Deco Diva

In Deco Diva Kara recreated the Polish artist, Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), the glamorous and decadent Art Deco legend of 1930’s Paris. Kara interspersed songs in Polish, French and Russian to capture this painter’s colourful history. Kara copied nightly Tamara’s beautiful lover in ‘Rafaela Sur Fond Vert’. Audiences were particularly pleased to be able to buy the paintings after the show each night. The play opened at the Leith Gallery on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of 1998.

The show was performed at the Mill Studio, Guildford, Bath Festival at Philips Auction House, Bath Royal Crescent Hotel, Hampstead and Highgate Festival, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Glasgow Art Club, The Royal Academy, the Scottish Royal Academy, Jermyn St Theatre and the Jewish Cultural Centre in Krakow, Poland. In April 2005 Kara was invited to take ‘Deco Diva’ to New York and enjoyed a three week run off Broadway at the new 59E59 Theater complex. (see reviews).

DECO DIVA, the text of Kara Wilson’s one woman show on the life of Tamara de Lempicka, was published in Spring 2005.

Kara was commissioned by Barry Humphries, a Lempicka collector, to paint Dame Edna Everage in Tamara’s Art Deco style. The paintings decorated the set of his ITV chat show.