Mavis Chin got here to England from Jamaica to take up performing. In these far off days there was no chance of incomes a residing performing in her homeland so she studied shorthand and typewriting, saved each penny and at last arrived in England with the intention of happening the stage.
She did. Throughout the lengthy course of her profession from a walk-on in The World of Suzie Wong to starring with Dame Edith Evans within the play The Adventures of the Black Lady in her Seek for God in 1968, one may by no means second guess her revelatory takes on the characters she performed.
She modified her names: Mavis grew to become Mona, Chin grew to become Hammond. These adjustments happened early in her stage profession as a technique of avoiding stereotypical casting. Mona Hammond had a uncommon expertise. Her consideration to element was phenomenal. As Woman Bracknell in The Significance of Being Earnest, in 1989, she spent hours simply getting the twist within the wrist proper for her fan.
She dug so deeply into the characters she performed that she grew to become influenced by them in her each day life. Working over a lifetime with this exceptional actor was revelatory, inspiring, and as many with whom she labored discovered, difficult. One night time I stood in the back of the auditorium checking on our King Lear manufacturing in 1994. When she got here on I fairly forgot it was Mona and have become caught up in her twin persona portrayal of Shakespeare’s Idiot. I used to be shaken to the core to not have recognised my pal within the function.
Mona was one of many founder members of Talawa theatre firm in 1986. She was concerned proper from the beginning and was decided for it to succeed. She acted in lots of the first productions of the corporate. This was her means of hitching her colors to the mast. There was her groundbreaking Woman Bracknell, however her slave girl in our second play, An Echo within the Bone (1986), was one thing that stays with you. The BBC “discovered” her in King Lear and whisked her away to EastEnders however that’s life.
Mona was good at giving items. She spent hours in junk retailers, upmarket emporiums, all over the place to seek out the right “little one thing” to suit the event. She discovered small, out of the way in which Chinese language eating places to cover away from prying eyes and commit herself to the matter of consuming, which she did with nice relish but nonetheless staying as skinny as a rake.
Mona was a pal, a colleague and a most trustworthy critic. Stroll good woman.
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