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Mona Hammond
Mona Hammond (born Mavis Chin; 1 January 1931 – 4 July 2022) was a Jamaican-British actress and co-founder of the Talawa Theatre Company. Born in Tweedside, Jamaica, Tweedside Map, Google. Retrieved 5 July 2022. Hammond emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1959, where she lived for the rest of her life. Hammond had a long and distinguished stage career. She was best known for her work on British television and played Blossom Jackson in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. Hammond was made an OBE in the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama. In 2018, she was awarded the Women of the World Lifetime Achievement Award for her long and distinguished theatre career and for championing Black British actors with the Talawa Theatre Company. Early life < ...
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Blossom Jackson
Blossom Jackson is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera '' EastEnders'', played by Mona Hammond. The character originally appeared from 16 May 1994 to 29 May 1997. Hammond was installed as a matriarchal figure of the Jackson clan but quit the role in 1997, reportedly because she was suffering from nervous exhaustion. She reprised the role on 25 October 2010 for two episodes. Storylines Blossom is the grandmother of Alan Jackson (Howard Antony). Originally from Tobago, she came to Britain as a young child and grew up in east London. Her first marriage to Nathan ended after he deserted her, and she spent the latter part of her life living with her common-law husband, Bill, until he died in 1993. On screen, she comes to live with Alan and his common-law wife Carol (Lindsey Coulson) at number 25 Albert Square in 1994 after her flat in Wapping is burgled. Blossom is great-grandmother to Billie Jackson (Devon Anderson) and although she is not blood-related to the other Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Roundhouse
The Roundhouse is a performing arts and concert venue situated at the Grade II* listed former railway engine shed in Chalk Farm, London, England. The building was erected in 1846–1847 by the London & North Western Railway as a roundhouse, a circular building containing a railway turntable, but was used for that purpose for only about a decade. After being used as a warehouse for a number of years, the building fell into disuse just before World War II. It was first made a listed building in 1954. It reopened after 25 years, in 1964, as a performing arts venue, when the playwright Arnold Wesker established the Centre 42 Theatre Company and adapted the building as a theatre. The large circular structure has hosted various promotions, such as the launch of the underground paper ''International Times'' in 1966, one of only two UK appearances by The Doors with Jim Morrison in 1968, and the Greasy Truckers Party in 1972. The Greater London Council ceded control of the building t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen Munroe
Carmen Esme Munroe, (born 12 November 1932)"Carmen Monroe, Actress & Officer of the Order of the British Empire Awardee" Guyanese Girls Rock, 8 November 2012. is a British actress who was born in , British Guiana (now ), and has been a resident of the UK since the early 1950s. Munroe made her West End stage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yvonne Brewster
Yvonne Jones Brewster (née Clarke; born 7 October 1938) is a Jamaican actress, theatre director and businesswoman, known for her role as Ruth Harding in the BBC television soap opera ''Doctors''. She co-founded the theatre companies Talawa in the UK and The Barn in Jamaica. Biography Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Yvonne Brewster recalls being inspired to become an actress at the age of 16, when her father took her to the Ward Theatre "to see a French play, called ''Huis Clos'', written by Jean Paul Sartre. And in it was Mona Chin, who I thought looked just like me. She was fantastic. I looked at this woman and I said, 'Hey, Daddy, I want to be like her. In 1956, Brewster went to the UK to study drama at Rose Bruford College – where she was the UK's first Black woman drama student,Reade, Simon (23 August 1992)"Pioneer with a vision of black theatre" ''New Straits Times''. being told on her first day that she was unlikely to find theatrical work in Britain – and also attend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Crucible
''The Crucible'' is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E. G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood. Miller felt that this production was too stylized and cold, and the reviews for it were largely hostile (although ''The New York Times'' noted "a powerful play n adriving performance"). The production won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play. A year later a new production suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Declan Donnellan
Declan Michael Martin Donnellan (born 4 August 1953) is an English film/stage director and author. He co-founded the Cheek by Jowl theatre company with Nick Ormerod in 1981. In addition to his Cheek by Jowl productions, Donnellan has made theatre, opera and ballet with a variety of companies across the world. In 1992, he received an honorary degree from the University of Warwick and in 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his work in France. In 2010, he was made an honorary fellow of Goldsmiths' College, University of London. Donnellan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to theatre. Biography Donnellan was born in Manchester and grew up in Ealing, London. He was educated at St Benedict's School, Ealing and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read English and Law. After leaving Cambridge, he was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1978. He founded Cheek by Jowl with Nick Orm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peer Gynt
''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five- act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed ''Per Gynt'', the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845 (''Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn''). ''Peer Gynt'' chronicles the journey of its title character from the Norwegian mountains to the North African desert and back. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, "its origins are romantic, but the play also anticipates the fragmentations of emerging modernism" and the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones."Klaus Van Den Berg, "Peer Gynt" (review), ''Theatre Journal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuente Ovejuna
''Fuenteovejuna'' () is a play by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. First published in Madrid in 1619, as part of ''Docena Parte de las Comedias de Lope de Vega Carpio'' (''Volume 12 of the Collected plays of Lope de Vega Carpio''),Edwards, Gwynne, ed. and trans. ''Lope de Vega, Three Major Plays'' (with ''The Knight of Olmedo'' and ''Punishment without Revenge''). Oxford University Press, 1999, p. xii. the play is believed to have been written between 1612 and 1614. The play is based upon a historical incident that took place in the village of Fuenteovejuna in Castile, in 1476. While under the command of the Order of Calatrava, a commander, Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, mistreated the villagers, who banded together and killed him. When a magistrate sent by King Ferdinand II of Aragon arrived at the village to investigate, the villagers, even under the pain of torture, responded only by saying "Fuenteovejuna did it." Background Rapid change took place in Spain in the years betw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. Internationally, it is known as the National Theatre of Great Britain. Founded by Laurence Olivier in 1963, many well-known actors have performed at the National Theatre. Until 1976, the company was based at The Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. The current building is located next to the Thames in the South Bank area of central London. In addition to performances at the National Theatre building, the National Theatre tours productions at theatres across the United Kingdom. The theatre has transferred numerous productions to Broadway and toured some as far as China, Australia and New Zealand. However, touring productions to European cities was suspended in February 2021 over concerns about uncertainty over work permits, additional costs and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playboy Of The West Indies
''Playboy of the West Indies'' (1984) is a play by Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura, a Caribbean version of John Millington Synge, Synge's ''The Playboy of the Western World''. Production history ''Playboy of the West Indies'' opened in 1984 at the Oxford Playhouse, where it had been commissioned by Nicolas Kent, and subsequently toured the UK, finishing at the Tricycle Theatre in London. The original cast included Joy Richardson (as Alice), Jackie de Peza (Ivy), Frank Singuineau (Jimmy), Jim Findley (Ken), T-Bone Wilson (Mac), Mona Hammond (Mama Benin), Rudolph Walker (Mikey), Joan Ann Maynard (Peggy), Tommy Eytle (Phil), and Jason Rose (Stanley)."Playboy of the West Indies By Mustapha Matura" National Theatre Black Plays Archive. The play has also enjoyed much succ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mustapha Matura
Mustapha Matura (17 December 1939 – 29 October 2019) was a Trinidadian playwright living in London. Characterised by critic Michael Billington as "a pioneering black playwright who opened the doors for his successors", Matura was the first British-based dramatist of colour to have a play in London's West End, with '' Play Mas'' in 1974.Michael Billington"Mustapha Matura obituary" ''The Guardian'', 1 November 2019. He was described by the ''New Statesman'' as "the most perceptive and humane of Black dramatists writing in Britain." Early years Born Noel Mathura in 1939, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, he changed his name when he became a writer, and explained: "I liked the sound of it.... It was the sixties."Biography Mustapha Matura website. Leaving the Caribbean, he travelled to England by ship in 1962, and after a year working as a hospital porter he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Fagon
Alfred Fagon (25 June 1937 – 29 August 1986) was a British playwright, poet and actor. He was one of the most notable Black British playwrights of the 1970s and 1980s. Fagon worked for British Rail and served in the British Army before he wrote and produced plays at theatres across the UK, including Royal Court Theatre and Hampstead Theatre. Biography Alfred Fagon was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, into a family of eight brothers and two sisters."Alfred Fagon" at . In 1955 he migrated to England, and worked for |
