Yvonne Brewster was born in Jamaica in 1938 and came to England in 1956 to train at Rose Bruford College. She came to train as a radio announcer but got her Equity card working in pantomime in Colchester before returning to Jamaica where she set up Jamaica’s first professional theatre company at the Barn Theatre Kingston with Trevor Rhone. She came back to England in the 1970s working as a drama teacher and director. In 1982 she became the first black Arts Council of Great Britain officer where she worked in the Drama Department. She left in 1984 to work as a freelance director and founded the Talawa Theatre Company in 1985 with Mona Hammond, Carmen Monroe and Inigo Espejel. Their first production was 'The Black Jacobins' by CLR James in 1986, which had not been performed in England for fifty years and never with a black cast. During the same year Yvonne Brewster directed An Echo in the Bone by Dennis Scott and in 1988 the European Premiere of O Babylon! by Derek Walcott and Galt McDermot. Brewster left Talawa in 2005 after a ten year search to find a permanent home for the company resulted in failure. She now divides her time between London and Jamaica where she continues to work at the Barn Theatre.  Kate Dorney