Photos: ©ShaunArmstrong.com
Director: Harriet Hardie
Costume Designer: Lauren Connolly
Sound Designer: Chris Warner
Composer: Rebecca Applin
Choreography by Katie Green
Performers: Ben Miles, Beverley Purkiss-Dean, Anna Soden, Harriet Forgan, Claire MacNeill, Sara-Jayne Berrill, Suha Al-Khayyat
Full House Theatre

The Power of Three is an interactive, promenade performance experience for children as they visit Bedford’s three different museums:  The Higgins Museum which unites on one site three previous cultural venues: Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford Museum and Bedford Gallery. The buildings themselves date back 200 years and have their own rich history of occupation and use, even before they became used for their more recent cultural past.

The Panacea Museum which tells the story of the Panacea Society – a religious community formed in the early twentieth century.  Set in ‘Castleside’, a beautiful Victorian house that was part of the community’s headquarters, our performance retold the story of the Panacea Society and other similar religious groups to children in a promenade performance.

The John Bunyan Museum which tells the story of the Bedford preacher whose writings transformed literature.  The Pilgrim’s Progress caused him to be imprisoned for his beliefs.  Now, over 350 years later, his distant relation and DJ, Johnny B, is here to tell us all about his ancestor and why he was so important, exploring his experiences and his story.

As costume designer, I sourced costumes for 3 futuristic, modern guides with powers that led the students around the 3 museums in separate groups.  These costumes each linked to each other and to spaces within the three museums.  DJ Johnny B was from the 90’s clubbing era, bright, loud and colourful to stand out in the museum.
I then designed 3 costumes from the early 1900s for the Panacea museum where the women lived and worked, which caused them to stick to the same fashions, as if they were ‘stuck in time’.