New acquisition on pioneering Black British playwright announced
We’re delighted to have acquired the archive of Mustapha Matura (1939–2019), one of the first Black British-based playwrights to have a play staged in London’s West End.
We’re delighted to have acquired the archive of Mustapha Matura (1939–2019), one of the first Black British-based playwrights to have a play staged in London’s West End.
The collection includes 18 boxes of papers, two hard drives and 176 floppy disks containing drafts of Matura’s plays, unpublished scripts, poetry and autobiographical material.
Born Noel Mathura in Trinidad in 1939, Matura moved to Britain in 1962, and when his play Play Mas moved to the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road in 1974, he became one of the first British-based dramatists of colour to see his work performed in a major commercial London theatre.
Matura later co-founded the Black Theatre Co-operative in 1978, helping to shape Black British theatre and television, including the groundbreaking sitcom No Problem which ran for two series on Channel 4.
Highlights of the archive include:
Helen Melody, Lead Curator of Contemporary Literary and Creative Archives, said: ‘We are delighted to have acquired Mustapha Matura’s archive, which will be a significant addition to our Caribbean diasporic collections.
‘Matura was a major figure in post-war British theatre with success in the UK and internationally. The archive is a particularly rich resource for textual study of Matura’s plays as it contains successive drafts, which allow a real insight into his creative process.’
The Mustapha Matura archive will be available for researchers to explore after it has been catalogued.