Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster OBE (1938-) is an actor and director who co-founded the theatre companies Talawa in the UK and The Barn Theatre in Jamaica where she was born. Brewster came to Britain in the 1950s and was the first Black woman to study drama at college, graduating from Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in 1959. She then received a distinction in Drama and Mime from the Royal Academy of Music where she was a pupil of Marcel Marceau. On her return to Jamaica, she taught drama, worked as a radio and TV presenter and co-founded (with Trevor Rhone) Jamaica’s first professional theatre company, The Barn Theatre.