Thursday 28 January 2016

Welcome to Spamalot!

I am once again working with the wonderful Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions on their summer production which, this year, is Spamalot! A large scale musical with anticipated costumes numbering well over 100, this is going to be a very fun show to work on! In addition to wardrobe mistress, this year I am also assisting Lisa Stead, the costumer, in sourcing and making costumes. From attending the read through this is an incredibly strong cast, and the rehearsals have already begun.
For anyone not familiar with Spamalot it is a Monty Python musical based on the plot of their film The Holy Grail, and has an astonishing number of costumes and costume changes. With a large cast, this includes for almost all performers multiple costume changes, quick changes and VERY quick changes! With the complex amount and variety of changes, planning is already underway to ascertain how many dressers will be needed and when.

The sheer volume of different changes during the show has made my usual method of costume plotting impractical, so while I do still have a master spreadsheet, I have done each performer an individual costume plot and from there, once exact change times and locations have been established to accurately work out who will need help and when, I am going to do dresser plots so that each dresser has a scene by scene guide of exactly who they need to help, where, and when. In the mean time it is all steam ahead! Spamalot has launched!