For the 132nd meal with a stranger, I met Naomi Paxton in London for an enjoyable brunch.
She’s an academic, researcher, magician, performer and more, always on the move as she hustles for her various interests. It means she wears many hats, the most obvious being the literal colorful hats, often twice the size of her face, that she wears when performing her playful, funny, magical cabaret act “Ada Campe.” They are explosions of feathers, hues and jewels that hearken back to the era of music halls with a modern spin.
There’s the acting hat she wears when working front and back of house at shows throughout London and beyond. There’s the professional academic hat — she’s an expert on British suffragettes, with a particular focus on how stage plays helped the campaign to give women the vote. And there’s the public engagement hat she wore working with Romanian orphans, many of them non-verbal, teaching them drama by using puppetry and other tools of the trade.
Naomi has traveled enough life paths to divide between several people. She shared stories from all the strands of her life at brunch, talking about what she’s learned from them and what’s ahead.