Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster (born October 7, 1938 in Kingston (Jamaica) ) is a Jamaican actress , theater director and theater director .

Life

The daughter of a landowner received her acting training from 1956 to 1959 in Great Britain at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup , of which she was the first female black student, and at the Royal Academy of Music . In 1960 she returned to Jamaica , where she earned her living as a teacher as well as radio, film and television work. In 1960 she founded the Barn Theater together with the author Trevor Rhone as the first professional theater in Jamaica. Since 1971 she has worked as an actress and director, mainly in Great Britain. In 1985 Brewster founded the Talawa Theater Company with Mona Hammond, Carmen Monroe and Inigo Espejel, which she ran until 2003.

With this group she staged classics by William Shakespeare , among others , but above all plays by dramatists from the Caribbean, Africa and African-Americans, for example by Derek Walcott , Ola Rotimi and Wole Soyinka . She has repeatedly worked as a director in the USA and Jamaica, where she was the artistic director of the music revue project in Falmouth . Even when she staged classics, she used elements of Jamaican folk culture.

Works

Brewster edited the three-volume Black Plays (London 1987-1995) and wrote an autobiography called The Undertaker's Daughter. The Colorful Life of a Theater Director (London 2004).

Awards

• Order of the British Empire
• Woman of Achievement Award
• Living Legend Award
• Honorary doctorate from the Open University (2001)

literature

• Wolfgang Beck: Brewster, Yvonne . In: Manfred Brauneck, Wolfgang Beck (ed.): Theater Lexikon 2. Actors and directors, stage managers, dramaturges and stage designers . Rowohlt's encyclopedia published by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. Reinbek near Hamburg, August 2007, ISBN 978 3 499 55650 0 , p. 103

Web links

• Yvonne Brewster in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Yvonne Brewster in the WorldCat bibliographic database