And now to the REAL reason for my gallivanting….I’m not normally in the habit of skipping off to the UK every few months, but I just couldn’t miss out on our daughter’s 4th year Performance Costume parades in Edinburgh!
It’s difficult to explain without the complete narrative, but in brief, the (fantastical!) characters Clemmie chose to represent were based on figures who existed in C1840’s Colonial Sydney. Although she designed costumes for a dozen characters for this particular project, only three were to be made for the graduate performance. They are ‘The Ghost of a Frustrated Botanist’, ‘The White Devil’ and ‘Orphaned Child’. She collaborated with a brilliant Edinburgh based musician to make an evocative soundtrack entitled ‘Bronte’ (see link below) to accompany the performance, and the result was goose-bump making….(from a seat in Edinburgh University’s Playfair Library, you could almost smell the waves of the Pacific Ocean lapping the faraway shores of home……a distant time and place).
Off the page and into reality…..Sass & Baz – their portrayal of Clemmie’s characters was enchanting….
And Emma’s portrayal of the child was captivating…
From the tiniest fragment of an idea a year ago, a set of believable characters came into being. Through an enormous amount of research came the development of a storyline; through imagination came illustration, and then the exceptionally frustrating period of making! In the final performance, three sensational friends enabled the seed of an idea to become reality.
THANK YOU Sass, Baz & Emma – you were brilliant!
And VERY WELL DONE to our darling Clementine!
Congratulations to ALL the Performance Costume students at ECA …… what a fantastic collection of characters were presented. I wish you all bright futures ahead….
And last but not least, to CH for allowing Clemmie to visit Bronte House on a wet & wild winter’s day in Sydney last year….on that day, the hint of possibility took flight….
Listen to the performance soundtrack here… (Bronte, Dave Boyd)