The Fiji Mermaid, with Lynne Thomas
The Fiji Mermaid is a short piece created with Lynne Thomas commissioned by the Booth Museum, Brighton in 2015. It was a ten minute piece with live music, puppetry and poetry.
In 2015, The Booth Museum commissioned a piece for their late night event, inspired by an object in their collection. We chose the mysterious “Feejee Mermaid” - an object that had always appealed to my macabre imagination. The Feejee Mermaid was a Victorian hoax - a strange object exhibited by P.T. Barnum in 1842, presented as a real mermaid, caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. In reality, this little, sinister-looking siren was a composition of the head and torso of a monkey and the tail half of a fish.
In this performance piece, Lynne Thomas, Bill the monkey and myself present the audience with proof that mermaids really do exist. With live music, puppetry and rhyme, we tell the tragic tale of the beautiful Fiji Mermaid, a curiosity famously exhibited by P.T. Barnum in the 1800s.
Performed at the Booth Museum, Brighton, and Brighton Museum in Autumn 2014, and Spring 2015.
Written by Daisy Jordan and Lynne Thomas. Puppetry by Daisy Jordan. Music written and performed by Lynne Thomas.
To learn more about the object that inspired this show, I’ve written a blog post about feejee mermaids, and mermaid folklore more generally here.
In memory of my dear friend and collaborator Lynne, who passed away in 2023.