‘The Amazing Technicolor Dream-Dress’ | 2022 | by Freeda Kingelin
Around the age of 10, I was singing in the school choir. One year our choir teacher decided that we would be practicing to perform the musical, ‘Joseph’s amazing technicolor dreamcoat’. I practiced the songs day and night, so I knew them by heart, and absolutely loved all the lyrics. I was so excited about a whole week of performances, a roadshow around & about Birmingham, England, where I lived and went to school.
The evening before the start of the roadshow, we were to do our first dress rehearsal performance for the kids and our parents at our own school. That day, I came home from school and realized I had gotten a rash all over my body. It was chickenpox.
There was no dress rehearsal for me. No roadshow. No whole week of performances. I was devastated and couldn’t believe how unlucky I was. My best friend would come by every night to update me on the show. I was so jealous.
That coat of many colours, it really got rubbed in my face, and like the brothers in Joseph’s story, who were so jealous they stripped him of his coat, I was so jealous and disappointed, I stopped singing in the school choir.
Now, tens of years later, I could still feel the energy of disappointment of not singing that musical.
So it was time to finally sing the musical I never got to sing, wear the coat I never got to wear, by painting it. Instead of Joseph in a dreamcoat, it is a woman in a dream-dress. It’s amazing, and technicolored, as it should be.
Finally I can let this musical be at peace within me.
Acrylics/mixed media on high quality Hahnemülle cotton rag paper (Paper Size 58X75cm)
- Subject Matter: Figurative
- Collections: Spiraliens