I’m posting a vdeo of the time Antonia visited David to tell him he’d been awarded the SMA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Already very ill with a broken hip and multiple medical conditions, none of us were to know that within a short period David would be taken to a care home for respite and never come home, because Covid separated him from us for eight months and dementia took over, but he was able to take away with him the comforting knowledge that people generally appreciated him, and specifically that someone dear to him had gone out on a limb to reward him and that person was Antonia. Suggested by Anna, Antonia had gone through the gruelling paperwork to successfully achieve that much sought-after accolade for him
He loved his students with pride and passion but Antonia was super-special and always claimed to want to BE another David Edwards.
The point is this: Antonia was astonishing, yes, and achieved all sorts of remarkable things, but you never got the sense it was for herself: she never bragged or self-referenced, it was always about others and she gave her utmost for her many many friends and admirers, not to mention the hundreds she trained through the Bamboo Project. She shouldn’t have left us so soon, but she’s left an indelible memory of a genuinely good, kind, clever, resourceful, inventive, selfless, supportive celebrant of theatre and of life, and her dear family, all of which things she loved and relished with fervour.
How lucky we were to have these two giants in our lives and how fitting that they might be together looking down on us from their celestial prompt corner.
Antonia - you’re unforgettable, for all the right reasons. To know you was to love you ♥️
