'I'm glad mum's story is kept alive': Archive preserves legacy of first Edinburgh International Festival performer
Elizabeth Charters was the very first performer on stage at the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival performance in 1947
The personal scrapbooks of the first person to perform at the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) are being digitally preserved almost 80 years on.
Elizabeth Charters, who was lovingly known as ‘Bessie’ to her friends and family, made history with her role in the Glyndebourne Opera production of Macbeth, which opened the first ever edition of Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 at the King’s Theatre.
At the age of 22, ballet star Bessie played a witch in the production.
It was a non-speaking role but turned out to be fortuitous with her name etched forever into Edinburgh history as the first performer to step foot on an EIF stage.
Her daughter, Lucy Thomson, has now been working with Capital Theatre and the King’s Theatre to help digitise her mother’s personal scrapbooks and artefacts from her dancing days.
Lucy, 64, said: “If you think of the play, the witches are the first characters you see.
“I've just got this vision of my mother and two other dancers leaping onto stage first.
“I didn't think it was a particularly tall tale but after looking through her stuff, it all kind of pieces together. It's quite cool.”
Bessie was born in Kelso in 1925 but initially made the move to Edinburgh to attend Edinburgh’s Ladies College, boarding in the city from around the age of 12.
Her move to the Capital also allowed her to attend dance classes that had otherwise been inaccessible to her in the Borders.
After developing her skill, Bessie went on to perform at the King’s Theatre pantomimes and evening revue shows, appearing alongside legendary stars of the stage such as Stanley Baxter.
She then moved to London and joined the Anglo-Polish Ballet Company, eventually travelling across the globe to perform for the troops as part of the Entertainments National Service Association [ENSA].
Lucy said: “The first tour was Italy with the Anglo-Polish Ballet, and then she went on tour with London Ballet which was the main ENSA company.
“She went to the Middle East, all over Singapore, Malaysia, India, all sorts of tales.
“They danced in the middle of quite difficult conditions on outside stages. She talked about dancing and feeling the beetles crunching underneath their boots.
“One story she told was during a trip to the Taj Mahal. She'd heard that you have to really see it by moonlight, so she and her pal conveniently missed the transport. They deliberately stayed behind and then just worried about how they were going to hitch a lift onto the next base.”
Lucy added: “When I was growing up, I didn't know fairy tales because I just wanted mum's stories from her travels. Those were my bedtime stories.”
After boarding a troop ship from Bombay at the end of the war, Bessie settled back in the UK and found work with the East Sussex-based Glyndebourne Opera company which led her back to Edinburgh to perform in the very first EIF show.
Lucy said: “I think possibly the Glyndebourne contract was maybe a good way to sort of get back up to Scotland after her travels.”
A contract for the production of MacBeth at the King’s Theatre is one of the artefacts which has been digitally archived by the King’s Theatre.
In it, it was revealed that Bessie was paid £7 per week during the three-week production period.
After a few more years of performing, Bessie hung up her performing shoes, settling with her husband Tom and eventually opening a dance school in Kelso.
However, the family kept close ties to Edinburgh, regularly travelling to attend shows and performances.
Lucy said: “We traveled to the King’s pantomime, and I still love to come to shows to this day.
“There was one time when I was about 12 or 13, me and mum saw Rudolf Nureyev perform at the King’s.
“At the end, she said let's see if we can get his autograph, and here was me ready to go out the door with everybody else but she pulled me through this wee side door, because obviously she knew the King's so well, and we went scooting away down backstage.
“We actually saw him. He came out of his dressing room wearing a towel around his waist, I was far too young to appreciate it to be perfectly honest. But we were told he wasn't doing any autographs that night, so we were ushered out, and there were huge crowds outside the theatre.”
One of the things Lucy has been grateful for during the project to digitise her mother’s scrapbook is being able to look through the remnants left by Bessie, who died from lung cancer at the age of 60 in 1985.
Lucy said: “I'm glad that mum's story is being kept in an archive somewhere, because it would die after a few generations otherwise.”