Evita Fittings

This week began the epic journey that is Evita.  There is a cast of 34 including teenagers and children.  The average cast member has about 7 to 10 costumes each.  That's only the amount of costumes, the changes are more than that because they repeat a few of those.  We now kiss our free time adios... and get hunkered into the routine of frantically setting up alterations between fittings that last about two hours each.  Today we spent two hours with our Evita and we will have at least another two fittings with her... all I can say is thank goodness she is a delight.  She mentioned that there were a few videos of her on youTube that she can't bring herself to watch... however I decided to look her up and found the video at the bottom... the one good thing about doing a stressful fitting week is that the cast is fun and being with a bunch of theatricals isn't so bad most of the time.

Thank You Google!

I Googled my name and found that I got a mention for my Octopus costumes in a theater review;



It's only one line, but hey my costumes were "a visual treat"

Awesome!

Clothing word of the Day

Since I am doing Sweeney Todd right now I was thrilled to learn This word;

Brought to you via Dictionary.com;

tatterdemalion \tat-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn\, noun:
1. A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.

adjective:
1. Tattered; ragged.

Last time peasant blouses surfaced, in the 1960s and '70s, they were part of an epidemic of Indian bedspread dresses, homemade blue-jean skirts, Army surplus jackets, Greek bookbag purses and love beads, the whole eclectic tatterdemalion mix meant to express egalitarian sentiments and countercultural solidarity with underdogs everywhere.
-- Patricia McLaughlin, "The peasant look", Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, April 25, 1999

Some shop!

I must take a moment to pat myself on the back... my shop is getting to be so organized! This week I finished measuring and tagging all of the blazers...

and the suits...

I separated and labeled the sweaters, the pants, the knit tops...

I made sure the shoes were all on the correct shelves (A Sisyphean task at best)...

Why is all of this super anal work important you ask? Mostly because when you're pulling for a show time is not on your side. If a designer needs to dig through 50 pairs of black pants to see if she can find one pair that will fit an actor, it is actually more time efficient to go to the store and buy a pair that say "38x32" on the tag... then the next designer has 51 pairs of black pants to ignore because none of them are labeled. Pretty soon you have essentially a stock that is a big laundry heap where nothing is useful because nothing can be found. A disorganized stock is about as useful as no stock at all. Thus; I'm pretty pleased with my efforts.

Shakespearian Insult Time!

Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skien of sleave-silk, thou green scarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse thou? Ah how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies, diminutives of nature!
--Thersites, Troilis and Cressida

Does half of your brain hurt?

Check this out; http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=25642

Muddy shoes

Today I had the fun of painting clean pretty clothes into looking like they've been through a week long trip in the catskills with rain, mud, a porqupine fight and the rescue of a bleeding dog... here's my "studio" mid process...

To ruin shoes it requires the following steps;
1. Field research

2. cover the shoes in a mixture of Gesso, and potting mix
3. paint over dry Gesso a layer of Raw Umber acrylic paint

4. Next layer is a Burnt Umber (leaving a little Raw Umber peaking through)

5. a slight smatterning of Burnt Sienna...

Voila! Shoes that feel like new but look Disgusting!

Mold making for Evil Dead

Zombies!

Right now my housemate is working on Evil Dead The Musical, so I've been hyper-aware of all things zombie. Yesterday he spent the whole day making life-casts of the entire cast (he promises a youTube video, totally different than the one below). Attending the session were; the prop master, the set Designer/tech director , a prosthetic's designer, the prosthetic's designer's friend, the prosthetic designer's friend's wife, the Contra Costa Times reporter, the SF Chronicle reporter, the actors, various actor's girl friends and boyfreinds, and the set designer's dog. Zombies are fascinating. Why is that?

Waiting around... (an update)

At times the life of a theatrical is like a long anxious spring break with no money... yep it's called unemployment.  This past week I had cleared for a job that I thought would start right away on.  I attended the first rehearsal and was ready for the designer to tell me "ok lets start fittings on Saturday".  It's a short turn around, most designers are anxious to start right away.  Not so. The designer told me "I want to start fittings next Thursday" leaving me a week and a half that I could have been working off my debts.  

I am unemployed.

I am broke.

I am bored.

I had such a frenzy preparing for this week that everything is clean.  Everything is ready.  I even made myself a summer shirt... 

It's hard to be too upset about an unplanned "vacation" but without any money to do anything in addition to the fact that I had rejected work makes it rather lame.  

On Thursday I got a call to help out for emergency stitching on Friday and Saturday... Hallelujah! 

In a town...

Ok we didn't get the movie voice over guy to do our trailer... but my stage play has a trailer...
wacky!

check it out HERE!

Water water everywhere...

Tech cancelled tonight due to strep throat... sickness is a show stopper whenever there is kissing involved.  Thankfully the evening off allows me to get artsy things done that I hadn't expected to finish.  No time to blog at length... my long dinner is about over.  Hopefully everything will be back on track tomorrow.Above our kick-ass P.A. walks the deck while the producers read the lines and the Stage Manager runs cues with the board ops... can't waste the whole night.

Tech Week

(tek•week) n. Jargon 1. The week in which a theatrical production works with all technical elements and performers in the performance space.  2. a 40 to 80 hour work week where everybody ignores "labor laws" ; I haven't been able to sleep more than a few hours a day but I'm in Tech Week so it is expected.  3. The week in which friends and family of theatrical workers must accept the near to total absence of said theatrical ; I haven't seen my sister for a while, either she was abducted by aliens or she is in Tech Week.

--abbrv. Tech

--archaic. Hell week

Me and my wooden friend; together again.

While studying Costume design in school I was flummoxed by how many designers are terrible at rendering (that's designer speak for drawing and painting your ideas in a semi-technical manner).   Now I understand.  Honestly it is something that isn't necessary all the time.  Last night I sat down with my watercolors and my little wooden model and painted the first full color rendering I've done all year. Often directors are intimidated by completed drawings, as though the ideas were in stone. Often it just takes too long to complete a set of drawings for a show. Sometimes clippings from catalogues and research books are plenty of information. Usually the only reason to actually sit down with your pen and ink is because you are fortunate enough to have a shop building your show. Mostly this is not the case and it is just lil' ol' you (and maybe an assistant) doing the show by rubbing two pennies together hoping they will make a nickel. This rendering was done to help my collaborators visualize what I've been telling them I'm planning. Sometimes it's hard to have somebody show you three pictures and tell you "we're using this jacket, this hat and these pants, only this will be tailored in and this will be painted like this..." in this case it was easier to sit down and draw... like a real artist! I wish I had more drawing and less shopping in my work(sigh). Forgive my reluctance to post my work online. I am happy with the drawing, but it is my professional work and I don't need to give it to the world for free.