The Show!

Disaster struck last week, but thankfully not the show. After 2 hospital visits and my blood test results it appears I have Glandular Fever, and thus have been only able to be involved in the last minute preparations and decisions for the show via the telephone. This has been a devastating blow as this show has been such a large part of my life since last September. However, I have managed to stay in contact with Sarah and Grace, and some of the helpers for updates - and last night was able to attend the show!

 

There were minimal changes to the costumes, and for the most part they were exactly as they were in the pre-dress parade much to my delight, with one major and a few minor exceptions that had not already been discussed in the pre-dress parade. The only main change was that one of the wedding dresses - made by Helena for the character Helena - had been changed in the dress parade by our head of year, who bought a replacement herself that was closer to the design before I changed the sleeves. The minor changes were that thankfully the tutors had managed to find a replacement for Philostrates jacket and Theseus' that were much closer to my designs and the look that I wanted and worked perfectly, and that the wedding dress for Hippolyta, made by Danielle, had its collar missing. I am not sure why yet, I have not been able to find out if it was a decision made by the tutors or if she ran out of time, however I am sure there is a good reason.

 

For the show itself, by the audience reaction it was a tremendous success. There was generous laughter and applause throughout. The actors were brilliant, there was not a single missed line that I was able to spot, all the action was well paced and placed and they have all done a brilliant job. I shall admit, being so close to the costume and backstage aspect of this particular show I spent as much time (if not more) looking at the costumes making sure there were no errors or slips, and that everything was moving well and they were wearing the right clothes at the right time but it all came across incredibly well, and the curtain call party was a joy to watch. I shall not post my highlights and risk spoiling the play for any viewers of tonight's performers but if I say for them - watch out for Robin Goodfellow, the fight scenes and for Bottom, after tonight they shall know what I mean.

 

This was my first experience working as a costume designer at the head of a team, and as such I did spend a lot of my way trying to work out exactly what my role was, where it began and ended. While many times the line did blur and I have learned at times you do just get on with whatever needs doing no matter who's job its meant to be, I have a much better idea now of what I need to do to succeed as a costume designer for a larger production.

 

On the whole, though this performance has had a host of problems throughout, they have all been resolved quickly and there were no major issues or last second panics. The wigs, which we were so worried about, came off beautifully onstage and I am relieved that we got to keep them in the production as they made the fairy costumes so much more interesting and surreal. If I could change anything about my work, while I did go to the tutors relatively quickly I would have made sure to consult the tutors sooner when there were issues that arose in finding things. I would also have pushed harder on the issue of the hires to make sure we had what looked the best, though that issue was resolved in the end. I would have liked to have been able to help more with the breaking down but unfortunately that started at almost the same time as my illness and I was therefore unable to be as involved as I had hoped.

 

My favourite - though I would never usually pick favourites - of the costumes has to be Robin Goodfellow, and on this special thanks to make-up as they did a spectacular job. The reason that I am so very happy with and proud of this costume is that it looks EXACTLY like my design, to the point that when the actor pulled the same pose on stage as I have him in on the design it was virtually identical. Because of this I am hoping to use a photograph of him from the production photographs for my photo in the AUB Graduate directory.

 

I have enjoyed working with my team, and with Ken and Oliver, on this production and have discovered a love of working on Shakespeare that I never realised before. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire of the costume and make-up team that worked on this production who did such an incredible job.

Pre-Dress Parade and the beggining of the last rush!

Pre-Dress Parade!

A pre-dress parade is where, to do an initial check of the costumes as a group, they are put on manequins and presented, usually, to the 'visual' team (in this case the tutors) to determine if anything needs changing or is obviously wrong that stands out and needs to be altered. This not only saves time at the dress parade and gives more time for any glaring mistakes to be remedied but also means that by the time the dress parade comes around and the actors are wearing there costumes as they are presented there will not only be less alterations to do, but there will be less chance for any extreme last minute changes.

Our pre-dress parade began at ten this morning and it was decided that we would go through the costumes in order of character, starting with the lovers, then going through the Athenians and fairies, and then the mechanicals.

 

 

 

There were a lot of changes to be made, the majority of them minor. The major changes were the wedding suits and Philostrates costume. Thankfully the wedding suit issue was easily resolved as there were two suits that were right that fitted from the costume store - we now have two cream pinstripes for the lovers that were made for previous productions that had not yet been put in the store. The small changes were mainly to things like ties, jewellery and shoes, nothing too drastic.The fairies are now having some of the same moss that is being used in the wigs added to the texture to give them more texture, but on the whole the fairies were very well recieved but the tutors would like them to look a bit more magical.

With that in mind, when we finished one of our second year helpers Melissa approached me about an effect she had used on a precious project in mixing metalic paint with liquid latex and offered to show me it in the hopes that it would be a solution. She brought me down two samples within two minutes and they were perfect, textural and interesting and fitting with the effect that I wanted. We showed them to head of year Rebecca and she immediately approved it. Melissa will now be directly assisting maker Helena with Titania's costume, and she will also be taking over Oberons costume so that maker Danielle will have more time to focus on the wedding dress for Hippolyta.

 

After this I had a double page of notes on things that need changing. After I met with Jess, Grace, Sarah and Oliver and we made a list of hires, buys and alterations that now need adding to out to do list. 

I then spent the afternoon working on the body suits.

 

Hectic times!

With the show opening two weeks today, it was all go. With our makers all occupied with principal costumes, the fairy dancers cannot be allowed to be left behind with the pre-dress parade approaching so myself, Grace, Jess Milham our buyer and helper Elly Harris spent the morning working on tacking the textural detailing to the body suits. This is a long task, as each panel of the textural work must be placed, pinned, and then tacked so that it will be firmly attached while still being able to stretch to allow the actors to put the costumes. I was working on the body suit that Jess began earlier this week as today she was buying for us and we would rather have as many hands working as possible and get things done sooner then have a mad rush at the end.

This will undoubtably happen anyway - such is the way of the industry - but this way there will be LESS to do when that time comes!

 

Pre-tacking (started by Jess Milham)

Post-tacking (tacking by myself)

Tacking in progress

The front with the top pannels completely tacked on.

At one we all moved to the Studio Theatre for a production meeting, the second to last before we open. There was very little to discuss on costume as I spoke to Ken yesterday about the new costume requirements, the main one being the pottential change of Hippolyta's dress. There are concerns that it may not read as regal enough, so myself and Grace have decided that we will be hunting for pottential alternatives over the weekend, though if we are unable to find anything and it passes inspection at the pre-dress parade we will hold with the current dress with the pottential for 'dressing it up'. The only new thing was for myself and make-up to tell the rest of the production team who were not there about the wig meeting and fitting yesterday. The production is going very smoothly so far after the problems earier in its inception and I hope it will remain this calm for a while to come!

 

After that I went to the dye room to make up the paint that we will be working into the fairies with to create the graduated effect of the texture growing out of the suits as on the designs. This meant mixing and watering down set paint as after discussion with my makers it seems that this is the best thing to use when painting into lycra, as dye will not take when painted on.

The set paint that we have is Roscopaint.

I made up the three main base colours for the graduating effect - a red tone, a brown tone and a green tone. These will all need to be used in a watered down form to build up layers in order to create the graduated effect needed.

 

Green Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

Roscopaint Emerald Green

 

Red Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

Roscopaint Burnt Umber

Roscopaint Ironred

 

Brown Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Umber

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

 

We will be begginging to paint into the body suits on Monday, in the hopes of getting two of the fairy dancer costumes completed in time for the pre-dress parade next Wednesday.

Over the weekend I will be sewing together Helena's headress, now that our buyer Jess has brought us the ribbon I will be sewing the ribbon in half to make it half the width and then sewing on the flowers made by our maker Helena. This is a small job but one of many so we are trying to get them done when we can.

The Band!

After drawing up my two band concepts and presenting them to Kenneth, I am delighted to announce that he much prefered the traditional Greek band costumes. Here is the selected design!

 

I believe that this design works the best with the concept of the piece and with the other Athenians designs, and Ken has agreed with this assessment. Now the task is sourcing the costumes!

The Read Through and Design Presentation!

The first day back after the Easter break, the first rehearsal and read through of the script and the time - finally - for myself and Oliver to reveal and present the set and costume designs to the full cast. At 2pm the cast, crew and production team congregated in the Studio Theatre of the acting block, ready and waiting to begin. We started with Kenneth Robertson, our director, giving a talk about the concept and setting of the piece, explaining our idea's of WHY to set it during the Greek 1970's at the time of the Military Coup and how it tied into the idea of repression and arranged marriage.

 

From there, Oliver took the floor and presented the set design. It was very well recieved and all of the actors are incredibly excited to see it brought to life.

 

Then, it was my turn to present the costumes. Some of the actors, in their initial fitting, had been able to see some of their designs but this was their first time seeing all of them, and all together. I took them through the costumes by scene, as I had designed them with a brief idea of why they were designed to look the way they were. It was an incredible and rewarding experience to see the actors excitement and appreciation of their costumes, (though nerve wracking as their is always the worry that someone wont like what you have designed for them) but they were all incredibly well recieved!
From there, Oliver brought in the designs for the Mechanicals, and Bottom as the Ass.

 

After the designs were all presented and the actors had had the opportunity to ask any questions, the read through began. I have been in on read throughs before but only for amateur productions, so it was incredibly insightful to see one led by a professional director.

Kenneth had the actors read through the script as written - taking almost two hours. He then gave the actors a break for refreshments before going back through the script and announcing the cuts. This was a very interesting and actually incredibly practical way of making sure that the cuts wanted are the right ones, or if and where more need to be added as you get a propper sense, hearing it read, of where the dialogues and monologues begin to lag, or the story to stall.

 

By the time the cuts were done it was after 5 and time for everyone to go home. An interesting point had been brought up though during the read through - when Ken had announced for the benefit of the band when they would be entering and exiting, he gave a brief desciption of what he thought he might like them to wear. I had initially thought of the band as looking like a traditional Greek band, but Ken described tail coats and suits. This has led to a dilema, as I do not think that tailcoats will look appropriate with the other costumes and setting, and will not aid in getting the Greek setting across. I have therefore decided to do two sets of designs tonight - one of the tailcoat concept, and the other of the more traditional Greek band though very smart, and see tomorrow which Ken prefers before taking the designs to my supervisor.