‘Yuh tallawah – that means you’re small but you’re strong’ … Yvonne Brewster directing in 1991. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith ‘Yuh tallawah – that means you’re small but you’re strong’ … Yvonne Brewster directing in 1991. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith The co-founder of Talawa, Britain’s longest-running black theatre company, is a woman of many firsts, celebrated in a new book Tue 2 Mar 2021 06.01 EST Last modified on Wed 3 Mar 2021 04.58 EST “Fantastic! Because all of us lickkle, and all of us tallawah, and all of us are women,” said Jamaican actor Mona Hammond when Yvonne Brewster suggested a name for her theatre company. Hammond, who had helped found the company, wanted a Jamaican name. Brewster consulted a dictionary on the English spoken in Jamaica, reading the book backwards. “‘Zuzuwapp.’ Oh, that sounds nice. No, that’s giving too much ‘ethnicity’ to the company,” she recalls. “‘Tallawah.’ Sure – my mother always used to say to me, ‘Yuh lickkle yuh know but yuh tallawah – that means you’re small but you’re strong.” Brewster spelled it “Talawa” so the three As would allow for more graphic design play. And Talawa it became.