Yvonne Brewster

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.

Yvonne Brewster OBE
Born	Yvonne Clarke (1938-10-07) 7 October 1938 (age 86) Kingston, Jamaica
Education	Rose Bruford College Royal Academy of Music
Occupations	Actress theatre director writer
Known for	Co-founder of Talawa Theatre Company

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.