Barbara Assoon (1929 – 14 April 2020) was a Trinidad and Tobago actress, journalist, and broadcaster.
Barbara Assoon was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The daughter of a French-Chinese acrobat,[1] she began her acting career in the mid-1940s. In 1948, she had a role in a production of Peter Ustinov's play The Indifferent Shepherd, acting in the first of many productions with Errol John.[1] In the following year, Assoon received a scholarship to study acting in England, choosing the Bristol Old Vic school, and appearing as Tituba in the first performance of Arthur Miller's The Crucible there on 9 November 1954.[2][3] Assoon spent the next 19 years in Britain and appeared in many radio, television and stage productions.[2][4][3] She performed in many radio soap operas as well as live TV dramas during the 1950s.[2] In 1957, Assoon made her Trinidadian radio debut in The Edwards Family, a soap opera.[1]
In 1958, she played Rosa in Errol John's play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Royal Court Theatre.[5] She reprised her role in The Crucible for British television appearance, in a production also featuring Sean Connery.[1] She also played one of the leads in Fable (1965), an episode of The Wednesday Play by John Hopkins, an inversion of South African apartheid.[6] Hopkins' play reunited her with Thomas Baptiste; the two actors had played the first Black couple to appear in Coronation Street in 1963.[7][8]
In 1966, her English husband died; he was an accountant, the couple had a son. Assoon returned to Trinidad with her son in 1968 working with Radio Trinidad as a radio presenter especially on its programme intended for women. Her last appearance in a stage play was in 1990, in Derek Walcott's Remembrance, appearing with Norman Beaton.[1] After her retirement, she remained active in training the next generation of journalists.[9]
She died, aged 91, in Westshore Hospital, Cocorite, Port of Spain.[10]