Yvonne Brewster: Nobody was offering black actors Shakespeare so we staged our King Lear
The director recalls her 1994 Talawa production of the tragedy, in which 39-year-old Ben Thomas was cast as a last-minute king after Norman Beaton fell illI am a Shakespeare freak. It's about how you get taught. My grandfather was a Jew from Poland who trained as a lawyer and ended up in Jamaica as an undertaker. He was a very intelligent man and took me under his wing: made me listen to Ella Fitzgerald and read Dick…