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FACETS
 
A contemporary text/song/film collage performance
based on the life of American writer/artist/dancer/wife Zelda
Fitzgerald (1900-1948)
Prologue:
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is best known
as the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the quintessential American
novelist of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.
Born in 1900 in Montgomery, Alabama, the youngest of six children,
she was raised as a free-spirited, imaginative and thoroughly spoiled
little girl. By the age of 18, when she met F. Scott Fitzgerald
at one of the many parties she attended, she embodied the Southern
Belle. Following a stormy courtship of nearly two years, Zelda married
Scott in New York in 1920 after the publication of his first novel,
This side of Paradise. Their only daughter was born a year later
in 1921.
At Scott’s side, Zelda became the toast of two continents, a model
for the ocean-crossing Flapper of the day. Her life provided Scott
with writing material for his fiction; he frequently quoted her
and her letters directly using her words as the voice for several
of his female characters.
In 1928, Zelda decided to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming
a ballerina and began taking lessons in Paris. After three years
of intense work (8 hours a day) which damaged her health, she had
her first mental breakdown. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia
and would reside in and out of hospitals until her death in a fire
accident in 1948.
The story:
Much has been told about Zelda’s life, but her full story, particularly
her own artistic ambitions and expressions, is not widely known.
After all, at her birth, Zelda entered a world that was just starting
to consider the possibility that women might have the right to be
independent citizens capable of making their own decisions.
Facets presents the portrait of a spoiled,
wilful and extraordinary woman of exceptional energy and ability.
The piece particularly illustrates her lifelong struggle to create
her own artistic identity, first as a dancer, then as a writer (Zelda
was fairly prolific and wrote 1 novel, 11 short stories and 12 articles)
and finally as a painter. It explores Zelda’s unique vision, experienced
in a multi faceted world between reality and fantasy, past and present,
sanity and madness.
Read an extract from the play
Credits:
Text
based on Zelda Fitzgerald’s writings adapted by Orange, with additional writing by Véronique 'Orange' Joly
Songs by Véronique 'Orange' Joly and Daniel Biro
Film by Daniel
Biro, showreels courtesy of the Aleksander family
Live guitar soundscapes by Rob
Palmer (additional samples from original ‘20’s music and
from the film The Great Gatsby, directed by Jack Clayton (1974)
and based on the novel by F.Scott Fitzgerald (1925))
Directed by Stephen
Farrier
Set & Costumes by Véronique 'Orange' Joly
Performed at:
- Battersea Arts Centre, Wandsworth Arts Festival, London, 2001
Should you share an interest in Zelda Fitzgerald and the Roaring Twenties, and wish to exchange or discuss some information, please e-mail L'Orange at info@orangegardens.com.
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