“We are truth speakers, we of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt.”
We met over Twelfth Night and The Lord of the Rings, which is a damn fine way to begin.
This was back in 2003, two-thirds of the way through the release of the trilogy, as we awaited the big screen adaptation of The Return of the King.
She was rehearsing Olivia, I Orsino, while I performed Oberon/Theseus in Chicago, fresh off of playing Mercutio in Utah Shakespearean Festival’s winter tour and an assortment of supporting roles at American Player’s Theater the previous summer, all the while practicing my best Gollum croak, totally obsessed with the film adaptations. So I knew we were off to a good start when this conversation happened at an early rehearsal:
“What are you reading?”
“Return of the King.”
“Good book. . . . I loved the scene they put in The Two Towers film where Elrond tells Arwen what will happen if she and Aragorn are together.”
“No! He’s wrong! It says here in the appendix to The Return of the King…” (she flips through the book to find the quote) “‘We are not bound to the circles of this world…’”
I asked her if she wanted to go to the Bristol Renaissance Faire; we went in costumes. I asked her if she liked Dungeons & Dragons, and she said she wasn’t really into that stuff; I told her about the world I’d been building, and the next day at rehearsal she gave me a handwritten three-page (front and back) character description, and then we played for ten years. Then she gave me the novel she’d written about the Lord of the Rings character she’d created—Ilanir, sister of Boromir and Faramir—and I loved it. We watched all of Blackadder. And by that time I suppose we were dating.
For the Portraits from a Distant Era series, Elizabeth portrayed her character Ilanir in the White Tree of Gondor doublet she had commissioned from Journeyman Leather, a company founded by Andrew and Jodi Weibel, two of my old performing parters from my Renaissance faire days. Initially we had thought to feature the tree design more prominently, but the pose was too different in style from the rest of the series, and the design was too prominent and would not have made for a great portrait. For this edition of the image, I pulled on the reins of my 2019 editing, making it a little less contrasty and a tad less warm, and I cleaned up the eyes.
So this is an anniversary post. For the Portraits from a Distant Era series, photographed this week in 2019, as well as for us, going back to 2003. It’s no coincidence that Elizabeth is a subject in virtually every Distant Era series, as well as the main assistant and cat-and-talent wrangler on every shoot. I don’t have adequate words to express how utterly fantastic she is as a model, assistant, cat mom, and partner, and lacking words, I quote the best:
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene 1
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