Talawa Theatre Company: Building Opportunities for Black British Theatre

Creating the opportunities that were missing

Talawa Theatre Company was founded in 1986 by Yvonne Brewster, Mona Hammond, Carmen Munroe and Inigo Espejel. They were responding to the shortage of opportunities for Black actors on British stages. Establishing a company meant taking responsibility for decisions about plays, casting and creative work. Talawa explains its name through a Jamaican patois expression conveying strength and determination. That sense of purpose was practical: the founders created an organisation through which more work could be made and more artists employed. ¹

The company’s repertoire has encompassed Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett alongside African and Caribbean drama and new Black British writing. This breadth is central to its history. It made space for contemporary experiences while asserting that Black artists could interpret established works. A company’s identity did not have to dictate a single style or a narrowly defined subject. Talawa’s contribution can be understood through the range of opportunities it created, on stage and in the work surrounding a production. ¹

Beginning with The Black Jacobins

An early statement of ambition came with C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins at Riverside Studios in 1986. The National Theatre’s Black Plays Archive records an opening night of 21 February and a cast of twenty-two. Brewster directed, with Norman Beaton as Toussaint L’Ouverture and Hammond as Marie Jeanne. The drama brought the struggle against slavery in the French Caribbean into a substantial ensemble production. It offered actors a historical and political world to inhabit, with Black resistance at the centre of the action. ²

The choice established the scale of what the new company could attempt. A history concerned with liberation required characters, conflict and dramatic interpretation. It was a subject to be performed and argued over, as well as remembered. Talawa’s subsequent work would continue to test what different kinds of theatre could make possible for artists and audiences.

Developing artists through TYPT

Talawa’s work also developed beyond a succession of professional productions. Its programme for emerging theatre makers, TYPT, began in 1995. A company account published in the context of its 2016 programme describes young artists aged eighteen to twenty-five working with established practitioners to create a show in four weeks. The participants included performers, stage managers and designers. Theatre making was presented as a shared process, with several kinds of expertise needed to bring an idea before an audience. ³

The same account names Michaela Coel, Femi Oguns and Nonso Anozie among former participants and describes continuing support after the intensive programme. Those later careers help demonstrate the programme’s reach, but famous alumni are only one measure of its significance. Rehearsal, collaboration and professional contact can change what an emerging artist believes is possible. A supported first experience can also provide practical knowledge about deadlines, responsibilities and working with other people. Talawa treated that development as part of its purpose, alongside producing finished work. ³

Keeping Caribbean drama in performance

Talawa’s 2014 production of Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl illustrates the continuing importance of Caribbean dramatic writing. It restaged the production Michael Buffong had directed at the National Theatre in 2012, taking it to audiences including those at Watford Palace Theatre. Set in a shared yard in Port of Spain after the Second World War, the play follows people negotiating money, relationships and their hopes for a different future. The prospect of departure for Britain forms part of that world. ⁴

Reviewing the Watford performances, Howard Loxton drew attention to Martina Laird’s portrayal of Sophia and to the sense of community created by the ensemble. His response helps identify what a revival can recover: complex characters whose lives cannot be reduced to a single historical theme. Migration exists beside family responsibility, desire, disappointment and humour. Returning to the play gave audiences another opportunity to encounter that complexity. Caribbean theatre became a living part of the repertoire through renewed performance, with actors and a director making decisions for a new occasion. ⁴

Claiming the major classical roles

In 2016 Talawa and Manchester’s Royal Exchange presented King Lear, directed by Buffong with Don Warrington in the title role. The cast included Rakie Ayola as Goneril, Debbie Korley as Regan, Pepter Lunkuse as Cordelia and Alfred Enoch as Edgar. The University of Warwick’s British Black and Asian Shakespeare database records performances in Manchester during April and early May, followed by Birmingham Repertory Theatre later in May. These details locate a major classical production within a partnership reaching more than one city. ⁵

The production provided substantial roles through which actors could explore authority, family conflict, vulnerability and betrayal. Its importance was therefore connected to the work those roles demand. A title such as King Lear offers a central performer sustained dramatic responsibility, while the surrounding characters carry competing perspectives and ambitions. Talawa’s involvement also placed a Black theatre company within the production of a frequently performed British theatrical classic. Casting and organisational responsibility were both part of the opportunity created by the partnership. ⁵

Musical comedy and the freedom to reinterpret

The collaboration with the Royal Exchange continued with Guys and Dolls, which ran from December 2017 into January 2018. Buffong directed an all-Black cast including Ray Fearon as Nathan Detroit and Lucy Vandi as Miss Adelaide. The production was presented with a Harlem setting. This was a different theatrical demand from Shakespearean tragedy: singing, comic timing, dance and ensemble storytelling were all essential to the evening. It extended the range of major work available to the artists involved. ⁶

British Theatre Guide’s review noted a tension between the relocated setting and references retained in the script, while describing the production’s developing energy and musical performances. That response is useful because it treats reinterpretation as something to examine in detail. A production can be historically significant and still invite questions about particular choices. Talawa’s work belongs within that ordinary life of theatrical criticism. Its artists were making decisions about character, rhythm and place, with results that audiences and reviewers could assess. ⁶

Making room for a new voice

New writing offered another route through which Talawa could widen the theatrical conversation. In 2019 it co-produced Nicôle Lecky’s Superhoe at the Royal Court’s Upstairs theatre. Lecky performed the solo work herself, directed by Jade Lewis. Its central character, Sasha Clayton, is a young east Londoner trying to build a musical career while her life becomes increasingly insecure. The performance combined storytelling, character changes and music, placing a contemporary female experience at the centre of a small theatre space. ⁷

Philip Fisher’s contemporary review recognised Lecky’s promise as both writer and performer while questioning aspects of the play’s resolution. The combination of encouragement and criticism is part of what new work needs: an opportunity to exist publicly and be discussed seriously. A partnership with a theatre associated with new writing gave the production a setting suited to that encounter. It also shows why a company’s achievements cannot be represented only by large casts or famous titles. A single performer can create a substantial theatrical world. ⁷

A working home in Croydon

Talawa’s residence at Fairfield Halls in Croydon gave it a studio with two hundred seats and office space. Fairfield’s account places that home within the company’s longer experience of touring. A studio and administrative base serve different but connected needs: artists require room to rehearse and present work, while an organisation needs the capacity to plan, communicate and sustain its programme. The physical setting makes those less visible parts of theatre more apparent. A company continues working between its public performances. ⁸

Fairfield also identifies Talawa as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Public support and partnerships form part of the conditions in which artistic decisions become possible. The existence of a dedicated working space should therefore be understood alongside the organisation needed to use it. A local base can support sustained relationships with a place while a touring programme reaches audiences elsewhere. These are complementary dimensions of a theatre company’s work, each requiring attention and resources. ⁸

Black Joy and a network of theatres

Play On! formed part of Talawa’s Black Joy season and opened at Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre in September 2024. Talawa and the Belgrade produced it with partners including Birmingham Hippodrome, Bristol Old Vic, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Lyric Hammersmith and Wiltshire Creative. Conceived by Sheldon Epps, with a book by Cheryl L. West and music by Duke Ellington, the production brought together a substantial group of regional and London theatres. The credits reveal the cooperative structure behind a large musical undertaking. ⁹

The musical reworks Twelfth Night within the jazz world of New York’s Cotton Club. Its aspiring songwriter, Vy, encounters assumptions about what women can do within a male-dominated industry. Disguise, attraction and mistaken identity become part of that story. Talawa’s production description connects Ellington’s music with street dance choreography under Buffong’s direction. The project brought familiar Shakespearean devices into conversation with Black musical traditions and different forms of movement. It widened the possibilities of interpretation through the combination of script, score, casting and choreography. ¹²

The season’s title also asserted the value of pleasure within the company’s public work. Stories about Black life can involve wit, romance, aspiration and exuberance, as well as conflict. Creating space for that range enlarges what audiences can expect from a Black theatre company and what its artists can attempt.

The youngest audiences

In 2025 Home Song extended this range to babies and their carers. Created by theatre maker and composer Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong in partnership with the Unicorn Theatre, it followed Adwoa and her mother on a journey connected with Kumasi and London. Puppetry, interactive sound and unaccompanied singing shaped the experience. The production approached belonging through forms that very young audiences could encounter with the adults accompanying them. Music, texture and shared attention could carry meaning without requiring the conventions of an adult drama. ¹⁰

The production’s credits also identify support from local nurseries, a children’s centre and families involved in parent-and-baby groups facilitated by Talawa. Those relationships place the work within a community of carers and children. Developing an audience begins before someone buys a conventional theatre ticket independently. It can involve making a space in which families feel able to participate together. The production therefore belongs in the company’s history of opportunity: the question concerns who can experience theatre as well as who can make it. ¹⁰

New work before the finished production

Talawa Firsts shows another stage of this process. The company’s 2026 new-writing festival programme described reading more than one hundred script submissions. It brought four developing plays into rehearsed readings and provided showcase nights for eight members of its Introductory Writers’ Group. The programme included work by Olamide Ajisafe, Jason David, Raphael Phillips and Jade Anouka. These were opportunities to test writing in performance, with experienced writers and newer practitioners represented within the same festival. ¹¹

A reading or a presentation of excerpts should not be confused with a fully realised production. Its purpose includes discovering how a script works when actors speak it and an audience responds. Talawa Firsts made that intermediate stage public. This is part of the labour through which a theatrical repertoire grows: writers need time, collaborators and occasions on which to develop their work. The company’s history includes creating those conditions, as well as the productions that eventually reach larger stages. ¹¹

Remembering the work behind the performances

Talawa’s early history survives in detailed production records. The Black Plays Archive identifies accounts, correspondence, contracts, technical files, a prompt script and show reports for The Black Jacobins within the V&A Theatre and Performance Collection, alongside photographs and publicity. Such records preserve the many kinds of work needed for a performance to happen. They also make it possible to investigate the company through evidence beyond reviews and recollection. ²

By 2026, forty years had passed since Talawa’s foundation. Its history encompasses the creation of roles, the development of artists and the building of relationships between theatres and audiences. No single production can stand for that entire achievement. Together, the work shows how an organisation can enlarge the field of possibility: by giving established actors demanding parts, supporting a writer’s first steps, revisiting a Caribbean play or inviting a baby into a musical world. Those different acts all concern the right to participate fully in cultural life.

Sources

[1] Talawa Theatre Company. About Us: Talawa's history and repertoire.

[2] National Theatre, Black Plays Archive. The Black Jacobins: 1986 production and archival materials; Production opened 21 February 1986; catalogue record.

[3] Talawa Theatre Company. TYPT microsite: About TYPT; 2016 programme context.

[4] British Theatre Guide. Howard Loxton, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl; Watford production, 4–8 March 2014.

[5] University of Warwick, British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database. King Lear (2016): Talawa, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; 2016.

[6] British Theatre Guide. Guys and Dolls: Royal Exchange Theatre and Talawa Theatre Company; Production, 2 December 2017–27 January 2018.

[7] British Theatre Guide. Philip Fisher, Superhoe; Production, 30 January–16 February 2019.

[8] Fairfield Halls. Resident companies: Talawa Theatre.

[9] Belgrade Theatre. Play On!: production information; 23 September–5 October 2024.

[10] Talawa Theatre Company. Home Song: production and creative team; 2025.

[11] Talawa Theatre Company. Talawa Firsts 2026: programme; 29 June–3 July 2026.

[12] Talawa Theatre Company. Play On!: story and production; 2024–2025 production; dates cross-checked with Belgrade Theatre.

Sources checked on 22 October 2026.