A change of plan - a different direction - and meetings meetings meetings

Today I was set to meet with Oliver at 9 to consolidate our idea's and research in preparation for our meeting with the director - Kenneth Robertson - and the digital media lecturer Liam in the afternoon.

Having spent the weekend researching everywhere I could I found out a startling fact. There was no hippy or drug culture mentioned anywhere in 1970's Greece with the natives, and the most reference found from that time was on a group of hippies who moved from the west of Europe to one of the Greek Islands in search of a refuge to live peacefully and were driven out by the nearby towns people. There is no mention whatsoever that I could find of any kind of drugs in Greece at that time.

Politically this was a time of great political and civil unrest. In an effort to stop the unrest and increasing violence of the riots between the right and left factions that it seemed the government was unable to control, a small group of Greek colonels plotted and enacted a coup, in one night having all opposition, real and suspected, of there impending takeover arrested they took control of Greece in 1967. They were not removed from power until 1974, and during this time the laws in Greece were rigid and the punishments brutal, there are stories of unlawful arrests and imprisonment, even torture, from that time as the Junta as it is now known sought to wipe out all opposition. This lead me to the conclusion that for the lovers a hippy Lysander, being an Athenian man, would not be supported by history.

A possible alternative to this would be to still have the lovers from opposing political sides and go for a more subtle approach perhaps with the concept being about conflict and division - the opposition of right and left, the lovers, the difference between Athens and the woods, ect. Upon meeting with Oliver I was incredibly relieved to find that he had come to the same alternative that I had. We went over our idea and the work we had started over the weekend and then went to meet with Kenneth and Liam.

Unfortunately Liam couldn't make the meeting, but we did get to have a long meeting with Kenneth. On broaching our idea, supported by our research, Kenneth revealed that his research had found the same thing and that it went so far as, he believes, long hair was banned in Greece at that time.

Notes from the meeting;
- Pitched the left vs right idea to Kenneth and he liked it, and suggested we look at Z, a documentary film by Costa Gravas.
- Egeus and Peter Quince are to be the same actor so a strong difference is needed here so that the actor will not be recognised.
- A record player is a possible prop in the first scene for the dance, the Tango Libertard (liberty tango is a destinct possibility.

There are some further notes, but they are minor about the actors playing the characters and we have been asked not to reveal these as the actors themselves have not been told - it is going to be a surprise.


Following this was a meeting with Gareth, one of our tutors which later turned into a double tutorial with Oliver.
Notes;
-Good pitch to Ken.
- Looking at the parrallels with Pans Labyrinth! The war, the woods, the magical world. Look at Pans Labyrinth for inspiration.
- Look possibly at Athenians as right wing and the woods and fairies as left wing rebels?
- Peter Brooke version might be a good adaptation to watch
- The dances ; Spanish/latin american Tango - Northern European/English Clog dance - Indian Dance
Muddying of the era's and locations through so many multicultural influences - look into possible Greek alternatives of dances to pitch to Ken OR go with the concept of influences being taken (cherry picked) from all over the world. Costume Context - if the dances are taken from all over the world this needs to be reflected in the costumes.

During the meeting I recieved an email from Ken which changed the era of setting from 1970 during the dictatorship after the colonels coup to 1960 before the colonels coup and dictatorship. This changed aspects that we had aleady discussed. Due to this, Gareth suggested that Oliver and myself should come up with two concepts to pitch to Ken based on the meetings we have had so far.

initial idea's for the concepts;
Concept A - Pan's Labyrinth inspired, looking at the conflict and the darker, more subtle side
Concept B - Multicultural, more abstract

Myself and Oliver have agreed to work on these idea's and our concepts and to meet again later in the week to go over our idea's and research.
I feel that so far myself and Oliver are both looking more ar
 

Meeting with the Director and moving forward

The project has already started and already we are full steam ahead! After an impromptu meeting with the Director myself and Oliver have and initial setting and time to start working from and a lot of research to do. Kenneth has a lot of idea's of things that he wants to include that is going to make this a full and fascinating project to work on. 

THE INITIAL PLAN

The setting: Athens, 1970 at the time of the Colonels coup.

The concept: Psychedelia and drug culture.

Theseus is a Colonel in the Greek military, one of the colonels in the coup (this is artistic licence as in the script he is a Duke). The opposing lovers Demetrius and Lysander, both vying over Hermia, are from the opposing greek political factions who were involved in a conflict at the time -  the rigid Right wing against the more hippyish Left wing. 

The fairies are going to have influences of India, as there are so many mentions in the text of time they spent there and this needs to be incorporated in the costumes.

There are also going to be three dances incorporated at various points in the production, a tango (or other passionate dominant dance) an Indian dance and the potential for a clog dance that one of Oliver's characters, Nick Bottom, may do. These types of dance are not something that immediately spring to mind when thinking of adaptations of the production, but as it stands as they are explained the dances do make sense in terms of the characters. 

Research research research!

1. what kind of conflict was happening politically 

2. what the drug and hippy culture was like in Greece in the 1970's

3. the dances

A Midsummer Nights Dream! Back to work!

The time has come for the beginning of the much anticipated - and dreaded - third and final year on the course! As such it is also the start of the first of two major projects of the year.

At the end of last year we were given a list of options for our first project, and as with a professional job we were asked to apply for the three options that we most wanted to do, in order of preference. I am delighted to announce that I got my first choice and shall be designing costumes for the AUCB production of 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'.

The performance is to be held in April of next year and we will have ten weeks to get the designs finished for hand in on the third of December. Next term I shall be able to work with the makers and potentially a costume supervisor in overseeing the realisation of my designs.

This project comes with an unusual twist. Part of the set design is going to be taken by digital media, working in collaboration with peer and set designer Oliver Barker. Due to Oliver therefore having less of the set, Oliver is going to have a small set of the costumes as well.

The Characters and Division!

In the play there are three distinct sets of characters that, while they do meet and co-mingle still remain as separate groups. 

These groups are ; The Athenians, The Fairies, and the Mechanicals.

The Athenians are a group of eight characters with the possibility of an ensemble. They are made up of the four lovers, Demetrius, Hermia, Lysander and Helena being the four mains from this section, followed by Theseus, the Duke of Athens, his fiancé and Queen of the Amazons Hippolyta, Egeus Hermia's father, and Philostrates the Duke's master of revels.

The Fairies are pretty well explained by the name - they are a group of fairies headed by their King, Oberon, and Queen Titania. Following them are Robin Goodfellow (in this to be Oberon's son) and the named fairies  Moth, Mustardseed, Cobweb and Peaseblossom. 

The Mechanicals are a group of performers, come together to perform a piece for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. They are made up of six characters; Nick Bottom, Peter Quince, Snug, Francis Flute, Tom Snout and Robin Starveling. 

After discussing it between us and with our tutors we have decided that for Olivers costume section he will take the Mechanicals, with myself designing for the Athenians and the Fairies. This means that I will be designing for fifteen characters, the majority of which due to the text will have costume changes. 

We have also found out who our director is - Kenneth Robertson, one of the tutors from the acting department and we are both very excited to be working with him.

This is set to be a collaborative project across the University, with myself and Oliver from the BA (Hons) costume and performance design course working with the acting course and with digital media. It is going to be a very exciting and demanding project where communication will be key among all parties involved. I have already bought and begun to annotate my script after reading it through and cannot wait to get started!

A-Roving Performance Day!

Finally the day arrived, the performance day for A-Roving We Will Go, the product of months of work for Katharine and myself and an intensive rehearsal week for our 9 actors. Thankfully, unlike the day before for the second dress run the day could not have been better - sunny with patches of cloud, so it was not too hot but it was warm enough for Alana's short's without her being cold, the only change was Peter's scarf which we decided he shouldn't wear as it would be too hot. The other character I had concerns about was Declan in terms of getting too warm but he assured me that he felt perfectly comfortable.

Tanya, on hair, make-up and dressing, and myself had given the actors their call sheets for hair, make-up and costume with guidlines of do's and don'ts at the dress run the day before. Our day started at 10:15 with myself and Tanya arriving to make sure that all the costumes were laid out for the performers as we had left them the day before. I set about ironing the items of the smarter characters to fit their more well turned out persona's while Tanya set out the make-up and hair supplies in preparation for our first actor at 10:30, Alana arriving with Hannah, the first two for hair and makeup. We went through the actors with, where possible, the actors having their make-up done first, followed by costume to avoid any make-up being dropped down the costumes, followed by hair. A few had to be put in their tops and t-shirts first but for the most part it went as planned.

There was a minor hiccup schedulewise when all the male actors, travelling down together, got stuck trying to find parking and ended up being 15 minutes late pushing the schedule to the limit, but we remained calm and kept them going when they lost focus and were soon back on track.

One of the roles we were taught is important for long costume days is that the actors can lose energy quickly, and all of us having performed for a film shoot in our first year we all had experience of this. This being the case it has become general practice for us to bring a range of sweets - nothing chocolate, sticky or powdery - to long costume days to keep the actors going and keep morale up on what can be a quite boring process for them. The night before myself and Tanya had visited a local sweet shop and bought a wide variety of sweets for the actors, which helped tremendously during hair and make-up and importantly between the two performances when engergy dipped dramatically. However with sugar, sandwiches and encouragement energy was soon high once again and they were set for the second performance.

There was one slightly more pronounced costume issue between the two performances when Jesamine, in getting out of her dress and putting it back on accidentally ripped the bodice of her dress on the broach that was holding the top together. Thankfully myself and Tanya were able to repair the worst of the tear and by also moving the pin it was not noticeable.

The performance went off perfectly in terms of costume, as did the performance itself with an incredible  audience turn out far better then the day before. The idea of Declan, James and Jay's travelling performance being to ask people directions and ask them to follow worked amazingly well, with much more audience participation in actually responding and following so that by the time they got to the performance space they had a fantastic following. I estimate that they had in excess of 200 people watching by the end of the performance.

A-Roving - Dress Run!

Today was finally time for the dress run of the show! This started at 9:30 with myself and Tanya Makeup & Hair and costume assistant arrived to get the actors into costume straight out.

After a short costume parade - as this was the first time seeing all the actors in costume at the same time - they moved onto a warm up and initial inside rehearsal in the studio.

This was also the first time myself and Tanya had gotten to see the full rehearsal, complete with the characters that the actors had created from my costume designs. It was interesting to see how each actor had taken the nuances of the costume and used it to create a personality. For Nick and Jesamine it was characters with mischief and clownish innocence, for Hannah a very prim and proper character, for Declan a west country fisherman, the list goes on.

I think one of the most startling things was Declan's performance as he only started learning the accordion 2 months ago in order to be able to play it in this production and is already proficient.

After some last words of advice and last minute direction the actors and myself and Tanya headed out to the performance site. The company of 9 split into three groups of three and headed to their starting points. Having allowed two sets of shoes - one for fair weather and one for wet - all the actors were in their good weather shoe's as the sun was shining and the ground was relatively dry but as it was cold the actors were wearing all layers of their costumes. As a caution against colder weather I have gotten Jesamine navy tights as they go with her costume, and added a scarf to Peter's.

The three groups - having synchronised their timers at the starting point being the rehearsal studio - all started as one in their different area's and travelled through the park to arrive at the main site.

 Each group had planned their own initial performance, with always an element of improvisation to compensate for crowd involvement and problems along the way. The initial group with Peter, Hattie and Hannah did a performance about throwing penny's in the river and making a wish. Alana, Nick and Jesamine made there way to the bridge to play 'pooh sticks' and try and get passers by to play it with them. James, Declan and Jay's group were lost travellers trying to find their way about.

 The dynamics of the performance was different once it was in the open air and in the performance space. The energy of the performance changed, the performers gestures were bigger and even though the park was virtually empty the performance still managed to gather a crowd.

The idea was that, though they are all different, they are all nautical and come together as a cohesive group, albeit a motley crew. As an ensemble I feel the costumes work very well together.

The performance is full of energy and ad-libbing and improvisation, with a lot of jumping and dancing around. The costumes held up well and the girls who had the wedge heeled shoes had no problems with them even on the grass. However if the weather is bad or the ground is wet tomorrow I will switch them to their bad weather shoes.

 On the whole the costume's worked very well and there were no major issue's that arose from the dress run other then Hannah's hat. As it was quite windy Hannah was worried her hat would blow off and eventually did have to take it off and put it in her bag. As it was quite windy and there was no secure way to fix the hat to her head, I have told her that if at any point her hat starts to blow off it is fine to put it away in her bag but to try and keep it on as long as possible.

The hair bands and scarves are all being fixed into place by hair and makeup artist for the project Tanya Pye. As there was no time today for makeup and hair Tanya helped in capacity of dresser and costume assistant and was invaluable.

With the performance tomorrow the last pieces to do are put the finishing touches on Nick's starfish belt and make sure that tomorrow morning Jay takes the duffel bag which is to be his bag for the performance and gets it travelled (being muddy).





Last of the Bags!

Sunday brought a meeting with two of our actors who were latecomers to rehearsal week - Jay and Alana. Thankfully there costumes were fine with the exception of Alana's shorts which may have to be rethought due to her appedix recently being removed. For this I am trying her in another pair which are a size larger then she usually wears in the hopes they will be comfortable but if not then I will have to change the bottoms, most likely to jeans.

Today - the last of the bags arrived in the post! The vintage suitcase, which I had greatly anticipated arriving was a bit of a shock being far bigger then I had thought it would be - one of the perils of buying online!

Pre-umwrapping with my shoe (size 5) to demonstrate the size of the package
 

Post-unwrapping - a very large beautiful vinage suitcase

 

This could be a problem but I will take it into rehearsals tomorrow and find out. It is larger then the other luggage but all of the luggage is unique and unique to the characters.

 



First Rehearsal - and Costume Parade!

Today was, for myself and Tanya, the first time meeting many of the cast members for A-Roving - and just in time for the costume parade, and for Tanya chemical allergy tests for the make-up and hair products.

 

Our day began with a last-minute run to the 99p shop to get anything we thought we would need - spare make-up, spare hair brushes and face wipes etc. The major find in the shop though was the stand of blue and red umbrella's by the door! Now we know where to get them from in the event of bad weather.

 

Getting everyone into costume at the same time as checking all the costumes and making changes and substitutions is very tricky with a cast of ten, even with only eight of the cast members present today, but we managed it and well. There was only one major change, and that was to Peter's coat - Peter owns a blue Gillet that he had brought with him and it worked so well with his costume and luggage we decided that he should wear that instead. There has, in all this, been a bright side to Richard, one of our cast members, being unable to be in the production. Still having his costume, and having the good fortune to have a few of the male actors a similar size and build meant that they could be used for spares - much needed spares as it turned out because despite being the right size at the waist the trousers for Alex were shorter on him then I wanted, but when I tried him in Richards and rolled up the legs to the right height they were perfect. The shoe's are now being used by Declan due to when he pulled on the shoe's that I had picked up for him the seam on the side ripped.

Also there has been another shoe substitution - while the shoe's that I had bought for Peter were good and went with the costume, he had a pair of blue shoe's with anchors on that he had forgotten he owned and brought in today, and they were so perfect I substituted them.

 

Scarves have turned out to be the biggest issue - I have fabric that I am turning into scarves for the production but the problem with this is, in order to get the colours and patterns that I want I need to get cotton, but cotton does not tend to look right as scarves. The tones are too flat somehow. Therefore I will do what I can with what I have, send out another call for scarves to borrow, and go back to the fabric shop tomorrow to see what else I can find that is suitable.

 

All in all though it has been a very successful day!