FIVE MINUTE CALL

My upcoming curated studio sessions are more than just photographs, they’re a cinematic love letter to the showgirls, singers, actors, burlesque icons, drag legends, circus daredevils, and cabaret stars who shaped history.

Backstage during a residency in Geneva, 2014

This one comes truly from the heart, from over three decades of a life spent backstage. From my years of not quite being able to let go of my many vintage costume treasures, feathers, and favourite shiny things.

Now, it is finally time to bring all these things together to create the ultimate backstage dressing room, the one you’ve seen in movies, the one you’ve visited in your dreams, skin lit by glowing lights, setting powder dusting your cheeks and filling the air. The smell of hairspray, the twinkle of your jewellery carefully placed on the dresser.

Later this summer the Studio DeLite will be transformed into an immersive backstage dressing room, ready for you to indulge your inner diva in.

These photoshoot sessions are about storytelling - about immortalising your legacy. But your magic is more than skin deep, more than the swipe of red on your lips - the mirror knows that, and so do you.

Backstage at Voodoo Deluxe, Milan, by Marco Kasco, 2016

Left to right: Me, Sara Constantini, ? & Kitty Bang Bang

Where the transformation happens

The dressing room has always been a place of quiet enchantment in our cultural imagination — part ritual, part sanctuary, the forbidden place known only to those who live a life of theatre.

Cinema has long understood this magic. From the cracked mirrors and broken dreams of All About Eve to the fevered self-destruction of Black Swan, filmmakers have returned to the dressing room again and again as the place where truth surfaces — the vulnerable moments, where masks slip, and souls are quietly undone or remade. It is where transformation happens, but not the kind that can be seen from the stalls.

Before the costume, before the character, before the lights, there is something far more sacred: a person alone with their reflection, every facet of themselves shimmering back in the glass. A liminal space. A threshold between worlds. The place where the self you carry through ordinary life and the luminous version you are about to conjure exist, briefly and breathlessly, side by side — suspended in the moment before the magic begins. It is a space where real conversations live — whispered truths, life news, in-jokes and camaraderie.

When I remember to, I love throwing my instax camera in my show bag to capture a few physical keepsakes from my adventures.

A quiet prayer to the Theatre gods

Backstage dressing rooms — real ones — aren't always glamorous. Any performing artist knows this. If you’re lucky, there’s a mirror & plenty of space to warm up. But they can occasionally be too cold, too hot, too crowded, starkly lit and devoid of enough hanging space for costumes. So I'll bend reality a little here with this next studio set. No strip lights, no breeze block walls. I promise.

Long before I was treading the boards in feathers and pasties, my first dressing room, my first taste of backstage, was my local church — somewhat symbolic, I suppose. A string of amateur pantomimes each Christmas peppers my earliest memories. Musty handmade costumes pulled out from under the stage each year — fairies, clowns and dames. The same battered box of expired makeup, the eyeshadow always either muddy brown or electric blue.

Although I don’t hold any conventional religious beliefs, I suppose the dressing room is as close as I’ll get to a place of worship. Worshiping the ghosts of those who came before me (whether they’re still living or not), a quiet prayer to theatre gods for one more good performance.

Backstage at the church panto in the mid 90’s vs backstage last week at my regular haunt, The Phoenix Arts Club in Soho.

Greasepaint & Grief

Through this set, I'm not just telling my story — I'm telling the story of every performing artist who has ever sat down in a dressing room and faced themselves in the mirror. Every facet of themselves reflecting back.

On the bad days, painting away the doubts, the fears & the worries. On the good days, the dressing room becomes a place of celebration — milestones whispered in confidence with co-stars, engagements, marriages, new costumes worn for the first time, the quiet joys that never make it to the stage.

I think of the morning I boarded the Eurostar, heading to headline a festival in France, when I received the news that a good friend had unexpectedly passed away. A friend that had been with me from the very beginning of my Burlesque journey. The grief I carried into the wings that night, quietly painted over in the dressing room, is something I will never forget. It's a sacrifice so many of us make, silently and without recognition — that no matter what is unravelling in our lives, we give our audiences only our most polished, sparkling, carefully crafted selves.

The backstage dressing room holds space for all of it. It is the sacred portal between our everyday lives and our glittering moments under the lights. The audience never sees those private storms — but the dressing room mirror does.

Countless venues, thousands of miles traveled - too many to count. But how well will our social media era snaps age?

The Legacy We Leave Behind

There is something irresistible about old photographs of show folk — shot on film, preserved in time, stolen from the inner sanctum of showbiz. Images of performers crowded into dressing rooms of yesteryear have a magnetism that I find myself drawn to again and again. They make me think about our own visual footprint. The legacy we are leaving behind for future generations to discover.

I wonder, sometimes, how well the endless phone selfies and dimly lit backstage snapshots will age — or whether they will survive at all, with technology advancing at the pace it does. Pixelated, dated — and not in a charming way (although they will always bring joy).

So what can you expect from your Five Minute Call shoot session?

I wanted to create a dedicated space to capture the essence that quietly underpins the life of a performer. Backstage at a real show, time is never on your side. We steal the odd mirror selfie with our castmates between costume changes and count ourselves lucky if we can find a good light. But wouldn't it be something to have the luxury of time that pre-show never gives us? To be unhurried. To be truly captured.

Think cinema stills from your long-awaited biopic. The editorial they run after you've headlined the most coveted show in town. These are not the standard cutout promo shots every performer has — these are something rarer. The images you'll return to in years to come and see your full self looking back. A story told through mirrors and rails of costumes, through shadow and light and everything you've carried to get here.

Let the camera see what you see. These sessions are staged reality — and there is nothing quite like them.

Limited run shoot sessions available August 10th-16th 2026

Please note this set will not be repeated, book ahead to avoid disappointment

All images featured on this post are for illustrative purposes - the “Five Minute Call” set build will take place late July / early August.