Julius Caesar

It had been quite a few years since I sat through Julius Caesar and so watching the BBC version to research this project, I was pleasantly surprised every few minutes when some famous line or fragment of memory was dislodged – ‘Et tu, Brute?’ the Feast of Lupercal, ‘Brutus is an honourable man’ – All of these were pleasant surprises, but I actually laughed out loud the first time anyone mentioned the Ides of March. ‘Oh yeah! This one has the Ides of March in it!’ The actor playing Caesar had a fake looking circlet of golden laurels girding his brow, so I decided to go with that image and, of course, the Ides of March. Then I experimented with materials. Back in theatre school I’d been assigned to make props for a show and discovered that if you stir instant coffee into white glue, it mixes shiny, black and wet, but sets hard, clean and dry. For this one, I tipped a few drops of red food colouring into white glue and mixed it well. Even though the wet blend is something vaguely pink, the solution dries much darker, rendering a perfect crimson drop, seemingly about to fall from the tip of the golden leaf – of course it’s really hard, dry, and completely stable. Es tu, Glue?