“The Life and Art of Francis Carrot"

Blog by Jacob Boehme

Week 1

30/06/2008 – 06/07/2008

An intense week of research, collating and collecting material/s. Just Peter Jago and I riding around town visiting material and millinery suppliers, meeting and talking with Elders of the trade and receiving one of the most condensed and concise lessons in fashion history I’m ever likely to experience.

The more time I spent with Pete, the more I realised we were embarking on a project that would be so rich and dense with detail and information…it was difficult to not get bogged down in the detail and to remember that this was theatre and that we could ‘make stuff up’.

But, the time spent with Peter, also made me realise we had access to a man’s life and work that perfectly imitated the premise of Francis Carrot…or was it the other way around? It was hard to differentiate between the 2 characters at times. It became almost hilarious comparing the similarities between the man I had invented and the man sitting opposite me in his lavishly ornate apartment. I couldn’t, at one stage, tell the two apart.

Pete sent me out on a swatch hunt one day and I returned to his apartment, where dinner and a tall glass of vodka awaited me. I passed with flying colours. For a layman, I had apparently chosen some of the most delicious (and expensive) materials we could use. Pete was impressed with his protégés choices and I gave myself a little pat on the back for getting it right.

How embarrassing would it have been if I had chosen any old tat we could have probably scored out of a Target frock?

We visited Pete’s workroom/studio, the trip ending up being the most informative in design and presentation for the piece. So, by the end of the week, I had arranged for Pete to pack up his tools and move them into the theatre for the week to come. There was something about the tools of the trade that appealed to me. I didn’t quite know why at the time, but they (his tools) seemed the most precious and prized of his possessions, it seemed important that we have them close by. Was this going to end up an object theatre piece with a puppeteer playing around a milliner’s table? Not sure, but I had developed a fascination with hat blocks, trays of tools and a love affair with crinoline.

Another decision was made that week. I had observed Pete’s fascination with Peacocks and in the search for a totem for Francis we landed on the lyrebird. Not so much a totem, but a muse.

Week 2

07/07/2008 – 11/07/2008

Finegan Kruckemeyer (our writer) landed in Melbourne, from Tassie on the Saturday and I had organised with Peter to host a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at his on the Sunday. We were joined by Jenny Ellis (puppeteer and maker) and had an absolutely nutty time of it, listening to Peter Jago wax lyrical about fashion and history and birds and hats. Jen and Fin were instantly fascinated and smitten, just as I had been.

Monday was spent with just Fin and I in the theatre. There was so much information I had to impart to Fin about the man I had invented so far. We spoke and wrote and talked some more and wrote some more, figuring out the little details and discoveries about this character that now had sprinkles of Peter Jago all over him. The character was becoming real it seemed. Fin just wanted to write Pete’s story, which we very well could do. It would’ve been easy. The man is a walking and living treasure of information and experiences. At the end of the day, we picked up Pete from his studio and loaded his tools and hats into my car and set up the theatre for the crowd to come.

Over the next 4 days, Jen and Pete got themselves busy making a lyrebird puppet. We all agreed that the lyrebird was a key feature about the man, the milliner. Especially after watching David Attenborough recordings on YouTube and marvelling at the noises the animal could make/imitate. It was a perfect metaphor for a character who looked anglo and could pass as such, but was hiding a little something extra underneath his skin. A perfect metaphor for a character, whose success depended not only on his remarkable creative talents, but also the ability to mimic the world around him and swim through high society circles and extraordinary situations that we were putting him in.

Margie Mackay (set design) walked into the theatre and took one look at the explosion of millinery goodies laid out over 2 tables and said “Well, there’s your set”. I agreed. It was all just too much…so much to play with on the tables. It was amazing how everything and everyone landed on the same page…pretty much all of the time. The addition of Conor Fox and Leonie Van Eyck (puppeteers and makers), rounded off our team. Tom Willis (lighting design) jumped on board and got straight into it like everyone else had. It was an extraordinary team to be working with.

Simple conversations, overheard by Fin, became magical poetry and prose…the man just churns it out. One idea became a new frenzy of building and design. An afternoon of giggles and dreaming somehow added to this crazy characters history. It became a project where anything could happen. Dreams could be as big as we wanted. We were working with theatre and millinery, we could be as camp as we wanted…and we were.

T'was so delightful to be as camp and crazy as we did in fact get. At times, I, as well as others, had questions about cultural protocols. We were, after all, making a piece about an Indigenous man. But, I didn’t want anyone to get stuck on this fact. This was a story about a man who inhabited a world of riches and silks, of travel and opportunity, a story about a man who denied his heritage and dreamed up a new one to create a better life for himself. Not so far from the truth. Stories of my own upbringing and history influenced Fran’s journey. Pete’s life added to the character immensely and the readiness of all in the room to accept and run with endless possibilities made the process and the result immensely rich and dense with detail. Absorbed in a world of Collins Street trade in the 1930’s, art deco, Erte, shadows and lyrebirds, fabric, feathers, hatpins and Indian lovers, we slapped on our campest hats and went to work.

Much of the forms we were exploring came directly from the world and working life of the milliner himself. The set design ended up being a crafted version of the mess on the millinery table, becoming a Tasmanian rainforest for one scene. We came to the conclusion that if we had enough supplies stored in boxes under the tables, we could strike the world on the table and create a new one for each new phase of Fran’s life and for each new hat he creates.

We ended the week with the beginning of Fran’s journey nutted out, a life of achievements and experiences we are yet to explore, and a fascinating world of history, fashion, millinery, politics and characters we are eager to find out more about.

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