| Andrea Dunbar | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22 May 1961 Bradford, England |
| Died | 20 December 1990 (aged 29) Bradford |
| Occupation | playwright |
| Literary movement | realism |
Andrea Dunbar (22 May 1961 - 20 December 1990) was a British playwright best known for Rita, Sue and Bob Too, an autobiographical drama about the sexual adventures of teenage girls living in a run-down part of Bradford, Yorkshire. Shelagh Delaney described Dunbar as "a genius straight from the slums".[1]
Contents |
Dunbar grew up on Brafferton Arbor on the Buttershaw council estate in Bradford[2] with seven brothers and sisters. Both her parents had worked in the textile industry.[3] Dunbar attended Buttershaw Comprehensive School (now Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College).
Dunbar began her first play The Arbor in 1977 at the age of 15, writing it as a classroom assignment for CSE English. Encouraged by her teacher, she was helped to develop the play to performance standard.[4] It was premiered in 1980 at London's Royal Court Theatre, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. It won the Young Writers' Festival, and was later extended and performed in New York.[5] The play described the experiences of a pregnant teenager with an abusive drunken father. On 26 March 1980, she was featured on the BBC's Arena arts documentary programme.
Dunbar was quickly commissioned to write a follow-up work, creating Rita, Sue and Bob Too, first performed in 1982. The play explored similar themes to The Arbor, in this case depicting the lives of two teenage girls who are both having an affair with the same married man. Dunbar's third play, Shirley (1986), placed greater emphasis on the central character.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too was adapted for the cinema and was filmed in 1986 by Alan Clarke. The film created considerable controversy on the Buttershaw estate because of its negative portrayal of the area. She was threatened by several residents, but nevertheless stayed living on the estate.
Andrea Dunbar first became pregnant at age 15, but the baby was stillborn at 6 months.[6] She later had three children by three different fathers. The first, Lorraine, was born in 1979 to an Asian father. A year later, in 1980, Lisa was born, both while Andrea was still a teenager.[7]
As a single mother, Dunbar spent 18 months in a refuge for battered women and became an increasingly heavy drinker. In 1990 she died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29 after becoming ill in the Beacon pub on Reevy Road. In 2007 her eldest daughter Lorraine, a heroin addict at the time, was convicted of manslaughter for causing the death of her child by gross neglect after the child ingested methadone.[8][9][10]
In 2000, Dunbar's life and her surroundings were revisited in the play A State Affair by Robin Soans.[11]
A film entitled The Arbor, directed by Clio Barnard, was released in 2010 about her life. The film uses actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar and her family, and concentrates on the strained relationship between Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine.[2] The film was nominated for a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Director, and won the Sutherland Trophy, at the 2010 London Film Festival Awards.