Mustapha Matura | |
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Born | Noel Mathura 17 December 1939 Trinidad and Tobago |
Occupation | Playwright |
Language | English |
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."
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).