Nanny of the Maroons
- Apr 10
- 1 min read
Nanny of the Maroons was a gorgeous project to work on — a new play with music about one of Jamaica’s most iconic female leaders. I wanted to capture a sense of Nanny being part of the landscape, but also shaping it — almost as if she’s controlling both the world around her and the story being told.
Below are the two favourite concepts.
The first uses Nanny’s head wrap as a way of telling the story, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, with small battle scenes playing out across it. It could have worked either as an illustration or a photographic piece, but I quite like the illustration (which was only ever done roughly as you see below, with stick people!).
The final concept we went with was this one — Nanny’s headwrap and clothing transform into the mountainous landscape around her, with sections of the fabric catching fire to hint at the conflict.
We shot it at Holborn Studios with fantastic photographer Sebastian Nevols. We shot it in several different layers so that I could piece it together (and so that we could keep the actress away from the fire!) Here's a video of how we made it (video put together by Belgrade Theatre):
And here's the finished artwork:
