An artist's practice

Happy Birthday Violet Rose was our 1990 effort. It came complete with an old people’s home, a two-storey teenage party, a larger than life cake with lit candles, a five metre high birthday card and a gothic shrine on wheels. The gorgeous Donna Wijngaart (above centre and below right) created much of the design concept for this performance, in particular, the costume design.

Donna also choreographed the ‘box dancers’ (above left) with unique movement motifs that referenced the birthday presents which made up the set. We had about 8 versions of Violet Rose at different ages. Each Violet was prepared to dye her hair red for the performances. Such commitment! Violet’s children (above centre) were costumed in the most amazing hand dyed (marbled) dresses and waistcoats. Donna virtually did all this single-handedly. Oh, and she choreographed their dance as well.

I don’t have any good photos from some of the earlier Rock Eisteddfods we did so have taken some screen grabs from a pretty dodgy quality DVD. I think you still get the gist of the performance. This one was called ‘A hellish daydream’ (1989) and featured a sped-up Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and an opening scene in black and white which turned into colour. Daniel Parkinson made the great glowing devil head.

It was our first foray into the use of scaffolding and from this moment our sets got bigger and bigger until we stopped at five metres high a few years later. This performance was really the beginning of a power production team of students who worked with me for years. Each performance was so different, depending on the interests and expertise of the students working on it.

You can also see the beginnings of the extremes of make up and hair that became a bit of a Cromer statement. This becomes more obvious as we move into the 90s.