cleopatra: A Theatre First", Talawa, 1991.
  11. ^ "Patron of the Clive Barker Centre – Yvonne Brewster OBE", Clive Barker Centre for Theatrical Innovation.
  12. ^ UK list: "No. 53153". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 31 December 1992. p. 10.
  13. ^ Burrell, Ian (2 October 2003). "Into the limelight at last: search begins for the hundred greatest black Britons of all time". The Independent.
  14. ^ "100 Women: Who took part?" BBC News, 22 November 2013.
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ "Yvonne Brewster - Reckord Celebrations"[permanent dead link‍], News - Talawa Theatre Company, 7 September 2012.
  17. ^ "RBC Fellow Yvonne Brewster OBE edits new Jamaican play anthology" Archived 28 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Rose Bruford College, 9 August 2012.
  18. ^ "Vaulting ambition", JamaicaTradingNetwork, 31 March 2018.
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