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.
Yvonne Brewster | |
|---|---|
| Born | Yvonne Clarke 7 October 1938 |
| Education | Rose Bruford College, Royal Academy of Music |
| Occupations |
|
| Known for | Co-founder of Talawa Theatre Company |
Biography
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
She married after returning to England from Jamaica in 1971, and she and her husband now live in Florence.[2][6]
Awards and recognition
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
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
- 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
External links
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