The Talawa Theatre Company was founded in London in 1985 by Jamaican born Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster

Yvonne Brewster, O.B.E. is a stage director, teacher and writer.Born in Jamaica, Yvonne Brewster went to the UK to study drama in the mid-fifties at the Rose Bruford College and the Royal Academy of Music...

, Mona Hammond

Mona Hammond

Mona Hammond OBE is a Chinese Jamaican actress and co-founder of the Talawa Theatre Company. Born in Jamaica, Hammond emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1959, where she has remained ever since. Hammond has had a long and distinguished stage career...

, Carmen Munroe

Carmen Munroe

Carmen Munroe OBE is a British actress, born in Berbice, Guyana. Since the early 1950s she has been a resident of the UK. She made her West End stage debut in 1962 and has since played an instrumental role in the development of black British theatre and representation on small screen...

 and Inigo Espejel, becoming the UK's most prominent black

Black British

Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...

 theatre company. It has produced award-winning plays from and about the African diaspora

African diaspora

The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...

 and has championed reinterpretations of classical British pieces.

The name Talawa comes from Jamaican patois, meaning gutsy, feisty. The company's mission is to provide opportunities for black actors, to use black culture to enrich British theatre, and to enlarge theatre audiences among the black community.http://www.peopleplayuk.org.uk/timelines/black_performance.php?year=6&syear=2& The company also runs workshops for schools and colleges.

In March 2006, Patricia Cumper, one of Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

’s leading contemporary playwrights, became the company's artistic director. Previous directors have included the US-born Bonnie Greer

Bonnie Greer

Bonnie Greer, OBE is an American-British playwright and critic.-Early life:Greer's father was born to a family of Mississippi sharecroppers. He was stationed in the UK during World War II and took part in the D-Day landings...

.

Talawa's Mission Statement in 2007: "Talawa Theatre Company is Britain's foremost Black-led Theatre Company. We give voice to the Black British experience and we nurture, develop and support talent. We cultivate Black audiences and audiences for Black work. In so doing, we enrich British Theatre."http://www.talawa.com

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