Paris People

I have found Paris to be a city full of surprises and creativity. Below are just some of the people and characters who I feel have helped to build its romantic reputation.

 

Josephine Baker

There were two big loves in Josephine Baker's life; 'my country and Paris'. Originally from America, she made her name performing exotic dance routines in the Folies Bergere. She spied for the allies during World War Two, was prominant in the Civil Rights movement after the war and adopted twelve children from all over the world. I think she was an extraordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life.

Brigitte Bardot

I drew a lot of pictures of Brigitte Bardot when I was a teenager. She was just so beautiful and also very French and Parisian.

Jim Morrison

The Doors are mostly associated with West Coast USA; California and Los Angeles in particular. However Jim Morrison died in Paris and is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetary with many notable European creatives such as Oscar Wilde, Theodore Gericault and Frederic Chopin.

Amelie

Amelie is one of my favourite films. The Parisians in this film are quite unglamourous and unsophisticated. I love the attention to detail and the real pleasure in small things taken by Amelie and the young man she falls in love with.

 

Christine from Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera is a powerful story that has been told many times on stage and screen. Our way in to the strange world under the Paris Opera house is Christine Daae, the obsessive love of the deformed and masked 'opera ghost'.

Satine from Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge is a brilliant exhuberant musical celebrating truth, beauty, freedom and love. Nicole Kidman's portrayal of the showgirl Satine is, I feel, both sensitive and mesmerizing.

Madeleine

I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe after listening to the BBC radio drama production of 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in the 1980s. Although Poe's stories were written nearly two hundred years ago I still find them fresh and meaningful, written in a first person narrative that is very relatable, even when we are in the mind of a murderer. I was working on Madeleine, my musical based on the Fall of the House of Usher, while visiting my boyfriend in Ramsgate and the house I was thinking of was Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House' in Broadstairs. I have attempted to get it performed in the past; at the moment it exists as an eight minute musical on YouTube.

This is my small collection of Poe memorabilia that I really enjoy reading, watching and listening to, including an edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination that was published over one hundred years ago.

Green Dreamer

In the early 1990s I spent some time working on ideas for musicals. the one I spent the most time on was 'Madeleine' which was based on 'The Fall of the House of Usher' by Edgar Allan Poe. I also spent a lot of time working on 'Green Dreamer' which is an environmental musical set in the fictional town of Shadowcliff. Shdowcliff is inspired by the seaside town of Ramsgate, Kent. I got to know Ramsgate really well in the 1990s as I used to visit my boyfriend there practically every weekend.