I Must Confess, I Love You
Iris Elgar
8
May 2025
8
May
2025
Join Maude King - a devoted romantic and drag persona with roots in the late 19th and early 20th century - for a workshop dedicated to the art of love-letter writing. Approached with equal parts sincerity and playfulness, the workshop invites participants to explore expressions of love in its many forms: romantic, platonic, familial, and self-directed.
Love-letter inspiration ranges from the writings of James Baldwin, Sappho, and Wendy Cope, to the emotional worlds of music, film, and performance. Rather than taking an overly academic approach, the workshop is designed to offer a comfortable, low-stakes environment for creative reflection and expression. The experience is intended to be both novel and social, with participants encouraged to attend with friends - or arrive open to making new ones.
Participants are seated around tables stocked with a variety of materials, and are welcome to bring writing materials or personal items from home. The first part of the workshop will introduce the history and culture of love-letters, before turning the focus inward, inviting participants to consider their own motivations for writing.
The workshop is designed to give participants the time and space to write their own love-letters. Maude King offers ideas, prompts, and conversation throughout - eager to learn about the acts and notions of love that might be unfamiliar or surprising to someone from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Maude, after all, has some catching up to do).
By the end of the session, each participant will have created a unique love-letter and spent creative time in a relaxed and welcoming space, guided by a tender-hearted, love-struck host in drag.
Join Maude King - a devoted romantic and drag persona with roots in the late 19th and early 20th century - for a workshop dedicated to the art of love-letter writing. Approached with equal parts sincerity and playfulness, the workshop invites participants to explore expressions of love in its many forms: romantic, platonic, familial, and self-directed.
Love-letter inspiration ranges from the writings of James Baldwin, Sappho, and Wendy Cope, to the emotional worlds of music, film, and performance. Rather than taking an overly academic approach, the workshop is designed to offer a comfortable, low-stakes environment for creative reflection and expression. The experience is intended to be both novel and social, with participants encouraged to attend with friends - or arrive open to making new ones.
Participants are seated around tables stocked with a variety of materials, and are welcome to bring writing materials or personal items from home. The first part of the workshop will introduce the history and culture of love-letters, before turning the focus inward, inviting participants to consider their own motivations for writing.
The workshop is designed to give participants the time and space to write their own love-letters. Maude King offers ideas, prompts, and conversation throughout - eager to learn about the acts and notions of love that might be unfamiliar or surprising to someone from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Maude, after all, has some catching up to do).
By the end of the session, each participant will have created a unique love-letter and spent creative time in a relaxed and welcoming space, guided by a tender-hearted, love-struck host in drag.
Iris Elgar
Iris Elgar is an independent dance-based artist. Keenly interested in both improvised performance and choreography, they often bring whimsy, queerness, and introspection to their work. They value curiosity within their practice and are invested in exploring the relationship between the performer and audience. Iris has experience performing in conventional and non-conventional spaces, including theatres, galleries, parks, museums, and streets, and has performed in durational works up to five hours in length. Notable performance spaces include Abbotsford Convent, Testing Grounds, and Temperance Hall. Key points of artistic interest include imagined worlds, perception of self and others, fantasy, and the grotesque. Iris’ movement training is predominantly in ballet and contemporary dance, and they enjoy using these influences, along with cinematic and literary references, to inform their work.
In 2022, Iris graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance. They performed in works by Lucy Guerin and Ngioka Bunda-Heath for their graduate season. At the end of their degree, Iris was awarded a Phillip Adams Balletlab VCA Mentorship Award.
Alongside performing and choreographing, Iris engages with workshops, secondments, showings, and other movement practices. They also have a drag persona ‘Maude King’, a time-travelling lesbian loosely inspired by 19th century male impersonators.