Occupation Playwright Spouse Ingrid Selberg Role Playwright | Name Mustapha Matura | |
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Nominations The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play Books Play Mas, The Methuen Drama B, Matura: Six Plays: As Time Goe, As time goes by, Moon jump | ||
THREE SISTERS EXTRACTS.mov
Mustapha Matura (born 17 December 1939) is a Trinidadian playwright living in London. He was described by the New Statesman as "the most perceptive and humane of Black dramatists writing in Britain."
Contents
- THREE SISTERS EXTRACTSmov
- Mustapha Matura Feb 2016 Goldsmith University Fellowship acceptance speech
- Career
- Personal life
- Selected works
- Awards
- References
Mustapha Matura Feb 2016 Goldsmith University Fellowship acceptance speech
Career
Born Noel Mathura in Trinidad, he changed his name when he became a writer, and has explained: "I liked the sound of it.... It was the sixties."
Leaving the Caribbean, he travelled to England by ship in 1962, and after a year working as a hospital porter he and fellow Trinidadian Horace Ové went to Rome, where he worked on stage productions such as Langston Hughes' Shakespeare in Harlem. Matura thereafter decided to write plays about the West Indian experience in London.
In 1971 his play As Time Goes By was first performed at the Traverse Theatre Club in Edinburgh and in London at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, with a cast of Caribbean actors, including Stefan Kalipha, Alfred Fagon, Mona Hammond and Corinne Skinner-Carter. Play Mas was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974 (with Stefan Kalipha, Rudolph Walker, Norman Beaton and Mona Hammond in the cast), winning Matura the Evening Standard’s Most Promising Playwright Award that year.
Among his subsequent plays were Rum and Coca Cola (1976), Another Tuesday (Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1978), More, More (The Factory, London, 1978), Independence (1979), A Dying Business (Riverside Studios, 1980); One Rule (Riverside Studios, 1981), Meetings (1981), Playboy of the West Indies (Oxford Playhouse, 1984, and produced for BBC television, 1985), Trinidad Sisters (Tricycle Theatre, 1988) and The Coup (Royal National Theatre, 1991).
In 1978, he co-founded the Black Theatre Co-operative (now called Nitro) together with British director Charlie Hanson. "Frustrated by the lack of interest from London Fringe theatres in Matura's new play Welcome Home Jacko, Matura and Hanson set up their own theatre company. Welcome Home Jacko was presented at The Factory in Paddington, west London, in May 1979 and marked the beginnings of the Black Theatre Co-operative. The company supported, commissioned and produced work by black writers in Britain."
Matura's work for television includes the Channel 4 sitcom No Problem! (1983–85), written by him with Farrukh Dhondy, and Black Silk (BBC, 1985), which he devised in collaboration with Rudy Narayan.
Matura is also a poet, and in Bayswater, West London, in 1971 he performed his epic poem "Elae Elae Ghanga", and featured in an evening of poetry and music on Friday, 29 October, organised by the Caribbean Artists Movement, along with James Berry, T-Bone Wilson, Louis Marriott, Marc Matthews and Archie Markham.
Personal life
He is married to Ingrid Selberg, daughter of Norwegian mathematician Atle Selberg.
Selected works
Awards
Mustapha Matura has received a number of awards throughout his career, in the UK and in Trinidad.