Mona Hammond(1931-2022)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mona Hammond was born Mavis Chin to a Chinese father and Jamaican
mother. She came to Britain in 1959 on a scholarship to work with an
architects firm but was soon involved in black theatre productions with
contemporaries such as Lloyd and Barry Reckord and Charles Hyatt, under
the name Mona Chin. In 1959 she won a scholarship to RADA. Initially
known as a stage actress - she played Lady Macbeth in an all-black
version of the Shakespeare play at London's Roundhouse in 1970 - she
went to co-found the Talawa Theatre Group with fellow actresses Yvonne
Brewster and Carmen Munroe. The group performs black versions of plays
written for whites as well as staging original Afro-Caribbean
productions. In 2005 she was awarded an O.B.E. for services to drama.
Having played in the TV soap 'Eastenders' for some years she has a
recurring occasional role as a white vicar's outspoken ex-mother-in-law
in radio soap 'The Archers.'
