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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Miss Lou's times in London</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Diane Abbott
Sunday, September 03, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=StoryText align=justify>The recent death of Louise Bennett (Miss Lou) created a wave of sadness throughout the Jamaican Diaspora. Britain was no exception. And a few weeks ago, BBC Radio put out a fascinating programme about Louise Bennett's time in London. Yvonne Brewster presented it, which was highly appropriate because the Jamaican-born Mrs Brewster is herself a distinguished theatre director.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=110 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Diane Abbott </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In 1945, Miss Lou obtained a British Council scholarship to become the first black woman to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), which was Britain's leading drama school. This was a remarkable achievement. It is an even more impressive accomplishment when you learn that she did part of her audition in Jamaican dialect, because this was at a time when even white drama students who had regional accents could not get into the exclusive RADA.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It speaks volumes about Miss Lou's charm and talent that she was able to win over the notoriously grand and snobbish people who ran the drama school whilst speaking anything other than the King's English.<P class=StoryText align=justify>If Miss Lou experienced racism at RADA she never spoke about it. Yet, she must have. Over 10 years later, Yvonne Brewster came to London to study drama and she has written in her autobiography about the racism she met; not least from the woman who ran her drama school and who only accepted her there on sufferance, warning her that she would never work in Britain because she was black.<P class=StoryText align=justify>You also wonder what kind of reception Miss Lou might have got from the Caribbean community in London. Miss Lou is a national icon now, but at the time, her use of patois must have seemed a little embarrassing to some of the Caribbean students desperately trying to be accepted by the British as serious intellectuals.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Miss Lou herself never talked about her time in London in anything other than warm terms. In fact, she wrote one of her best poems about it "Jamaican people colonisin' Englan' in reverse.."<P class=StoryText align=justify>She never completed her studies at RADA, as she was offered a job at the BBC. However, you can only speculate as to whether part of the reason she left drama school was that once she got to London it dawned on her that any chance of a career in mainstream British theatre was minimal.<P class=StoryText align=justify>On the recent radio programme they explained how Miss Lou came to the attention of the BBC. Soon after she came to London, she took part in a 1945 Christmas Day broadcast by the BBC Caribbean Service.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Miss Lou sent greetings to Jamaica in patois. Upper-class Jamaicans may have looked down on patois at the time, but the manager of the BBC Caribbean Service was so impressed that he offered her a contract as a resident artist on a programme called Caribbean Carnival.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It was a 30-minute programme, which was broadcast before a live audience (composed mostly of Caribbean residents in London). Every week Miss Lou wrote and read out a topical poem. She also appeared on the long-running radio series Caribbean Voices together with distinguished writers like George Lamming, V S Naipaul and Andrew Salkey.<P class=StoryText align=justify>For the next few years, she mixed and mingled with the tiny community of Caribbean
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Diane Abbott
Sunday, September 03, 2006
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=StoryText align=justify>The recent death of Louise Bennett (Miss Lou) created a wave of sadness throughout the Jamaican Diaspora. Britain was no exception. And a few weeks ago, BBC Radio put out a fascinating programme about Louise Bennett's time in London. Yvonne Brewster presented it, which was highly appropriate because the Jamaican-born Mrs Brewster is herself a distinguished theatre director.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=110 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Diane Abbott </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In 1945, Miss Lou obtained a British Council scholarship to become the first black woman to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), which was Britain's leading drama school. This was a remarkable achievement. It is an even more impressive accomplishment when you learn that she did part of her audition in Jamaican dialect, because this was at a time when even white drama students who had regional accents could not get into the exclusive RADA.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It speaks volumes about Miss Lou's charm and talent that she was able to win over the notoriously grand and snobbish people who ran the drama school whilst speaking anything other than the King's English.<P class=StoryText align=justify>If Miss Lou experienced racism at RADA she never spoke about it. Yet, she must have. Over 10 years later, Yvonne Brewster came to London to study drama and she has written in her autobiography about the racism she met; not least from the woman who ran her drama school and who only accepted her there on sufferance, warning her that she would never work in Britain because she was black.<P class=StoryText align=justify>You also wonder what kind of reception Miss Lou might have got from the Caribbean community in London. Miss Lou is a national icon now, but at the time, her use of patois must have seemed a little embarrassing to some of the Caribbean students desperately trying to be accepted by the British as serious intellectuals.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Miss Lou herself never talked about her time in London in anything other than warm terms. In fact, she wrote one of her best poems about it "Jamaican people colonisin' Englan' in reverse.."<P class=StoryText align=justify>She never completed her studies at RADA, as she was offered a job at the BBC. However, you can only speculate as to whether part of the reason she left drama school was that once she got to London it dawned on her that any chance of a career in mainstream British theatre was minimal.<P class=StoryText align=justify>On the recent radio programme they explained how Miss Lou came to the attention of the BBC. Soon after she came to London, she took part in a 1945 Christmas Day broadcast by the BBC Caribbean Service.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Miss Lou sent greetings to Jamaica in patois. Upper-class Jamaicans may have looked down on patois at the time, but the manager of the BBC Caribbean Service was so impressed that he offered her a contract as a resident artist on a programme called Caribbean Carnival.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It was a 30-minute programme, which was broadcast before a live audience (composed mostly of Caribbean residents in London). Every week Miss Lou wrote and read out a topical poem. She also appeared on the long-running radio series Caribbean Voices together with distinguished writers like George Lamming, V S Naipaul and Andrew Salkey.<P class=StoryText align=justify>For the next few years, she mixed and mingled with the tiny community of Caribbean