Opera! Back to West Green House.

This month I have been back costume assisting at West Green House Opera working under Aly Fielden. This years operas were La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus, they were fantastic to work on with some really interesting costumes to work on, including helping with the construction and decoration of a large bat inspired mask - to see images from the production look on the West Green House Opera website at past productions, I highly recommend it.

The Hills were Alive with the Sound of Music!

You may remember from January that Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions newest offering to the stage has been 'The Sound of Music'. Now with seven shows done - including two sing alongs - The Sound of Music has been put to bed and it is time for me to finally write about it!

As with the last few shows the majority of the costumes have been hired with some alterations to be done and standard repairs during the run, however I did get to make the postulant costumes for Maria and the three other postulants, and also the 'curtain' costumes, the childrens play clothes, were given over to me to design and make. This has been a wonderful opportunity to again design a set of costumes for a large and well known productions, and unashamedly one of my favourite musicals from my childhood.

While I am still waiting for production photos here are some of the making photos! As in the script this is when Maria is trying to break the children free of their identically ordered and regimented existance, I made each of the childrens costumes slightly different in either colour bands or design. 

 Marta costume, completed                      Girls play clothes in progress

Red Dragonfly Productions - 'Tom Jones' and 'Monkey'

Over the last three weeks I have had the opportunity to work with Red Dragonfly Productions, a Lymington based English/Chinese touring theatre company, on their most recent productions 'Tom Jones' and 'Monkey', preparing the costumes for the show.

Tom Jones is an adaptation of Henry Fieldings novel of the same name, set in the 1800's between a country estate, an Inn at Upton, and London, following the story of the illegitimate Tom Jones and his fortunes - and misfortunes. The concept behind the production is that the players are at Henry Fieldings house for a party and as their entertainment are putting on Fieldings latest work, the majority taking on multiple roles, using found clothes that are in the house left over from previous guests and visitors, which leads to a range of styles throughout the 1800's. 

Thanks to a few costume sales and job lots over the last year the company had a large store of period appropriate costumes already available, though the majority required a substantial amount of repairs and alterations most especially taking up, letting down, false backs, taking in and additional fastenings. I also made two costume pieces for Tom Jones, a pair of military breeches for Ross - writer, director and actor - and a pink underskirt for the floral dress of Ainsley, our Lady Sophia.

Lady Sophia in her floral dress with pink underskirt

Left, Ross as Military with white breeches - Right, our 'Tom'

While Tom Jones had the vast amount more costumes and by far the larger amount of makes and alterations, for Monkey I made Tripitaka's hat, Monkeys yellow neckerchief, and made minor alterations to the 'princess' costume. Below are official promotional photographs taken by Mark Piggott Photography.

It has been wonderful working with Red Dragonfly Productions and I hope to work with them again.

The Sound of Music Begins!

The Sound of Music is the next big production for Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions, being staged at the Regent Centre Theatre Christchurch from the 29th of May to the 1st of June.

As usual myself and Lisa, head of costume, are set to have a meeting to discuss costumes for the show, but not usual is the message I received the day before New Years Eve! With a promotional photoshoot being set for this week, the hire costume that was planned for use was unavailable, as was BMT's own apron, to make the initial outfit for 'Maria' in the shoot. Knowing the show and the film I knew exactly the look they wanted for the initial Maria look, the novice nun before she is sent to the Von Trapp's. The original message was to ask if I had anything that might be appropriate as it was needed for collection by the second of January. As I had nothing appropriate, I was requested to make the dress and apron - this is the first costume since university that I have made in less then 48 hours, and I must say I am very proud of it! 

As it was last minute no one had the performers measurements yet, so I was asked to make it to a standard UK size 10. This presented another set of challenges as again I have gotten to used to making costumes to measurements I had to look up the UK standard on the internet and there are a lot of conflicting measurements on there. I decided that in case they decided to go with the standard twirl photo, to make the skirt as well as the apron full and as close to a circle skirt as I could manage with the pleating so that it would provide the best effect on camera. 

In the event that we use this costume for the show and it involves quick changes I will have to make adjustments to the fastenings and the apron attachment, there is currently a zip fastening the dress and the apron is held with the traditional two pins in the top corners - in terms of general use though, if there are no quick change, it should work well.

Making the apron allowed me to try out a new pleating technique I had seen demonstrated online - using a fork to make perfectly even pleats - and it actually worked! This saved me an incredible amount of time in pleating the apron to the desired volume while keeping the pleats neat and even.

Hopefully soon I will be able to put up the photos from the photo shoot of my costume being worn. I am very excited to be working with Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions on what will be my sixth big show with them, and I cannot wait for my meeting with Lisa to find out what I will be doing!

Christmas Costumes!

In the run up to Christmas, with no panto on the horizon this year unfortunately, it was suggested to me that I try making some Christmas costumes for sale. This is something that I have never tried before, having always made for either shows or commissions to a specific brief, and always to specific measurements!

At first I started making hats and scarves (after all, what is a being from the North Pole if not one that requires warm clothing?) From there I must admit that I went with the more obvious fabrics first, red tartan and other fleeces, with two exceptions - the first being my Elf-On-Strike hat! Not working to a brief I confess this was more inspired by the fact it was the first of the Christmas pieces I was attempting, right at the beginning of November and so I was not overly in the festive spirit. This is the first time I have attempted large scale hand embroiders, I was embroidering on fleece so I used multiple embroidery threads and a bodkin to make sure the embroidery was substantial enough to last without warping the fabric.

From hats I wanted to make full costumes, so I decided to start with elves - not the everyday interpretations but something a little bit different, and special. Having to do it to non-production specifications was interesting, I am so used to thinking about the production requirements when making a costume! I decided to do the elves out of synthetic fabrics with a lining.

Thinking of what makes an elf - the colours, red and/or green are synonymous in the UK at least, so that was a good jumping off point, as well as a bit of sparkle, it is for Christmas after all! So I started with basic shape designs, then chose my fabrics according to my self imposed budget. I had spare calico that I used to draft a basic pattern also helped by my borrowed dress form!

Another fun skill I got to learn from this was how to make frogging from cord. This is an incredibly difficult and fiddly process, and I must admit that if you can get exactly what you need online, it is worth the extra expense! However if you can't wait, or you just can't find the right colour of type of frogging you need it is possible to make it, just be prepared to fail miserably the first few times no matter how many different how-to's or tutorials you try online! In the end I knew the basic shapes I wanted and just ended up working with the cord until I figured out a way to make them that made sense to me and that I could work with.

Above - one of my first elves right before I added the buttons 

A fabric that in theatre I have never actually gotten to work with before is fleece, stage lights and hot theatre's not being overly conducive to hot costumes! However it is by far one of the easiest fabrics I have used, and I loved making this Nutcracker inspired costume below.

My Nutcracker, 1

Candide and West Green House Opera

In July I was able to spend an amazing four days in the grounds of West Green House, working as wardrobe assistant under wardrobe mistress Aly Fielden on West Green House Opera's production of Candide, fantastic as this was the first opera I have ever worked on, I was able to embellish and alter costumes as well as make some Nun hats! I have no photos to put on here unfortunately but if you are in Hook for the two weeks of the summer of the Opera I highly recommend it!

'Anything Goes'

We are now post-show, and what a show it was! Anything Goes with Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions at the Regent Centre in Christchurch, we had a four day five show run last week closing on Saturday and it was a triumph! I was back on board as costume assistant and wardrobe mistress (some designing and making, a lot of alterations and repairs, and again prepping and running the wardrobe and dresser team for the run!) There were plenty of quick changes, the shortest of which was 15 seconds, rivalling the 12 second Spamalot quick change.

Before I get into backstage though, the costumes. I was working again with the wonderful BMTP head of costume Lisa Stead. The majority of the costumes were hired from a wonderful company in Guildford that has been active for 30 years, however not everything we needed could be found there. After the read through I drew up a selection of costume designs, late 20's and early 30's, just in case we couldn't find what we needed from hires and buys, and I am so proud that two of my designs were selected by Lisa - a wedding dress design and a day dress design - to be made for the show, with the day dress design being used for four matching day dresses for Reno's Angels, used by them for the majority of their scenes. Not only that but I was also asked to make the iconic Palazzo trousers for Reno and her Angels! I had a four page to-do list of alterations and repairs that accumulated in the weeks before the show, but there were so many small bits I wont go into detail, and instead stick with the designing and making!

The onstage photos are provided by Paul Thompson of Oakphotography.

Day Dresses;

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a close-up professional photo of all the Angels on stage together in their day dresses, however I got one of them all together backstage, and two professional photos of them during scenes. My initial design was shorter, and a dark blue that I had envisioned for Erma's character as an evening dress, however making it knee length and a pale blue brought them into daywear. In order to keep them more period specific and to better accommodate the fabric we were using for them I bias cut the dresses, which when standing correctly as onstage in the below photos suited them wonderfully!

Above - Angels in day dresses, front right stairs, third back left stairs

Above - Angels in their day dresses on the left stairs

 Above - Angels in their day dresses backstage

Above, photo during the making process, before the second fitting to correct the length and before the sleeves are hemmed.

The Wedding Dress;

The wedding dress was a labour of love, I absolutely loved both designing and making this dress! A 1930's bias cut, which is something I have never done before but surprisingly enjoyed. Originally I designed this as a V-neck but due to concerns of the performer I changed it to a higher, round neck which was also period and suited better. I originally also designed it with a line of buttons up the front as a mock fastening and point of interest, however after seeing it on I decided to leave it without the front buttons as the clean lines were so elegant.

The Finale! Wedding dress to the right of the photograph

  Our Hope in her wedding dress on set between Saturdays Matinee and Evening shows

 

A little shot of detailing on the sleeve cuff - I added three buttons to each cuff and elastic mock rouleau loops

The Palazzo Trousers;
Due to a photoshoot to promote the show a few weeks before we opened, the white Reno palazzo trousers were the first ones that I made! After examining the way they hung and where they were fitted I decided not to cut them on the bias, and instead to put long zips and where necessary additional Velcro on the side of the trousers. For the front, I found the most effective and simple way to do the front section was to do a stitched pleat each side of the centre line going into the pressed line down the centre of the leg, adding the buttons on to make them look as though there is an additional panel. I repeated this for the dark blue trousers as well, as with the other costumes making each to the measurements of the performer. The white trousers are the only ones with the mock turn ups, made by stitching a tube of fabric to the bottom of the trouser legs and securing it up with a swing catch at each side - yes it is the return of the rare swing catch! The fabric used for the trousers, both white and blue, is the same as the light blue day dresses, and it was due to the photoshoot that we discovered that, unlike the light blue fabric, the white was partially see-through and definitely needed lining! This was simple enough to add and below you can see photos of the white lined trousers on-stage.

Unlike the other costumes there were some fantastic professional photos of the trousers!

 Anything Goes! The Angels and Reno in the Palazzo trousers on stage

The Angels backstage in their Palazzo Trousers

 The white Palazzo trousers just after I finished them, before pressing

As wardrobe mistress, this show was a different animal from Wizard of Oz and Spamalot where the majority of costume changes were for specific songs, instead there were a lot of multiple quick changes for the same performers during single scenes, and quick changes to accommodate the dance sections of certain numbers, and the fastest and most prolific set of changes during a certain scene in the first act, including a change of just under a minute out of two layered costumes to the third base layer, with another layer again added over the top to be stripped out of on-stage! For this I had my largest dresser team yet, with myself and five others on rotation of three or four at a time, who are currently students at the Arts University Bournemouth.

The next Bournemouth Musical Theatre Productions is already chosen, but I will not announce it on here yet as I don't want to ruin the surprise!