Theatre director Yvonne Brewster at The Little Theatre last Thursday. Brewster, a Jamaican, is an influential theatre luminary in Britain. - Photo by LeVaughn Flynn

The value of Britain's 300-plus year contribution to Jamaican theatre is incalculable. But, as Louise Bennett's poem, Colonisation in Reverse, implies, Jamaica has, in turn, influenced British theatre.

That influence too is immense, says Yvonne Jones Brewster, the Jamaican whose contribution is, arguably, greater than any other. She got an OBE (Order of the British Empire) from that government for it, and has been otherwise honoured.

While interviewing her last week about her work in British theatre, The Sunday Gleaner asked Brewster to identify the next four most relevant Jamaicans to the industry. She named (in no special order) playwright Barry Reckord, actor-producer Anton Phillips, playwright-author and theatre administrator Pat Cumper and playwright Alfred Fagon.

Brewster left Jamaica in 1956 to attend Rose Bruford College in London. This was many years after she originally got the idea to go to drama school.

'directing my parents'

"I decided at the age of 10, when I started directing my parents," she chuckled.

She is now a Fellow of the college and admits to having "quite a few" other honours and awards, but says, "I don't let them hang me down too much."

Her awards include Woman of Achievement Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain; the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Award); the Royal Television Society Award and the Living Legend Award from the National Black Theatre Festival, USA.

Her honours include, apart from those mentioned, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Honorary Doctorate, Open University; and Fellow of Central School of Speech and Drama.

She believes her major contribution to theatre in Britain came in 1985 with the formation of Talawa Theatre Company, Britain's leading black theatre company, which she headed until three years ago. (Another Jamaican, Mona Hammond, now a "very important actress" in Britain, is also a founding member of Talawa.)

Brewster states that when she was starting the company it was difficult to get funding as "people didn't want to put large amounts of money into the hands of black people (in the arts). The first grant was £80,000 — back in those days, a whole heap of money. Now we're in the millions."

She insisted on hiring blacks to run the company, she says, and "it was to all intents and purposes a black-run company. We were doing, in the first instance, the black classics" — meaning, she explains, African American, African and Caribbean plays.

writing plays

"Then people were encouraged to start writing plays which looked at contemporary issues in Britain at the time. So you'll find the whole idea of the company changed from 1985, when we did The Black Jacobins by CLR James and Derek Walcott's O Babylon", among others.

Later, Brewster says, Talawa started producing "white classics", including Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. Now commissioning black writers' work and producing contemporary black British theatre "is all they do", says Brewster.

Her other major contribution has been as a director. She estimates that she has directed at least 40 plays in England alone ("My international work comes up to rather more," she states), including Nobel laureates Walcott and Wole Soyinka.

Brewster, the author of a memoir, The Undertaker's Daughter, is currently working on two books, one as editor of a collection of plays by Barry Reckord.

'intelligent and questioning'

Reckord

Of Reckord (who has had 14 stage and television plays produced in Jamaica and England), Brewster says Reckord and Walcott were the two Caribbean playwrights who were the most "intelligent and questioning" about societal issues.

"These men have concepts that are great and deep. Derek's concepts are usually racial, Barry's are usually sexual," Brewster said.

She had the delight of being in England in 1962, she says, when four great black playwrights - Reckord, Soyinka, Errol John and Walcott — were working there. Reckord was the most popular at the time, she says.

"In 1962, he had this incredible play, You in Your Small Corner, which was put on at the Royal Court Theatre. Then it transferred to the West End, to New Arts Theatre, and in a few months it was taken up by Granada Television in the 'A Play for Today' series. Barry was doing what no white playwright was achieving at the time."

Reckord, she goes on, was a pioneer, in that his work enabled black actors in England - including the famous singer Cleo Laine (now a dame) — to get work. He has "six brilliant plays" but unfortunately he got "obsessed with sex" in his later plays, says Brewster.

She then spoke of Anton Phillips, actor, director and producer, and also a graduate of Rose Bruford College, whom she helped to start Carib Theatre Company in London. They did educational children's theatre in schools, Brewster says, "on things like 'How an Atom Splits'."

"He's also quite a good actor, and he did a lot of television work in the 80s and later. He's quite political and formed the Black Theatre Forum to have a place where you could meet and talk politics. I don't think it exists now," Brewster says, adding that she particularly admired him as a producer who insisted on high standards.

prestigious theatre

Phillips

Phillips' production in 1987 of The Amen Corner by James Baldwin resulted in his being the first black person to have produced and directed a play that transferred (from the Tricycle Theatre) to London's prestigious West End theatre district.

Brewster speaks of playwright Pat Cumper, her successor as artistic director of Talawa, in glowing terms like: "wonderful lady" and "terrific brain". (Cumper was a Jamaican scholar and went to Cambridge University.)

"She encourages people to write," as head of Talawa, and is also doing a fine job at archiving material, Brewster says.

CUMPER

Particularly impressive is Cumper's administrative work at Talawa and her skills in adaptation. She has adapted works by poet Claude McKay and novelists Toni Morrison, and Andrea Levy, and regularly writes radio plays, says Brewster.

last on Brewster's list

The last person on Brewster's list was Alfred Fagon (1937-1986). A leading black playwright of the 1970s and '80s, his plays included 11 Josephine House, The Death of a Blackman (1975), Four Hundred Pounds (1983) and Shakespeare Country, which was produced by the BBC. He lived in Bristol for many years and the city has recognised his achievements by erecting a statue in his honour.

Brewster says of Fagon: "Alfred went to England from Clarendon when he was in his 30s. He was a junior boxing champion in Her Majesty's Army. When he was discharged he said, 'I think I will act.'"

As Brewster tells it, at the audition of a play by Trinidadian Mustapha Matura, Fagon, who never lost his Jamaican accent, declared, "Me can do better dan dis," and went away and wrote a play, 11 Josephine House.

"It was put on immediately in the Almost Free Theatre in the '70s. It was a great success," says Brewster. "It had Mona (Hammond) in it and Horace James and Oscar James. Roland Rees, a marvellous English director, had the courage to put it on - a play by a total unknown who couldn't even speak the Queen's English."

While jogging one morning, Fagon dropped dead, was "scooped up" by the police and buried in a pauper's grave, without any friend or family being informed, says Brewster.

Rees and his other friends organised a memorial service for Fagon and at it collected £2,000. It was later used to create a foundation, with Brewster as treasurer. The foundation now gives an annual playwright's award of £5,000 to writers of Caribbean descent living in Britain.

This year, Brewster says proudly, the Alfred Fagon Awards ceremony will be hosted in November by the prestigious Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, on the south bank of the Thames.

Delightedly, she declares that her task over the next few months would be to find somebody famous to hand out the award.