LIBERTINE KING features two elements common to a lot of the character-images I've created: a false beard and a costume that leaves my chest exposed. (See FAQs for a discussion of the Chameleon's exhibitionist side.) In this case, the costume was the main impetus for the character. I spent many hours on it, relying more on trial and error and intuition than a pattern. The material is a pair of brocade drapes I picked up at a thrift shop. (Thrift shop drapes are the best source of large volume luxury fabric at rock-bottom prices -- I call it Scarlett O'Hara costuming.)
Perhaps I picked this style of costume because I remembered how much I enjoyed wearing a renaissance doublet and pantaloons when I was in a production of The Merchant of Venice in college. The period offered a natural excuse to sport a crepe-hair beard creation. The decision to give him pattern baldness as the second stage in shaving back my head came fairly late in the process, more an issue of where to fit him in the lineup of the week than anything, but the partial baldness seemed to suit the sexiness and maturity that I imagined for the character. (Yes, I think pattern baldness is sexy.)
I imagined this character to be amorally sexual; one who would claim and possess others voraciously -- his operatic parallel would be the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. I did feel masterful in this guise; it gave me a visceral charge to be this person. Yet it seems that the character emerged as a little more humorous, warm, benign, dissipated, risible than I had imagined him.
A couple of people have told me that he looks like my significant other (a.k.a. Chameleon's Consort), or that they actually thought he was the Consort. I suppose that 's what comes of embodying qualities I find attractive in a partner.
Images created: August 27, 1997
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