Lettuce be gone!

Obsession, sequins, paint, and felt... today I sent them off to be with their new show... Goodbye Lettuce!

Please never come back.

The King of Broadway...

You know that guy... the one who oversimplifies things and pretends to know how everything works and how to get ahead... we in the show biz meet them a lot. 

Lettuce progress...

I've been working on a new (the fourth) lettuce jacket for a kid's show. This incarnation is made with a different fabric than the first and the client requested I make a collar that is more durable... Today I played with a new material called "Fuzz Form". It's a thermal plastic that begins like felt, when heated with a heat gun it solidifies and is sculpt-able... I'm so far very happy with the results and wanted to post a few in progress photos...

It starts out white.

I found the only way to paint it is with Design Master's Spray paint... but it looks pretty nice if I say so myself.

90% done

I am down to minor tweaking to the lining... but essentially the coat is done... the beautiful blue dress was a group effort but I might mention not a small task either. Opening is on Wednesday... oy!

6:27pm Shop update

First blood of the day... for some reason the center back neck is an inch too high. After adding a little padding to the shoulders the bubbles in the back seem to be solved... not sure about the front though. The coat seems to splay out at the hip level. Still scared about the size... can't do much about that until after we fit this puppy though. Looking at this post I see that my hands/nails desperately need some TLC... another day.

5:38pm shop update

main bodyof jacket is together... fearful of how small it seems to be I let the seam allowance out. Also I realize that either I've been calling the actor "Ben" while his real name is "John" OR I have the wrong measurement sheet here.
Troubling

Lacking editing on my netbook I leave you to turn your head...

3:55pm Shop update

This chaos will be a jacket... it will. Pieces are cut. Hair canvas is almost all in place. Center front hem facing has gone AWOL. Tune in as this mess becomes art...

One of these things...

...does not look like a lace parasol...


That's it, just a random internet snafoo that made me laugh. You may continue your regularly scheduled internet browsing.

How to be free of catalogues

There is a danger to mail order and I do a lot of it. I do a show with a nurse and I have to order scrubs. I do a show with a courtesan and I'm ordering trashy lingerie... but then I wind up with a pile of mail order catalogs that don't stop...
Not to worry. All direct mail has to give you the option of being removed from their mailing list. Even your junk mail will have (in teeny tiny writing) an opt out section. For catalogs typically you need to find the fine print section in the middle, like this;
There should be a section that is labeled "Customer Service" "Mailing prefrence" or "Mailing options" and hopefully there will be a phone number to call. Some places only have email options (which I try to avoid because then they also will have your email on file)
Now that you have found the phone number; call it and be patient. Listen to the instructions, you will most often be directed to a real person. Here's a typical conversation;

Operator; Thank you for contacting customer services how may I help you?
You; Hi I'd like to be removed from your mailing list please
Operator; okay, do you have your customer number printed on the back of your catalog?
You; Why yes I do it is {your number here}
Operator; okay I've removed you from the list, you may receive a few more issues because they are pre-printed, but none after that.
You; Thank you, have a nice day!

Be polite, be nice, they have to take you off the list.

Sometimes they will ask you why you wish to be removed (they probably have a little check box to fill out) I usually say that either I am not interested in their product or that I don't like to kill the trees. The environmental reason will typically lead to them asking if you would prefer to receive email. I think it's important to let them know that environment is a concern so I think it's okay to lie and tell them you're already on the email list... sometimes it's true.
Keep it simple, they don't need to know that I ordered four pair of mesh panties for a show because they were so awfully tacky... you're done.
sort of...
As a follow up you might want to write to the Direct Marketing company that has and is distributing your name to every mail order catalog you never want to get. Think of it like head lice; if you catch it early you'll only have a few nits to pick out and you're done, but if you let it go, they'll be everywhere.

Good Luck! Save some trees!

Don't Panic

Or more accurately when your vintage 50's silk dress comes back from the dry cleaners three hours before curtian looking like this;

PANIC!
and then step 2; stop Panicking and take apart the seams so that you can lie what is left of the fabric flat.
Sometimes these things happen, sometimes fabric that looks perfectly sound will disintegrate when confronted with dry cleaning fluid... even pros miss these things on occasion. That said... upon seeing the destroyed sleeve I did have a mega-queasy feeling. This is Bad.
Step 3; gently lay a light weight fabric of a similar weight behind the torn fabric and pin down
Do Not,(Repeat) Do Not use fusible interfacing or stitch witchery... hand stitch with a single thread the patch to the back of the tatters...
Step 4; See all of this mess... I did have to trim some of it away (sob)
Step 5; After the patch is hand stitched place the fabric on a good sewing machine and use a straight stitch back and forth, back and forth without overdoing it...
Step 6; reassemble sleeve and give it a good press with steam.
Step 7; HAND WASH ONLY from now on (holy crap that was scary)

NSFW

Not safe for work... unless this is your work. I had to look for some seriously racy men's underwear today, I feel a little dirty scrolling through page after page of this kind of underwear. It's for work! I swear! I also feel a little bad for laughing at a lot of the cheesy models and funny underwear. (you're not supposed to laugh at a man in his underwear)
We're looking at gingham check things, lace up jockstraps, mesh slings, butt enhancers, package enhancers, waist cinchers... quite a variety.
These three were my favorites of the day;

Left to right;
*Mesh bird print jock strap;
1. who's really going to pay attention to the print that is on them?
2. this is one of the first things that pops up when you click "underwear" on this website and Oh-my I'm still not convinced the stylist didn't just paint his penis red...

*Hello Photoshop! I wonder why they did this... was the real guy attached to this body making a terrible face? And why didn't an editor stop and say "no this looks kinda fake"

*A kilt? really? a kilt?

Ah yes, this is my job and I'm not even making porn-money... this is for a real live play that college students are required to read to deepen their cultural experience. This is for art. Really.

needs more blood...

What does a night gown look like after you have murdered your husband on your wedding night? I think probably very very bloody...

Here is the conservative amount of blood... there will be more tonight I think.

Get thee to work!

"Art does not happen in your plans, or your
strategies, or even your best intentions. It happens in the moment-- in
your risks, your near misses, your improvisation, and your endless
willingness to make it work, even if you're not making it perfect or to
plan. Art is a verb, it is present tense, it is here right now. A...rt
is not a mirror, art is a hammer. So pick it up and get the fuck to
work." --Cera Byer

--I'm currently in a muiti show marathon! Hopefully good fodder for posts, even more hopefully good work that gets done on time with Quality! Wish me luck!

Designer clothing on a theatre budget

Howie-- All of your shirts have alligators on them, you're, it's like you're always in costume
Solomon-- I like my shirts they--
Howie -- You don't even have a personality, you're so...
Solomon -- and it's a Crocodile, it's a crocodile so...

These stupid little crocodile patches are apparently worth $60 each. Really you can find a polo shirt that looks exactly like it except there is no crocodile on it for about $20, so that means that the other $60 it costs for an IZOD shirt must be from these little green creatures. Perhaps they are also spirit guides that will bring you to good fortune and will make you look generally more attractive to the object of your affection... there must be more to it.

Because of these lines in our current play (Speech and Debate by Stephen Karam), I scoured two Goodwills and an Out of the Closet to find these two badly worn shirts with little tiny $60 patches on them. Take that IZOD, I just bought two patches for a grand total of $11! I guess that means I saved $109 at Goodwill. Not so bad.

Carrot

I'm falling behind on trying to put up a post per show... sometimes I really have my head down and I'm just plowing forward. Last weekend I did a re-furb (meaning I had to do over) on a fantasy costume I designed last summer. In the original design I had a sequined top with a sheer green overlay as the "Carrot top" but unfortunately sequins are hard to maintain and they tend to eat fabrics in touch with them... This company needed something Very Sturdy.

Meet Spandex... plain boring spandex... that I cut up, overlocked, dyed and rearranged...

...until it actually looks interesting. I am thrilled beyond words with the outcome!

Some days you get done with a costume and think "wow, I actually know what I'm doing". Which may or may not be true, but in show biz it's important to make believe you know what you're doing, so I'm rolling with it.

Conceptual packing

Here is the wasteland.

The empty desert that is February and March, often January and sometimes April... no work.

Little work.

Work that trickles in as you beg friends to pay you to hem pants and repair pockets...

and sometimes you get to alter Cristo-esque blankets that cover set pieces...



This is the season when one questions the path that has led to art as a career... and pines to tell your younger self "go into biology!" "How about you try computer programming"

Soon all of the shouting about being out of work should result in a tsunami of jobs that (hopefully) will make me wonder why I was ever so despondent about this paucity of work.

(fingers crossed)

New plays are an odd beast...

I recently opened a new play called Oedipus el Rey. The story is Oedipus Rex, transposed onto California Latino gang culture. I've been living with this play for weeks. I read an early draft, thought it a rough read, and slowly as we got to opening I've seen it become a solid show worth seeing. The performers are engaging, the prose is musical and the staging is dynamic. The problem I have with it is that sometimes the transposition is too literal for the action to be fully believable in a modern context. On the one hand if you're calling your play "Oedipus" you had better have the story intact. What exactly is Oedipus king of? The ghetto? The crime business? It's not clear... and finally (spoiler here) when Oedipus puts his eyes out (I will refrain from telling you how it is accomplished in this production via blog post in case any of my five readers wants to see the show) I don't think the motivation is sufficient in the modern context. Perhaps it's a moment of weakness in the play or staging that could be fixed... but the whole end makes me think that this play would be better if we weren't so bound to the Oedipus tie-in.

There are three simple but important things you need for any play. You need a performer, content(like a story, music, action, dance...) and an audience. If you lack one of these three elements you have nothing. Usually additional elements are nice (like costumes, lights, sets, atmosphere...) but you can do a show without them.
This play retells a familiar story so that the audience knows what to expect, they come in knowing 20% of the play. The journey is in the story telling. The audience enters with a fore-knowledge of the timeless issues brought up in Sophocles' Oedipus (human kind's destiny and effort to control it, violence...) hopefully they also latch onto the modern issues it brings up as well (like California's recidivism problem or modernity versus tradition). The trouble is trying to make a modern play equally effective as a classic. Is it possible the play could be stronger without the old Oedipus infrastructure? If so, who would come to see it?
The problem may be that 'Oedipus Rex' is a play over 1500 years old and our little show is less than a few years (If we count all the time it stewed in the playwright's brain). The baby play needs some maturing, but at the same time it's important to get people to come out and interact with it for that to happen.
It is an old problem. Shakespeare and Mozart stole almost every plot they ever wrote a play/opera on top of... it is a brave old tradition to get butts in seats. There is nothing new. Not really.

Rain and Rings

Monsoon season in Northern California and I am out in the middle of it. I've got a meeting at the far end of town. First I find a parking space and trek through the rain. I wore inappropriate shoes, I don't have any other kind of shoes. I don't actually own a single pair of waterproof shoes...
Meeting.
Late.
... and we break before a run through
... back to the car with the winds blowing water into my face...

I had two shopping errands to run on the other end of the city, over the hills and through the Presidio... and driving in this downpour contributes to both a lack of visibility and the increased asshole levels of everybody driving.

My first stop was easy enough, we had ordered a wig, I picked it up... easy.

Second stop was to the more popular end of the Haight Asbury...
and I stop at the cheesy jewelry store... I am on a quest for a size 4 (TINY) ring. I have one hour to find said ring and make it back across town, through the Presidio, over the hill and across the rain swept plains (well parking lot). I must face the cranky shop keeper who doesn't understand why I would want a size 4 ring. He glares at me as though I'm about to shoplift his valuable $8.99 earrings and $9.99 rings... I tell him "I'm looking for a size 4 ring that looks like an engagement ring" he "helps" me by pulling out the tray with the giant glittery butterflies and swirly glass rings. --thanks dude-- 1/2 an hour later I've looked through half of his stock and I've found exactly two rings that look vaguely like wedding rings in a size four... this is the one I chose;



...maybe a little tacky but this character also wears a pink velour sweat suit so I figure it's ok.
I braved back across the city,
Run-through rehearsal.
Back across the bridge
... just enough time to grab a banana and set up for dress rehearsal...

It's been a long 6 hours of rehearsal and driving and I'm rather soaked from the toes to the knees.

I hand the ring to the actress...

she scrunches up her little face...
"um... I'm not gonna wear this, it's ugly"

There is a word in my head right now and it rhymes with "kitsch".

New Years Resolution

Ok... here it is... I don't make resolutions usually... My Goal this year is to make at least one post for every project/show I work on this year. I would like to promise insightful and enlightening material that will blow your mind... but lets just start with a simple goal. One post per show. It may be a good story or it may just be a snap shot... but it shall happen. I hope...

The photo here is from backstage at the Nutcracker last month... it doesn't count for 2010... but be warned; blogs to come.