Talawa Theatre Company announces cast for 40th anniversary showcase at Hackney Empire
Talawa Theatre Company, the UK's leading Black British theatre company, has announced the cast for Talawa Iconic — a one-night showcase marking its 40th anniversary at Hackney Empire on 13 October 2026.
The event opens with a black carpet at 6pm, followed by the showcase at 7pm. Olivier Award-nominated actor and Hackney Empire trustee Josette Bushell-Mingo will open the evening with a speech. Music will be performed by the Chineke! Quartet, the string ensemble drawn from the Chineke! Orchestra, Britain's first majority-Black and ethnically diverse professional orchestra.
The programme spans four decades of Talawa productions, with excerpts from ten plays dating from 1986 to 2026. Doña Croll reprises the role of Cleopatra from Antony & Cleopatra — a part she first played in 1991, when Talawa's co-founder Yvonne Brewster directed her as the first Black actor to play Cleopatra professionally on the British stage. Tameka Empson and longtime Talawa performer Ben Thomas perform an excerpt from The Importance of Being Earnest, Talawa's 1989 production.
Theresa Ikoko performs a section from her play Girls, which won the Alfred Fagon Award — the prize recognising work by Black British playwrights — after Talawa developed it through Talawa Firsts, the company's new-writing programme. David Webber, an original cast member, reunites with Laurence Ubong Williams for an excerpt from A Place for We. Lifford Shillingford, returning from the 2025 cast, performs a section of Play On!
Rounding out the programme are excerpts from The Black Jacobins (1986), King Lear (2015), Run It Back (2019), Recognition (2023) and Fragments of Us (2026).
Talawa was founded in 1986 by Yvonne Brewster, Mona Hammond, Carmen Munroe and Inigo Espejel. The company has been a national portfolio organisation of Arts Council England — meaning it receives regular public funding as part of the council's core funding list — and is now under the artistic direction of Michael Buffong. Over four decades it has produced and co-produced work across the subsidised and commercial sectors, nurturing writers and performers who have gone on to shape British theatre more broadly.
Tickets are priced at £40, with £20 tickets available for under-25s and for residents of Hackney and Croydon. They are on sale through talawa.com and hackneyempire.co.uk. WhatsOnStage
For a company that has spent 40 years putting Black British stories on British stages, the Hackney Empire night pulls those threads together in one room — performers returning to roles they originated, a string quartet providing the music, and a borough ticket price that keeps locals in the audience.
