The College was deeply saddened to learn that of the passing of pioneering theatre director, teacher and writer Yvonne Brewster OBE (née Clarke) earlier this month. Born into a wealthy family in Jamaica, Yvonne became a major force in black British theatre, working as a director, producer and writer across film, theatre, radio and television.

Yvonne was born in Jamaica and was one of UK’s first black female drama students, graduating from Rose Bruford College in 1959. Yvonne studied alongside Gambian playwright Janet Badjan-Young, Director of the Ebunjang Theatre complex in The Gambia.

Image: class photo in which Yvonne is seated, 4th from the left. Also in this photo is Gambian playwright Janet Badjan-Young, standing far left in the middle row.

 

In a career that spanned continents, she helped to found Jamaica’s Barn Theatre, named after our own Barn Theatre, alongside fellow alum Trevor Rhone CD, encouraging the work of Caribbean dramatists for decades. Whilst in the UK she was one of four female founders of Talawa Theatre Company, which has now supported Black British theatre for nearly 40 years and touched the lives of generations of artists and audiences.

She worked with Theatre of Black Women (1982 – 1988), Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, founded by Paulette Randall, Patricia Hilaire, and former College President Bernardine Evaristo who met as students at Rose Bruford College in the early 80s, and with Carib Theatre, founded by Anton Philips and Judy Hepburn, also alumni. She was the first black woman to direct at the National Theatre.

Yvonne returned to Rose Bruford to direct students in College productions, including a production of The Good Doctor by Neil Simon in 1985, in which our present Programme Director of BA Actor Musicianship Alison MacKinnon starred.

 

Image 3: A photo from the 1985 production of The Good Doctor, starring present-day Programme Director at Rose Bruford Alison MacKinnon (right).

 

Image: A programme for the 1985 production of The Good Doctor.

 

In 1996, she was given a Children’s BAFTA award for directing a BBC children’s production of Romeo and Juliet. In 2005, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama conferred an honorary fellowship on Brewster in acknowledgement of her involvement in the development of British theatre.

The College is extremely fortunate to have witnessed the development of some of the most inspirational figures within British and international Black theatre. Yvonne Brewster’s vision transformed the landscape for Black artists, we owe her a huge amount, and she will be very much missed.

Further reading & listening

  • Yvonne was featured on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read in 2004 where she discussed her favourite books and on Desert Island Discs in 2005.
  • Yvonne was interviewed for The Guardian in 2021 on the publication of Talawa Theatre Company: A Theatrical History and the Brewster Era by David Vivian Johnson. A copy of the book is available in the library.
  • Trevor Rhone’s monologue Bellas Gate Boy, later developed as a play by Yvonne, following his travels to London to train at Rose Bruford and his early work with Yvonne, is available in the library. In 2007 the College held a Jamaican Festival, at which Trevor’s play was further adapted, and Trevor was awarded a Fellowship.