The Isabel Series

A few weeks ago I did a photoshoot with Steph. This one came out of reflecting on the fact that I don't have a lot of interesting locations to serve as backgrounds for pictures... but one I do have access to that's kind of neat is my kitchen. It's bright and airy and blue-and-white, one of my favorite color schemes for decor. (I know, I'm an old lady.) I also have lots of blue and white household items to serve as props, and it also goes well with the color of my beloved copper cookware. So in order to take advantage of this, I created kind of a Perfect Hostess character named Isabel for Steph to pose as. I like the act and accoutrements of cooking, though my desire to not make a mess and the slow speed at which the process goes made me cut back on the verisimilitude. Also I wish my microwave didn't love over the stove. Microwaves are not lovely. Aw, well.

These photos are, as usual, minimally edited, just cropped a little and with the color saturation punched up. One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to use a more serious editing program. I'd love to have these with real stark white, very rich blue, and extremely bright copper. Add that to my ever-expanding projects list. They are full-sized so they LiveJournal does not make them fuzzy.

Jared in PMRP!

The Post-Meridian Radio Players just announced their cast lists for their Summer Radio Mystery Theater! I am very proud to say that Jared will be playing not one but two parts across the three pieces featured in this show. In the production of "Gracie Takes Up Crime-Solving," drawn from the Burns and Allen show, he will be playing the womanizing charmer Bill Goodman. Personally I thought his reading at the audition for that part was phenomenal, so I'm really glad he got it. This piece will be directed by usernamenumber*, and I'm so happy for him that he'll get a chance to work under Brad's direction. Additionally, the other day he was offered the role of Sir Henry Baskerville in another of the three pieces The Hound of the Baskervilles. I am a huge fan of that novel, so that's really cool. He'll be in excellent company, too. Congratulations to rigel* for getting the lead in Sorry, Wrong Number, directed by the awesome audioboy. And most of the other cast members are names I recognize from previous productions Jared did with Theatre@First, such as the amazing Leslie Drescher, who was Rosalind and Caroline Bingley. Jared's wanted to get into voice acting for a long time now, and I know he loves working with this group, so I'm extremely happy for him. It makes me so proud to see his name on the cast lists here on the show website.

Jared and went to see the last production that PMRP put on, when they did an episode of Red Shift and a reading of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I'd never been to an audio drama performance before, so I didn't know what to expect. They lined the edge of the stage with microphones and had a row of chairs along the back where the actors waited until it was their time to move up and speak. The sound effects were handled by the techies over the sound system, like in a regular play. The actors were sort of in costume too, which was interesting. I was impressed to learn that oakenguy* was one of the writers of well-written and hilarious Red Shift script. All the actors were very funny and did a great job, but the highlight of the show for me was lediva*, talking in the WEIRDEST sort of strangled-off nerd voice, playing a violently obsessed fan from a race of acid-spitting aliens. It was an interesting experience, and one I will be repeating when I attend the Summer Radio Mystery Theater. It will be July 27th and 28th, both nights at 8PM and then a 2PM matinee on Saturday. I hope you'll join me there for Jared's PMRP debut!

Holmes tech

This weekend was load-in for Sherlock Holmes, and things went quite well for my first time doing this with a group other than Hold Thy Peace. I threw on my work clothes and reported for duty at the Natick Center for the Arts, which is a converted firehouse made into a very cool performance space. We spent Saturday and Sunday setting up the stage, building the set, and hanging the lights. I've picked up the ability to at least lend a hand to just about everything, but I was assigned to painting early on with the seventeen-year-old ASM and our Holmes's two young daughters. I think there may have been some of "let's not give the little girls the heavy lifting jobs" in that assignment, at which I roll my eyes, but I enjoyed the work and feel like I made a pretty solid contribution. Our assistant director Tom said, "I really admire your enthusiasm," to me, as I was jumping in to help wherever I could. That made me feel good, as I really do like tech week-- as I said to him, I want to do and make all these things that aren't feasible in my regular daily life, so tech week is my chance to build stuff or paint stuff and all other sorts of things of that nature. My best contribution here was that I was allowed to do the painting for the flats representing the interior of the gasworks. I was told to make the plain green look like aged, worn metal, so I took a sponge and dabbed it with black paint, then went over that with the other end of the sponge dipped in green paint. Then I smeared the whole thing together, and splattered some white flecks by Tom's suggestion. Somebody with more knowledge and experience will probably have to clean it up a bit, but as you can see from this picture, it doesn't look half-bad.

Grumble grumble grouch grouch

Grouchy. I wanted to finish recording Gigi's parts in the first and second episodes of Tailor of Riddling Way last night, but there was an unaccountable buzz being recorded by the headset. This is a new thing and we couldn't figure out where the hell it was coming from. It was very consistent, so Bernie could edit it out mostly, but it was very hard to get it so there wasn't any distortion remaining in the line. We managed to get all her lines for episode one done, which means we could focus on producing that for release in the meantime, but I wanted to get the couple of remaining pieces of episode two as well. Gigi is going home for the summer at least, and though there is a strong chance she will be attending Boston College Law School this coming semester and will be accessible then, at least for the meantime she will not be readily available. I hate when this sort of technical error happens, because I hate anything in my projects happening that is beyond my personal ability to fix. Also, chances are I'll have to spend money on new equipment to deal with this, which I really, really don't want to do, and I'll have to make sure any new equipment records a sound that isn't radically different from the recordings we've already got.

Also, I hurt my ankle a few days ago and it is getting in my way. It feel fine as long as I'm sitting on my ASS being USELESS, but I have too many things to do and I do enough sitting as it is. Unfortunately the more I walk on it, the more painful it becomes, not all that much but just enough to be really, really irritating. I have dance I want to work on, and this is not helping at all.

We put a ballerina in a tree, and she turned into a wood nymph

I enjoyed doing the photo shoot with Gigi so much that I felt the need to do another one!

Yesterday niobien* was kind enough to allow me to dress her up and mess up her hair and send her up into trees so I could take pictures of her. katiescarlett29* served as my lovely assistant helping me figure out shots. The genesis of this one was that I had these two unusual dresses that I thrifted a while back, the ballerina-like pixie dress and a hundred percent silk empire-waisted gown in shades of green and brown. They are quite pretty, and I've never had a chance to do anything with them. At the same time, I've always loved the way Carolyn looks. She is petite with a dancer's body, a sweet face, and a gorgeous fall of wavy hair. It occurred to me that as she's close to my size, she would be able to wear the interesting things I've bought myself at thrift stores. The fact that she has a background in ballet-- she even was nice enough to come to class with me once --gave me the idea to put her in the pixie dress. Once I decided that we'd do the shoot outside, taking advantage of Carolyn's tree-climbing skills, I thought the brown and green silk dress would both suit her and fit into the environment.

Carolyn is a wonderful model. I knew she'd be fun to work with because of her expressive physicality-- it was what allowed her to bring such life and humor to the pantomime character Audrey in Merely Players. But she is also just a wellspring of ideas for poses, kind of dreamily flowing from one into the next, always finding some way to work herself into her environment in an interesting way. I gave her some suggestions for shots I wanted to see, but mostly everything we captured was her idea, with Steph moving around helping to spot good angles from which to take the picture.

Here's one of my favorite shots, completely unedited. Would you look at how beautiful this girl is?

We went to the area around the chapels on Brandeis campus because it's so pretty. The idea behind the shoot was not as cohesive as the one for Gigi's. I saw her as a sort of fairy-spirit-creature who incorporated the elegant composition of ballet into a more wild natural setting. Steph suggested we call this character "Daphne," which I think fits. I like the strong contrast between those two elements, and the contrast between the more structured, precise poses of Carolyn in the ballet dress and the more freeform poses of Carolyn in the silk dress. It really took advantage of Carolyn's look and physicality-- she could climb the trees, she could do the ballet positions, and she could do them both at the same time! The look of the silk dress and its accompanying style probably worked a little better, but I am happy with everything. Here's a nice one of her in the ballet dress:

With the brown and green dress we also got to include another neat little detail that I think added a lot. I like to save little bits of material from other things and incorporate them into later projects. It can be fun to tell the story of where those pieces came from when showing off the final product. For this other costume, we braided two green ribbons into Carolyn's hair for kind of a wild, messy look. One of those green ribbons was around a box of fancy nuts that morethings5* once so sweetly brought as a host gift to a dinner party I had (which impressed my parents mightily!) The other was a table favor from the wedding of Kerri and Andrew, whose wedding colors were green and brown.

So I'm really happy with this project. I will clean up the pictures a little and post the best ones here and on Facebook. I will be doing more of these in the future, I think, and I would definitely love to shoot Carolyn again sometime.

Performance opportunity

Tossing around an idea in my head. I discovered recently there's a theater around that will rent out a small performance space for private people to put on one-night engagements. I could get a thirty-seat theater with basic tech for an evening for the cost of fifty dollars. It's a small thing, but I am thinking of going for it and putting on some little production just to get something put on. I put in an inquiry about a weekend date sometime in late August or so, to see if it's possible, and maybe get myself on the calendar.

The question would be what to put on. I have been looking at Aria da Capo, a strange and beautiful little one act play by Edna St. Vincent-Millay that I've wanted to direct for a while, but I think it might be a better use of the opportunity to get a piece of my own work out there. Still, what would that be? I only have one one-act that I think is worth putting on and that's To Think of Nothing. Since it's going to be such a small event, I will likely only get people I know coming, and most of the people who would come have already seen that. It'd be another thing if I thought I could get more of the public to come, get more exposure for the piece I'm most proud of, but again, it's only a thirty-seat theater for one night. Probably not going to happen that way.

I have a couple of ten-minute plays, and people do present collections of them as evenings of theater, but I'm not sure I like putting them all together given how little relation they have to one another. But one idea I did have-- so remember how I was musing about how neat it was my humorous ten-minute piece Just So could be cast as men, as women, as men in drag, or women in drag? I thought that maybe it could be played four times in a row, each time with a differently gendered cast, and blocked differently each time to emphasize what was funny about that particular gendering. I would be concerned that it might get boring seeing the same sketch four times, though the piece is short enough (I think it actually runs only about eight minutes) that might not be too big a problem. I would also have to be sure I could come up with blocking that was different enough for each piece to make the point and keep the audience entertained.

Or, if I'm not sure I could do that, I could write something new. Maybe something that even better facilitated being run four times with differently gendered casting. Or just something else entirely. Have to think about that.

Any ideas?

Photo shoot with Gigi and Jenn

God knows the very thing I need is more projects, but I like keeping busy and making neat things, especially when lovely friends and collaborators are involved in the process. Yesterday I had the chance to do just that with and the invaluable help of , and I'm really pleased with how it went.

Both Jenn and I have had the very honor to be the subject of a photo shoot by the lovely and talented , who sets up gorgeous scenarios with settings and costuming, gives wonderful direction on how to model the idea behind the shoot, and has an eye for just the right shots. It was so much fun, and I really admire the works that Haz makes. Though I don't have a fraction of her knowledge and experience, I found myself wanting to try my hand at something along those lines.

I liked the idea of coming up with a little character and plot and setting up a photo shoot to depict that story visually. My first idea I particularly wanted to be the sort where you look at the picture is ostensibly about one thing, but if you examine it more closely to can figure out what's really going on. I will not tell you what my theory was here, because I'd prefer to see who gleans it from looking at the finished series of photos.

For this first time the person I wanted to work with was , who is a talented, expressive actress, lovely to look upon, and always wonderful to work with. I thought she would be perfect for this character, a fancy society lady named Esmeralda. But of course she needed to be costumed for the part, so naturally I turned to the expert in the matter, everyone's favorite Costume Fairy Jenn. She provided two lovely evening gowns, one a clingy dark blue with sparkles all over it, the other a sleek one-shoulder burgundy with a sweeping skirt. They were absolutely the right look, and Gigi looked fabulous in them! Jenn has such a good eye, and not only for that. As we set up the space, wrangling my house into an appropriate setting for the little drama-in-pictures we wanted to tell, Jenn had a wealth of ideas for shots, for tweaks to optimize the image we were trying to portray, and notes for Gigi's acting. And Gigi was as awesome as ever. She has so much talent and her incredibly expressive face is just perfect for getting things across in a visual medium. Also, she is willing to try anything and just throw herself in to the best of her ability. That might be my favorite thing to work with in a collaborator of any kind, a willingness to throw out ideas and try and experiment and see what works. I'm so grateful to both of them for taking the time to lend their talent and efforts.

It took hours, and we wrecked the place with all our props, costumes, and tools, but I learned a lot about what to expect from running a photography shoot. I think I will be a lot more prepared and streamlined in the future. Here's a teaser for you all, a very roughly edited shot from the shoot that I think captures a particularly get moment from Gigi. The rest I'll post once I've had a chance to go through them all, and put them through a real editing program.

Tested and sewing for Titus

Spent my first full day of testing my Lenten resolution to not let things get me down. It was shockingly hard, and that in itself was sort of upsetting. Do my emotions and well-being really crash so easily? Is it really so tough for me to not spiral when things don't go my way? I'm sort of disgusted with myself. But I did a pretty good job of moving forward and not getting dragged down, so I guess with effort I can break this cycle. That's the idea behind committing to do it for the entire forty days.

I've been going in to help with Titus stuff in the afternoons of this week. I have mostly been assisting Walker, the costume designer, with costume construction. He's sewing and otherwise building the entire wardrobe, which I am quite impressed by, but it's a lot of work so I was happy to take a little bit of the burden off of his shoulders. I am actually really glad to have something getting me to practice my sewing, and the chance to hang around chatting with Walker has been pleasant as well. He is extremely intelligent and a very interesting person. Under his direction I made two half-circle capes, a purple imperial robe for polaris_xx*, a toga by attaching two white linen curtains together and putting a stripe of blue silk along one edge, and a red military tunic to be worn by Prentice. I hope to go back in and do more sewing today, and if it's possible for Walker to assign me something I may take some projects home and work on them over the weekend. I've been meaning to work on something anyway, so if it would take some of the load off of him, I would be happy to get the practice.

Festival signups and Titus build

Both of my games at Festival, The Stand and Paranoia, have now filled. The Stand will be interesting because this time it seemed I was getting a lot of female players, so in order to accommodate them I opened up a few neutral slots. Now I have thirteen men and twelve women to play seventeen male and nine female characters, which is more skewed to the female than either of the previous runs were. If any of these lovely ladies are willing to be cross cast that will make everything a snap, but if not enough of them are, I will have to consider what currently male characters I can gender swap. Given the setting and historical time period, it's a pretty gendered game, and while there are plenty of people stepping outside of their proscribed roles, it's usually pretty significant to their plot. Still, that should actually be a fun and interesting challenge should the need arise. Festival looks to be a good con overall; it's a good roster of games at this point, and they're almost all completely full. Well done, ninja_report*, for making this happen!

Build for the current HTP show, Titus Andronicus, has begun. Though the show is still several weeks off, their unfortunately early performance dates mean there is no show in the theater before them, so they were able to move in and get started. I hope the extra time proves to be of benefit to them. I went by the last couple days to lend a hand here and there where I could. I really enjoy helping with build week. With work and school I spend so much time doing mental, sedentary work that my body craves a chance to pit itself against physical work of some kind. And It's not often that I get a chance to build things. Carpentry is one of the many things I'd love to learn if it weren't something that required a significant money and space investment, so it's nice to have an outlet every now and then to experience it. And I like the challenge to my body to do that kind of work.

Travel, Tailor, and tired, so very very tired

Gah, what an intense week. Started my school assignments, had a ton of stuff to do at work, and launched my audio drama project. I have been writing or otherwise working almost constantly since Monday, and the last few days have been especially busy. My brain feels like it's overloaded the circuit and blown a fuse. But it's not done yet. Today I have to drive to the Berkshires for a two-day company retreat for work. I'm not a huge fan of driving and I don't ski, so I'm not terribly excited, but it won't be so bad. I'm packing up now, and am just thankful that the snow quit before today.

Friday we had the read through of the first two episodes of The Tailor of Riddling Way. Most of the cast was able to attend, and we had a nice dinner together before going through the script. I am actually pretty pleased with what I put together. Hearing the whole thing read showed me the weak spots, too, the places that require tweaking and change.

Bernie and I also made our first shot at recording on Saturday. I hadn't originally planned on jumping in immediately, without time to do any planning, but Caitlin is going away to her acting program in Connecticut for the semester. I really, really wanted to use her because she's so talented, so we had to fit her in before she left. She was incredibly patient with our experimenting; our whole team was, in fact. Niel Marsh, the gentleman who plays Porek in Second Shift and the man in charge of audio for Mask of Inanna, kindly dropped by to give us some advice on how to proceed. I was especially glad to have Bernie helping. His technical background allowed him to understand what Niel was talking about, which was incredibly helpful. I don't know how I'd be managing this without him. Niel also brought with him, so she could act off of Caitlin in a scene they had together. I've never gotten the chance to work with Rigel before, and I was very pleased. I think she suits the character very well, and understands the personality really well. rounded out our little team, filling in for the one actor we didn't have present. Everyone was so great, and not only did we learn a lot from the session, I think we got some good material recorded as well. I'm happy to say I think our little experiment is off to a good start.

Merely Players triumphant

Merely Players came to its triumphant conclusion this weekend, and I am incredibly pleased. We filled our little house both nights, and most gratifyingly of all, they laughed! They followed the show and got the humor! Thanks so much to all you lovely people who came out to see it. Your support means a great deal to me.

Plus we got to test the unusual performance format. More than just our show doing well, I am pleased by the proof of concept. People will come to a show with a cabaret-style setup and buy the snacks and have a good time. That is a doable endeavor that will succeed. Hold Thy Peace could use this format for side projects in the future.

Schwartz is a shit theater space, let me tell you. It's more meant to be a lecture hall than a performance venue, so opportunities for tech are minimal-- a presention sound system and a couple of light switches you can flip on and off are pretty much the extent of it. But we chose it because it fit the aesthetic of our show. I didn't want the polished atmosphere of trying to immerse you in the illusion of another world that so much theater aims for. Instead we wanted, as I like to say, all the nuts and bolts of theater on display. Instead of hiding the trappings of a production, we used them as our set dressing-- you could see our cruddy worklights on the side aisles, the props tables and costume rack set out in plain view. And on top of that, the actors were almost never out of sight, always in character off to the sides even when they weren't on the stage. It drove the point of the metatheater home nicely, and created an immersion of another sort, one where the audience almost feels like it's on the inside of the production rather than just being witness to the final product of it.

It wouldn't have happened without our fabulous staff. Sari, Sam, and Elena came in to wrangle the lousy space and equipment into submission, making our technical functions work in spite of everything. The hardworking waitstaff made up of Plesser, Caitlin, Charlotte, Tziporah, and Simon I thank most graciously for lending their time and effort to pulling off this whole "cabaret with concessions" scheme. Rachel is consistently one of the only designers I feel like I can simply hand off the job to, because I always trust her to do good work. And of course there's Bernie, for whom none of my theatrical endeavors would ever get off the ground. He supports me tirelessly with his work and expertise, and I can't express how amazing I find it that he can take the entire technical burden off my shoulders and make it appear, almost by magic, for me every single time.

My cast was great as well. Lenny, for example, blows me away with how incredibly generous an actor she is, having an excellent sense of how to balance the push-pull of onstage interaction. I chose the role of the Fool for her just to watch her GO, and she did not disappoint. For someone so big and active onstage, she really know how to share it, to extend when it's her time such that she holds the eye captive, and to withdraw to allow attention to shift to those onstage with her. She and Andrew have a particularly remarkable ability to read one another, to pick up on where the other is going and then to move to meet and balance them. I saw it first in Othello when they played Iago and Roderigo, but it definitely showed here too. Andrew himself is finally really hitting his stride as an actor, learning how to use his physicality, make effective choices, and convey expression with his voice. I can't wait to see how he continues to grow; this was a very good semester for him, first with an important serious role in Margaret, and then a comedic one in Merely Players.

Steph was so great in her part as the Director. The character was very much outside her acting experience, and she'd also never done comedy before, so the great work she did here really impressed me with her stretching. The character is in many ways one big parody of yours truly, and Steph exaggerated many of my habits and mannerisms to great effect. I loved how she threw herself into it, pushed herself and tried stuff to see what worked. I think she was one of the funniest parts of the show and probably my favorite of the characters.

I love Gigi's acting. I find her to be incredibly expressive and her enthusiasm makes her a joy to work with. She was my first choice for the role of the Ingenue because pretty much all of her previous roles required her to portray a more mature and dignified presence, something she is very good at, but I love seeing people do things that are different. She was adorable and charming, using a lot of her natural energy to bring the character to life.

Ben was just perfect as the Lead. I don't think he's ever had such a large important role before, so the chance to really get into and develop a character helped him immensely. I find it is often the case that an actor with growing room will often make a lot of progress if trusted with a part he can really work with. Ben has a gift for comedy, which helped, but I think it also encouraged him to create a definite physicality and expressiveness in letting him cut loose and really own the stage. I wonder if he can translate that forward leap into drama as well, and I look forward to seeing what he's like in his next role.

I just fell in love with niobien*'s work. The play would not support another person with dialogue, but I wanted to have a stage manager character in there. It was Bernie's suggestion to make the character silent. It turned out to be the coolest idea. People have a prejudice against non-speaking roles as less important, but pantomime is a difficult and dying art and I did NOT write this role to be a throwaway. It takes a lot of skill and effort to convey yourself without getting to say what you're thinking. Carolyn was amazing at that. She's never done a show as an actor before, but she was so enthusiastic and adventurous. Her expressions and her instincts were wonderful, making the character funny, endearing, and totally readable. I'd love to work with her again in a speaking role, but I am so glad that I trusted the difficult challenge of building a character out of pantomime to her.

April made for an excellent Diva. She learned to balance the over-the-topness of her character's humor with the occasional moments that demanded real, serious acting. She had great chemistry with Ben, and they made for some really fabulous interaction. Those two characters are supposed to constantly try to outdo each other, and it's no small thing that they managed to convey that without actually upstaging each other or failing to work together on the meta-level.

I also loved the visual texture provided by the techie characters, Emma, Jenna, and Miriam. Having them support the scenes made for so much additional humor. Their pieces required a lot of timing, energy, and discernment to nail just right, and they did wonderful things with it. This is a very pro-techie show, you'll notice, depicting them as the most competent and least screwed-up people involved. Though make what you will of my choosing to make the stage manager the silent character; some would say I have stolen that technical voice, while others may see it as a a reflection of how she's given up in the wake of so much actor madness.

Thus concludes my second produced play. Here's hoping that things continue on this vein, and I am blessed with such wonderful collaborators who will help me put on my work. Thank you again, all who shared the experience with me, and came to see the results of our labors. <3

Tech week snags

So though it ultimately worked out okay, yesterday's dress rehearsal for Merely Players ran into quite a few stumbling blocks. We weren't able to get into Schwartz until an hour later than we were supposed to because of some rescheduled chemistry class in there. That was irritating, but what really burns me is that we may not be able to use the place on Thursday, our final dress rehearsal. Despite the fact that we booked it, it may have been given away to some other group by oversight. Stupid Conference and Events. I am frustrated because though I was willing to have been set to the lower priority for themajority of the process (I made sure Margaret always took precedence because it was a larger show that went up sooner, as well as the HTP mainstage) but I am not happy to have our arrangements screwed up at this late stage. Thursday is supposed to be the night that we have all of the waitstaff there as well to learn their duties and get used to how we have the spaced laid out, and their schedules are all busy enough that they don't have any time besides what I've already asked them to set aside. And the actors really want to have their Naked Tech, an HTP tradition before every show. I'm not sure we'll have time for everything if we've only got tonight before we go up.

On the bright side, once we actually got going rehearsal went very well. We got the space set up quickly, and the run through was very smooth and funny. We could bear it if we don't get that last rehearsal in. Still, I want that last night, and I want it in the space we're supposed to be in. If Conference and Events works with us, we will hopefully get the space at 9PM, which is technically enough time to do what we need to (and it would let me go to ballet, which I would otherwise be missing.) But unfortunately there's no guarantee we'll get even that. I suppose if we're not in there we'll just not bother with a run through and just talk out the pre- and post-show duties with the waitstaff. Things will be simple enough to execute that they'll be fine with just that. The show must go on, as they so, so you push through the snags and make do. Even if you're steamed about it.

Merely Players tech week begins

Yesterday was the beginning of Merely Players tech week. I was tired going in, due to the fact that I'd spent the weekend finishing my enormous final grad school assignment for the semester, but I always seem to kick into gear once the urgency of the final days of production sets in. I like the energy of tech week, the feeling of everyone involved focusing in on their tasks to put the show together. It doesn't matter how tired I am, I go into CREATIVE ADRENALINE HYPERDRIVE MODE and off we go, getting things done. And of course these Hold Thy Peace one-act side projects have the best tech weeks. The shorter the show and the smaller the cast, the easier it is to get everything prepared ahead of time and hit the ground running once we get into the theater. For To Think of Nothing it was perfect, like a series of well-designed gears clicking together and snapping into place. For Merely Players it's a little rougher due to the space; tech and set has to be minimal in a lousy performance space like Schwartz Auditorium, but we still had to arrange the lights and set the stage to suit our purposes. For us load-in consisted primary of moving our mountain of costumes and props into the theater; a hallmark of the first night of tech week for me is spending an hour beforehand packing all our stuff into my car and feeling so grateful that we can just leave it in the space until we're done. We got three lovely techies, Elena, Sari, and Samantha-- real techies, not the actors-playing-techies in the show --to come and help, and we set cast and crew alike to setting up the lights and putting together the costume rack and seeing that the prop tables were all properly laid out. On Bernie's suggestion we first did a walk-through of all the blocking in the new space. I think that was extremely helpful for the actors to get their bearings, because the first full run was smoother than even I'd hoped. We still have a bit of polishing of the timing and spacing to get down, but by and large they were very comfortable and the run was very strong. I am so pleased and proud of them. If we keep this up, by opening night this Friday we are going to do a fantastic performance of the first actually funny comedy HTP has done since Comedy of Errors my junior year.

Margaret costuming, part III

Here is Ben as King Lewis of France and Emma as his lovely sister Lady Bona. These costumes are simple but incredibly effective. I knew that if the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester ended up in blue, which they did, I wanted the French nobility to wear green. That meant that we put Emma in this very pretty forest green stretch velour gown with elegant criss-crossing straps across the back. She looked very beautiful in it. So we found a green dress shirt at the Garment District for Ben, plus a tie of similar color to give him an edgy monochrome look. I liked the idea of a dress vest to suggest formality and power, but I had a hard time finding one I could use until Simon Cramer kindly lent us his. It came out quite sharp, and I appreciated how distinctive they looked from everyone else.

Here is Barbara Rugg as Lady Gray, the woman Edward of York takes as his wife and queen. To contrast with his black uniform I thought her queenly garb would work well if white. That gave me the idea to dress Barbara, who is a petite girl and the only person in the cast close to my size, in my lovely cream halter Cordelia gown. The gold brocade pattern shimmer quite beautifully under the lights, and I am pleased to see the dress get worn by someone, even if not by me. She holds her baby with Edward, who I insisted be wrapped in white, both for the rose of the Yorks, and to work with this beautiful gown.

Here is Julian Seltzer as King Henry VI. Originally I wanted him in a brown vest and brown slacks; he is a mild, slightly awkward, unkingly personality who I wanted to look a bit frumpy. I couldn't find anything in brown-- and apparently nobody wears vests of any kind anymore --but it turned out to be for the best. Julian came with me to the thrift store to help me find this rather nice but still somewhat unassuming gray pinstripe suit. Julian picked out this tie himself, with added the right touch of Lancaster red without being too sharp. I was incredibly pleased by how the gray looked besides the darker and richer colors around him, maintaining the effect I wanted while still being visually distinctive.

This is Abby Clarke as the witch. I wish I could take credit for her interesting costume, but all I was responsible for was the billowy black dress underneath. Abby herself brought the black cloak, while the orange cape draped over it was Charlotte's idea. It formed a large orange swath over the black and those two orange runners down each shoulder. I love the effect, giving her the typically witchy blackness while adding visual interest with the orange. Also, her orange is the only example of the color in the play, giving her a unique and slightly incongrous touch to suggest the force of chaos and doom that she is.

And that concludes the major costumes I designed! Not bad, huh? I might actually be pleased with this if I'd had a full amount of time to work on this. Came out not half bad after all.

Margaret costuming, part II

This fabulous picture is Prentice as Edward of York, eldest son of the Duke of York, besides HTP freshman newcomer Samantha LeVangie as the Duke of Warwick. I place the two of them side by side because originally I'd planned for their costumes were switched. Warwick switches sides twice in the play based on who he believes is the better claim at the moment and is recognized as a cunning military thinker, so I thought dressing the character in all black might stand well for that turncoat nature. Edward was going to have the camo jacket because the rest of his brothers all had variations on that army color scheme. But the black jacket wasn't fitting Samantha very well, and Jenna pointed out that since it didn't conceal her hips, it wasn't helping her much with making her look cross-cast. So on a whim I switched her pieces for Andrew's, and things clicked. The hat remained, concealing her hair and giving the impression of a military beret. She also seemed to move more confidently in the camo. I wish there was a better logic for Edward wearing all black, but he does become a fairly ruthless king and it does look pretty sharp on him. I found a sharp black dress shirt in club storage for him, and asked him to bring in his silver tie that would look white against the rest of it. It is a nice nod to his white-rose York allegiance.



Excusing the terrible quality of this picture, this is Alex Davis, another freshman newcomer, as the Duke of York, the leader of the white-rose party campaigning for the English throne. This was a military uniform I found complete in the Halloween section of the thrift store. Originally I considered this for Alex because he is one of the biggest men in the cast and he might have been the only person to fit it, but I ended up liking how official he looked in it, and the way it echoed the look of Suffolk's uniform. No one was like to confuse Plesser and Alex, so that similarity was safe. Also when they stood across from each other they create a cool visual motif. His dress shirt was white because of the York white rose sigil. The black tie and black belt finish the ensemble. Again I was quite pleased.



Here are the two younger York brothers, Stephen Badras as Richard, later the infamous Richard III, and Lenny as George, later Duke of Clarence. Dave requested that they look alike. When first went to the thrift store, I scoured to the place for anything vaguely military-looking, including the olive-drab jacket that you see Lenny wearing now. She told me she owned one very much like it and brought it in. Since I needed the same costume for the both of them, we put her jacket on Stephen, because he had stage combat to do and it fit him better. She also graciously took the baggier pair of camo pants for the same reason. I like how the jackets give them bulk, making them look like bigger men, and enabling Stephen to counterfeit a strange deformity to his body that is part of being Richard. Their looks are the reason I had originally planned to have Andrew in the camo jacket as their older brother Edward, so as to visually echo them, but I think it worked out.





Here is Alison Thvedt, a third freshman newcomer, as Rutland, the fourth and youngest York son. She is basically wearing what I wore when I played Fleance in that production of Macbeth I was in a few summers ago. I got Alison a black T-shirt similiar to the one I wore, and those cargo pants are mine, bought for the Fleance role. Since they are not really my style since then I've been using them as paint pants, which explains the splatters you may notice on them. I don't think they make any differnce to the look overall. :-) I bought her a hat like Samantha's, again like what I wore as Fleance, but she ended up wearing it as a background soldier rather than as Rutland.

To be continued in part three!

Margaret costuming, part I

The aesthetic was "vaguely World War I"-- emphasis on the vague --where most people would be in military uniforms. As I mentioned, I tend to prefer to applying a very unified design to a show's array of costumes, here I mostly shot to honor Dave's preferences and keep the characters looking distinctive from each other. To be honest, things worked out even better than I expected, hitting my main goals as well as suiting some of my personal design theory. The cast was good enough to allow me to take pictures for my portfolio, so I thought I'd show them to you and explain what I was thinking.


Here is lovely Caitlin as the main character Margaret. Dave wanted her in red to make her stand out visually and to indicate her powerful personality. Caitlin has a fabulous figure that not many people are blessed to have, which made finding red dresses to fit her a bit tough. The best I could do was a dress of mine I thrifted a while back fortunately made of a stretchy fabric, which I've always liked because of the high-low skirt and the unusual combination of one flutter sleeve and two spaghetti straps on the other side. One of these days I'd like to make a copy of it by hand. The fit isn't perfect on her, but overall I think it's all right. Over her shoulder is my red blazer-- which Caitlin once remarked upon seeing as "very sharp" --to make her seem more serious and offiical in other scenes. The shoes were costume heels I thrifted specially for the purpose, which were sexy and striking but apparently quite uncomfortable. Apologies, Caitlin, you made them work beautifully even so.


Here is Plesser as the Duke of Suffolk. This is probably my favorite costume in the show. I found the jacket and the pants at the thrift store in Waltham, separately even though they match so well. The red collared shirt is from club storage, actually quite nice, chosen because of his allegiance to the red-rose Lancaster family. It also made a nice subtle connection with Magaret The "boots" aren't actually boots, but rather a pair of brown dress shoes under the leather half-chaps I wear to horseback ride. The belt belonged to Plesser, fortunately matching the color of the boots. I like this ensemble particularly because it looks very, very much like pictures of my my great-grandfather in his WWI cavalry uniform. I made the sash myself out of synthetic red shantung, trimmed in yellow braid I had among the sewing notions my mom packed up for me. He looks very handsome, and I don't think I came up with a sharper look for this show.

Here are Charlottte and Steph as the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. It's a little hard to tell in Charlotte's picture because of the weird light, but I fashioned a uniform for her out of a blue blazer and a pair of navy tuxedo pants I found at the Garment District, which made me decide that the color of this couple with be blue. I wanted to get Charlotte a real military dress uniform, but I couldn't find one in any store I could get to in the time I had; there wasn't time to order one online. So I had to improvise. In order to make the blue wool blazer more like a dress jacket, I sewed red and gold braided trim on the cuffs, the pockets, and across the shoulders. More gold fringe like on Plesser's sash was sewn to the shoulders, and a larger version like what you'd find on the edges of a rug went across either breast. At Charlotte's suggestion, three more gold buttons were put on to make it look more like a men's jacket. A white mandarin-collared dress shirt she had completes the look. I wish I'd had time to take in the waist of the tuxedo pants, but otherwise they created the right look. Beside her is Steph in the iridescent blue dress with the cowled back that Emma so graciously lent us. I think it's very flattering on her, and the way it shimmered beneath the lights was lovely. I am very glad they ended up in the blue because it made them stand out nicely against all the olive-drab in court, and because it made for a great moment when Margaret and the duchess faced off and created a great visual of red versus blue.

To be continued in another installment!

Random notes on Margaret costuming

Things go well. I would say we have about half of all the pieces we need, due to a vigorous scouring of the thrift store, club storage, and a raid of whatever might be useful in my own closet. I have found a bunch of military uniforms that will likely serve, though they all will require a little taking in to fit their wearers. Thus is the trouble with thrifting; selection is based on luck and you get whatever you find. But for the stage I know a couple quick fitting fixes; I find adding two darts in the back of a blazer do wonders for taking in across the chest and shoulders. There's also a bunch of cuffs I want to take up, both in sleeves and pant legs. These are minor fixes that I could even do with pins if I had to, but if I find the time to sew them that's probably better. Not bad for two days' work, eh?

Today me and the other two costumers are going to hit the army surplus store. I'm hoping to get the last handful of military jackets and suits there, as well as a few pairs of fatigues and maybe hats. That will hopefully finish off the major, "character-identifying" pieces. After that we would just need supplementary pieces like shirts to go under jackets, belts, and boots. Boots are always a pain, as nobody ever seems to have them and they're too expensive to buy new, so I guess we'll have to do one last thrift store raid to get anything even vaguely combat-like we can find.

I also need just a couple of color-specific things before I can nail done some final piece assigning. I have decided that the king of France and his sister Lady Bona will wear the same color, and that Gloucester and his wife the duchess will wear the same color. It's a small touch of my costuming theory that I can put in. To that end, I have procured two fancy dresses for the actresses arthoniel* and katiescarlett29*, one in dark green and the other in dark blue. The green is a dark forest stretch velour with criss-crossing straps in the back, the blue is iridescent with a cowl back borrowed from arthoniel*, the one she wore to the fancy party. Fortunately both of them fit into both. The deciding factor, then, will be what color military dress uniform I can find for nennivian*, who is playing the duke of Gloucester. I am planning on choosing this with care-- I want Charlotte to look good, and perhaps in solidarity for the efforts she has put into making her male performance, I want her costume to work with her performance as much as possible. I already have a number of other people in green or olive military pieces, and I'd like to have more contrast, so I think my preference is for blue, which means that I'd put Steph in the blue dress. In that case, Emma would wear the green and I will have to find a green dress shirt for Ben, who is playing the King of France. But if all I can get for Charlotte is a green dress uniform, it will have to be the other way around, and Ben will need a blue shirt.

The sizing on those dresses I eyeballed pretty nicely for Steph and Emma's bodies. I didn't do quite so well on another dress I bought, a diaphanous light blue gown with a drape over the bust. It was meant as another alternative for their costuming but didn't fit either of them. I should have known, based on how it fit me. I have an odd habit, you see, that when I'm costuming a show where any piece I'm considering buying I feel compelled to try on myself, even if it's intended for a person of a totally different size and shape from me. I guess the theory is if I know what body I'm trying to fit, I can extrapolate how it might work on them based on the differences between us once I see how it fits on a body like mine. This technique... does not always work. I think the fact that we're used to our own bodies as what's "normal" for us means that we don't always recognize the ways in which we're unusual, or at least not average. I sometimes don't have a good frame of reference for how much thinner I am than average, so if, say, a possible costume garment is a little bit too big on me, I might think it will fit someone who I perceive to only be a little bit bigger than me. Often in reality it ends up that because I am a good bit smaller than an average person, that average person I'm aiming to fit is going to need more than just a little bit bigger than me. Or I'll try to remember how much smaller I am, and think that something that's absolutely huge will be better filled out by a larger person, when in fact they are nowhere near that big. Thus this problem meant that light blue dress would not work as intended. Fortunately it ended up fitting Samantha, the girl who's playing Warrick, and will serve when she's playing a lady-in-waiting in the background. I had not been optimistic when I asked her to try it, and she is a tall statuesque girl, but I guess she doesn't have the same sort of bust or hips that made it unworkable for Emma and Steph.

Which brings me to another thing that always strikes me when costuming. When trying to find things for the best possible fit for the wide variety of the cast's forms, it becomes necessary to assess, and frankly discuss, the shapes of your actors' bodies. This is something that under normal circumstances I don't think people feel it's polite to do. When dressing actors, I will do it out of necessity with no critique or comment one way or the other, and then right after feel a little guilty about it as if I've said something rude. I think it's almost as if you are assumed in that case to be evaluating where it's no one's place to make value judgments about the bodies of others. But even though I must confess I have been known to make those judgments, in this process I have no trouble looking at everyone's shapes dispassionately. You can't really dress people properly unless you look at this stuff. If someone can't fit into a dress because of their hips, I need to be aware of that in order to find something that will accommodate those hips. If someone doesn't have the shoulders to fill out a jacket and they look swallowed by it, then I need a jacket to fit narrower shoulders. Even though in other cases it might be considered focusing on things that might be perceived as flaws, in this case it is appropriate, and without judgment.

Related to this, comparing people's measurements is an interesting way to see the differences in how people are built. I find it fascinating that a six-foot guy can have a 27" inseam, and a five-nine girl can have a 30" inseam. Though it occurs to me that I should have taken slightly different measures. I learned how to take measurements based on seamstress's techniques, which are more useful if you are making the garment yourself than if you are trying to find it in ready-to-wear. Wish I'd measured the men, or women playing men, around the chest rather than just sleeve and shoulders, because that's the usual sizing by which jackets and blazers are sold.

Got a ton done in just a short amount of time. Here's hoping today's trip is equally productive.