Andrea Dunbar (22 May 1961 – 20 December 1990) was an English playwright. She wrote ''The Arbor'' (1980) and ''Rita, Sue and Bob Too'' (1982), an autobiographical drama about the sexual adventures of teenage girls living in a run-down part of
Bradford, West Yorkshire. She wrote most of the adaptation for the film ''
Rita, Sue and Bob Too
''Rita, Sue and Bob Too'' is a 1987 British comedy-drama film directed by Alan Clarke, set in Bradford, West Yorkshire about two teenaged schoolgirls who have a sexual fling with a married man. It was adapted by Andrea Dunbar, based on two of ...
'' (1987).
Early life
Dunbar was raised on Brafferton Arbor on the
Buttershaw
Buttershaw is a residential area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is bounded by Horton Bank Top to the north, Wibsey to the east, Woodside to the south and Shelf to the west.
Buttershaw consists mostly of 1940s council housing with ...
council estate
Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council estates, council housing, or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in so ...
in Bradford
with seven brothers and sisters. Both her parents had worked in the
textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.
Industry process
Cotton manufacturi ...
. Dunbar attended
Buttershaw Comprehensive School
Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College is a Mixed-sex education, co-educational secondary school and sixth form located in the Buttershaw area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.
History
It opened on 3 September 1956 as Buttershaw Second ...
.
Career
Dunbar began her first play, ''The Arbor'', in 1977 at the age of 15,
writing it as a classroom assignment for
CSE English. It is the story of "a Bradford schoolgirl who falls pregnant to her Pakistani boyfriend on a racist estate," and has an abusive drunken father.
Encouraged by her teacher, she was helped to develop the play to performance standard. It received its première in 1980 at London's
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England ...
, directed by
Max Stafford-Clark
Maxwell Robert Guthrie Stewart "Max" Stafford-Clark (born 17 March 1941) is a British theatre director.
Life and career
Stafford-Clark was born in Cambridge, England. the son of David Stafford-Clark, a physician, and Dorothy Crossley (née Old ...
.
At the age of 18, Dunbar was the youngest playwright to have her work performed there. Alongside a play entered by Lucy Anderson Jones, ''The Arbor'' jointly won at the Young Writers' Festival, and was later augmented and performed in New York City. On 26 March 1980, she was featured in the BBC's ''
Arena
An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators ...
'' arts documentary series.
Dunbar was quickly commissioned to write a follow-up play, ''Rita, Sue and Bob Too'', first performed in 1982. This explores similar themes to ''The Arbor'' through the lives of two teenage girls who are having affairs with the same married man. Dunbar's third and final play, ''Shirley'' (1986), places greater emphasis on a central character. It depicts a girl's "tumultuous relationship" with her mother. As she explained, she meant to write "about Shirley and John but, you know, I wrote the mother in and she bloody took over the whole play."
The film version of ''
Rita, Sue and Bob Too
''Rita, Sue and Bob Too'' is a 1987 British comedy-drama film directed by Alan Clarke, set in Bradford, West Yorkshire about two teenaged schoolgirls who have a sexual fling with a married man. It was adapted by Andrea Dunbar, based on two of ...
'' (1987) was adapted for the cinema by Dunbar, directed by
Alan Clarke and filmed on the Buttershaw estate. Dunbar disowned the film when more writers were brought in to give it a happier ending.
However, it created considerable controversy on the estate because of its negative portrayal of the area.
Dunbar was threatened by several residents, but nevertheless continued to live there.
In 2010 a commemorative
blue plaque on Dunbar's former home on Brafferton Arbor was unveiled in the presence of her relatives.
Personal life
Dunbar first became pregnant at the age of 15; the baby was stillborn at six months.
[Lyn Gardner, Born to Write and Die"]
The Guardian, 4 July 1998. She later had three children by three different fathers. The first, Lorraine, was born in 1979, and had a Pakistani father. A year later, in 1980, Lisa was born, again while Dunbar was still a teenager.
[Liam Allen, The Arbor: In the footsteps of Rita, Sue and Bob"]
BBC News, 22 October 2010. About three years later, she had a son, Andrew, with Jim Wheeler.
As a single mother, Dunbar lived in a
Women's Aid
Women's Aid Federation of England, commonly called Women's Aid within England, is one of a group of charities across the United Kingdom. There are four main Women's Aid Federations, one for each of the countries of the United Kingdom. Its aim is t ...
refuge in
Keighley
Keighley ( ) is a market town and a civil parish
in the City of Bradford Borough of West Yorkshire, England. It is the second largest settlement in the borough, after Bradford.
Keighley is north-west of Bradford city centre, north-west of ...
and became an increasingly heavy drinker. In 1990 she died of a
brain haemorrhage
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...
in
Bradford Royal Infirmary
Bradford Royal Infirmary is a large teaching hospital in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, and is operated by the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The infirmary is affiliated with the Leeds School of Medicine
The School ...
at the age of 29, after falling ill in ''The Beacon'', a pub on the Buttershaw Estate, at the junction of Reevy Road West and The Crescent. It was closed in 2016 and demolished in 2019, but appears in the opening shot of ''Rita, Sue and Bob Too''. Her cremated remains were buried at Scholemoor Cemetery and Crematorium (Section N, Grave 1219) in Bradford. Her headstone is a small black granite cross.
In 2007, her eldest daughter Lorraine, a heroin addict at the time, was convicted of
manslaughter for causing the death of her child by gross neglect after the child ingested a lethal dose of
methadone
Methadone, sold under the brand names Dolophine and Methadose among others, is a synthetic opioid agonist used for chronic pain and also for opioid dependence. It is used to treat chronic pain, and it is also used to treat addiction to heroi ...
.
[Tribeca '10 , Clio Barnard's "The Arbor" Defies Categorization, ''Indiewire'', 10 April 2010.](_blank)
/ref>[Martin Wainwright,]
Playwright's darkest visions return to consume her family
. ''The Guardian'', 24 November 2007.
In January 2018, her daughter Lisa Pearce died of stomach cancer after having been diagnosed in December 2016.
Depictions
In 2000, Dunbar's life and her surroundings were revisited in the play ''A State Affair'' by Robin Soans
Robin Soans (born 20 June 1946) is a British actor, and a playwright specialising in verbatim and documentary plays. These plays include ''Across the Divide'' (2007); ''A State Affair'' (2000) which looked at life on a Bradford estate, produced ...
.
A film about her life, '' The Arbor'', directed by Clio Barnard
Clio Barnard (1 January 1965) is a British director of documentary and feature films. She won widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards for her debut, '' The Arbor'', an experimental documentary about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. ...
, was released in 2010. The film uses actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar and her family, and concentrates on the strained relationship between Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine.
A novel inspired by Dunbar's life and work, ''Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile'' by Adelle Stripe
Adelle Stripe (born 1976) is an English writer and journalist.
Work
Stripe's writing is rooted in the non-fiction novel form and explores working-class culture, untold histories of Northern England, popular music, and small-town life.
''Bla ...
, was published in 2017 by Wrecking Ball Press
Wrecking Ball Press is an independent poetry & prose publishing company, based in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Wrecking Ball Press was established and is edited by Shane Rhodes; it was born in the back of a café.
Wrecking Ball Pres ...
. It was shortlisted for the Portico Prize
The Portico Library, The Portico or Portico Library and Gallery on Mosley Street, Manchester, is an independent subscription library designed in the Greek Revival style by Thomas Harrison of Chester and built between 1802 and 1806. It is reco ...
for Literature and the Gordon Burn Prize
Gordon Burn (16 January 1948 – 17 July 2009) was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction.
Background
Burn's novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity as l ...
. A second edition came from Fleet Publishing in the same year. In 2019 a stage adaptation by Freedom Studios and screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth was announced in ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''. Dramatisation of Stripe's novel focused on women's relationships, with a cast of five sharing the roles. It portrayed a teenage Dunbar rising to national note with her autobiographical works ''The Arbor'' and ''Rita, Sue and Bob Too'', and the challenges of life on the Buttershaw
Buttershaw is a residential area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is bounded by Horton Bank Top to the north, Wibsey to the east, Woodside to the south and Shelf to the west.
Buttershaw consists mostly of 1940s council housing with ...
estate in Bradford.
A 2019 Woolyback production for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
written and directed by Sean Grundy – ''Rita, Sue and Andrea Too'' – dramatized the life and career of Dunbar, played by Natalie Gavin
Natalie Gavin (born 1988) is an English actress from Bradford, known for her roles in the BBC dramas ''Prisoners' Wives'' and ''The Syndicate,'' and the ITV drama '' Jericho''.
Early life
Gavin was born in Bradford. She grew up in the Bra ...
.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunbar, Andrea
1961 births
1990 deaths
Writers from Bradford
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights