Our first meeting to form the begining of a concise schedule for the next few weeks is now complete! We now have a basic plan of future meetings, when we hope to get into the dye room, initial costume completion schedule etc.
I am meeting tomorrow with the supervisor for the fairies and Athenians to discus fabrics, and the suits that need buying.
Our second meeting of the day was a surprise, a meeting with the head make-up artist Louise and our first production meeting with Rebecca and Gareth since we presented our designs to Ken weeks ago. It went well, on the whole, Louise is thankfully not only incredibly excited about the project but is a henna artist! This is going to make the fairies costumes and 'look' so much.
There was also a relief when it came to the 'wigs'. For that there are only a few wigs for definite now, the main being for Ethan (Theseus) as he has long hair and is not willing to cut it. As in Greece at that time it was a taboo to have long hair - especially to the lengths of Ethans - he needs a shortened wig. Also in terms of the fairy wigs, the dreadlocks, I had a thought that they might be able to be dreadlock extentions fixed into the actors hair. I was delighted to have this confirmed by Louise that not only would this be easier but it would also be cheaper!
For the body suits, though I had spoken to my makers and we had agreed that the best course of action was body suits, the tutors believe that it is, for some of the fairies, unnecessary to have full body suits and would be best to have make-up do the henna and growing-mossy effect. While I am willing to let this happen with parts of Oberon and for some of the other fairies in terms of having sleeveless and kneelength body suits, it was suggested that Titania's costume be a top and bottom and I am unwilling to cut out the midriff part of Titania's body suit. While having her body suit more like a leotard with arms would be pheasable and may indeed work better, as Titania is going to be very active, due to the nature of the visual effect to cut out the midriff of her costume in order to have henna directly on her stomach would not only be a unnecessary risk of a costume slip, it would also this would mean an obvious seamline across her back.
For the fairies that have gold henna, and standard dark brown henna that will not be on the suits, Louise has assured me that makeup would be able to do this on the very physically active faires.
After the meeting I had the opportunity to sit down propperly with Louise and discuss the fairies in more depth.
In terms of Puck, Robin Goodfellow, the actors physique, as Puck is meant to be a very physical creature she is going to try and 'highlight' the muscular abdomen that I have drawn into my designs - though we do not know yet what kind of musculature the actor has. After discussing with my makers Puck will also only be having 'shorts' rather then a full body suit of lycra, but he still has the growing foliage coming out of the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. I discussed with Louise the possibility of using latex to create the growing effect and she is very keen to try it out. This is an effect that we also hope to use on Oberon on his face, where the foliage comes out of his face and beard.
For Titania, on my design I had given her a stylised gold and turquoise blue peacock feather that sat in her parting, mimicking traditional Indian jewelery, and Louise is very keen to work on it.
Louise also had some problem solving idea's of her own when it came to prosthetics. After speaking with Ken in the meeting he broached the idea again on using prosthetics on the faces of the mechanicals when they are transformed into fairies. While I am hesitant to have prosthetics on their facea when none of the other fairies will have them, Louise had the idea of prosthetic ears that could go on all the fairies quickly and easily without compromising the overall look. I have asked her if she can draw up what she has in mind and email us and am very excited to see what she will come up with.
THE ACTORS
At 1:30 a group of the actors came in to be measured by our group of makers, and as Louise was keen to get working and needed to find out who is allergic to any of the make-ups that she will need to use or prosthetics glues, I suggested that she come in and speak to the actors while they were there - a sugestion she immediately took me up on!
This led to an intense but fascinating half hour of co-ordinating actors, makers and make-up so that everyone who Louise needed to speak to who was present got to speak with her, and so that all the males present bar one was told not to shave their facial hair or cut their hair - the exception being Walter(Lysander) who will need to be clean shaven but have relatively long hair for the period. They were all surprisingly receptive to the idea. One of our actors will need to stay shaven for a couple more weeks due to his current production - Spring Awakening, another AUCB show - but as that ends in less then a month he will have more then enough time to catch up with the others in terms of facial hair.
This also gave me the opportunity to actually discuss aspects of their costumes with the actors that they may not be comfortable with. I had hoped to do this before the design process was complete but due to the actors not being permitted to find out who they were playing in the show until right at the end of term I was unable to do so. Thankfully, the actors that I have spoken to have no problems with any of the pottential issues I have raised.
While I hope this is not the case, the only actor that I can see having any issue with the hair for his design was not present today - the reason I am concerned that he may have qualms is that in my design he is bald. When he comes in for measurements later this week I will be able to find out from him for certain.
Actions from today's meetings;
- Email Puck actor about willingness to shave his head
- Write up todays meetings for production journal
- Finish designs for the Greek band (5 members)
- Prepare for tomorrow's meeting with supervisor - fabric file etc.
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