About Yvonne Brewster
Elsie Yvonne Brewster (née Clarke; 7 October 1938 – 12 October 2025) was a Jamaican actress, theatre director, producer and writer working across film, theatre, radio and television. She has been described as a "cultural visionary who helped shape modern Caribbean theatre". In 1956, she went to England to study drama at Rose Bruford College, as the UK's first Black woman drama student. On returning to Jamaica in 1965, she co-founded with Trevor Rhone Jamaica's first professional theatre company, the Barn, before returning in the early 1970s to the UK, where she co-founded Talawa Theatre Company, the first production of which was The Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James. Brewster also directed other international productions, among them Nanny of the Maroons in New York, The Importance of Being Earnest in Ireland, and The Lover in Florence, Italy. In 1993, Brewster was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and she received other honours including the Woman of Achievement Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain, as well as being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Central School of Speech and Drama. 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. Brewster was Talawa's artistic director until 2003, directing Talawa's first production: C. 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.
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