Sometime last year someone was looking for a vintage themed 1940’s fire performance and I got the idea that. it would be a hell of a lot of fun to create a fire show based on the iconic Rosie the riveter character from the WW2 era and make it a fireshow or street entertainment.
I got to launch her this year as part of the Newcastle fringe festival, in a fantastic all female line up created by helen hopcraft called “mad bitches inc” – a perfect fit if you ask me.
Who is Rosie the riveter anyhow ?
She’s an iconic figure from ww2 that was used in propaganda to get women into heavy industries. She’s fascinating in her own right but has always represented a “we can do it ” attitude to me, a bravery and a challenge to male-dominated roles. Those dames were resilient, resourceful, and cheeky.
Read about Rosie (wikipedia)
Rosie is due to tour, there’s shows booked in. Maitland, dubbo and wollongong .Want Rosie to come to your town? just give me some information about your event and we will see if
“We can do it”
Family Herstorys Unburied
Though rosie is fascinating all by herself I also know for a fact that my nanna – Jean Robinson. ( my grandmother’s mother ) worked at the De Havilland Airplane factory in Sydney that era. My nanna was an amazing woman – at times a single mother, an entrepreneur ( she ran her own dressmaking business in Sydney at one point ).
“she’s a little prairie flower -she’s as wild as wild could be”.
She was also a “bit wild “- she drank like a fish and would at family gatherings sing:
Talking with my mum and my grandmother
(yes she’s still alive – we are made of tough stuff indeed) I unearthed some facts I had not known about my nanna – it was the war so supplies were hard to come by nanna “recycled” various. things she got in the factory into more useful objects like :
- bolts and a penny they turned into a lighter for cigarettes
- metal she made an ice pick for so she could drink
- the airplane plans were printed on cotton lawn as paper was scarce she made those into camisoles and bras.
