Cast List:
Charles – Holden Rounds
Ruth – Naomi Hammond
Edith – Meg Morrison
Dr. Bradman – Cage Baesler-Ridge
Mrs. Bradman – Morgan Case
Madame Arcati – Azlen Moore
Elvira – Madison Gray
Your stage manager will be Ayden Cole
Ruth – Naomi Hammond
Edith – Meg Morrison
Dr. Bradman – Cage Baesler-Ridge
Mrs. Bradman – Morgan Case
Madame Arcati – Azlen Moore
Elvira – Madison Gray
Your stage manager will be Ayden Cole
Costume REsearch
Production Meeting Notes
Wed. Oct 9: Our total budget for the show is $4400 which doesn't include the rights which have already been paid.
We're going to put Elvira in the late 1920's, because the actor's body shape would look great in that silhouette. Ruth in the mid 30's with a bias cut dress because the actress is curvier, and Charles late 30's because the actor's silhouette is better suited to a broader double breasted suit from 1939 or 40. Elvira and Charles were married 5 years and she's been dead for 7. Elvira died of pneumonia but laughed herself to death. Charles and Ruth have also been married for 5 years. My timeline is that Elvira died in Oct. 1929, right before the stock market crash. The present day of the play would be Oct. 1936.
Madame Arcati is going to be played as a fraud with a cockney accent but who is pretending to be Romani and using that accent. We want Elvira to be showing lots of skin and her costume be floaty and diaphanous. She is more flirty and outgoing/outrageous compared to Ruth who is more conservative and rigid. The dress Ruth dies in needs to have long sleeves.
ACT I.i: everyone is dressed for dinner in formal wear, men in tuxedos with black bow ties. Charles, Ruth, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, Arcati, and Edith.
ACT I.ii: same Charles, Ruth, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, Arcati, Edith, and Elvira.
ACT II.i next morning. Ruth and Charles are at breakfast, Edith is serving. Elvira comes in at the end.
ACT II.ii the following day, late afternoon. Ruth is waiting. Edith announces Mdm Arcati. Charles and Elvira come in later from a drive. Ruth goes up to bed, Edith comes to clear up.
ACT II.iii several days later, in the evening, it's raining. Mrs. Bradman and Ruth are waiting while Dr. B looks at Charles whose left arm is in a sling. Elvira. Ruth leaves to go see the vicar.
INTERMISSION (so Ruth has time to change and do her makeup)
ACT III.i a few more days later, in the evening after dinner. Charles is drinking coffee and wears two mourning bands on his arms. Arcati trying to exorcise Elvira; Ruth comes in on the last line. (Ruth has 12 pages of dialogue before she has to enter.) Plenty of time if we want to move intermission earlier in the evening.
ACT III.ii several hours later it's 5am. Charles, Arcati, Elvira, Ruth, and Edith wearing a white bandage on her head.
Tuesday Oct. 15: Had another meeting with Joe about my costume research. He loved the idea of Elvira being in silk pajama pants underneath a very flowy robe. He also liked the idea of Ruth being in seperates in Act 2. We talked about the actor playing Dr. Bradman cutting his hair shorter for the role and then slicking it back. I suggested padding out the actor playing Madame Arcati to make her look a bit older and also give her large glasses.
All the pieces that I'm buying for Elvira, Ruth, and Mrs. Bradman have been ordered and should start arriving next week.
Thursday Oct. 24: Ruth's vests and skirts are too big so I have to send them back and re-order them in a smaller size.
We're going to put Elvira in the late 1920's, because the actor's body shape would look great in that silhouette. Ruth in the mid 30's with a bias cut dress because the actress is curvier, and Charles late 30's because the actor's silhouette is better suited to a broader double breasted suit from 1939 or 40. Elvira and Charles were married 5 years and she's been dead for 7. Elvira died of pneumonia but laughed herself to death. Charles and Ruth have also been married for 5 years. My timeline is that Elvira died in Oct. 1929, right before the stock market crash. The present day of the play would be Oct. 1936.
Madame Arcati is going to be played as a fraud with a cockney accent but who is pretending to be Romani and using that accent. We want Elvira to be showing lots of skin and her costume be floaty and diaphanous. She is more flirty and outgoing/outrageous compared to Ruth who is more conservative and rigid. The dress Ruth dies in needs to have long sleeves.
ACT I.i: everyone is dressed for dinner in formal wear, men in tuxedos with black bow ties. Charles, Ruth, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, Arcati, and Edith.
ACT I.ii: same Charles, Ruth, Dr. and Mrs. Bradman, Arcati, Edith, and Elvira.
ACT II.i next morning. Ruth and Charles are at breakfast, Edith is serving. Elvira comes in at the end.
ACT II.ii the following day, late afternoon. Ruth is waiting. Edith announces Mdm Arcati. Charles and Elvira come in later from a drive. Ruth goes up to bed, Edith comes to clear up.
ACT II.iii several days later, in the evening, it's raining. Mrs. Bradman and Ruth are waiting while Dr. B looks at Charles whose left arm is in a sling. Elvira. Ruth leaves to go see the vicar.
INTERMISSION (so Ruth has time to change and do her makeup)
ACT III.i a few more days later, in the evening after dinner. Charles is drinking coffee and wears two mourning bands on his arms. Arcati trying to exorcise Elvira; Ruth comes in on the last line. (Ruth has 12 pages of dialogue before she has to enter.) Plenty of time if we want to move intermission earlier in the evening.
ACT III.ii several hours later it's 5am. Charles, Arcati, Elvira, Ruth, and Edith wearing a white bandage on her head.
Tuesday Oct. 15: Had another meeting with Joe about my costume research. He loved the idea of Elvira being in silk pajama pants underneath a very flowy robe. He also liked the idea of Ruth being in seperates in Act 2. We talked about the actor playing Dr. Bradman cutting his hair shorter for the role and then slicking it back. I suggested padding out the actor playing Madame Arcati to make her look a bit older and also give her large glasses.
All the pieces that I'm buying for Elvira, Ruth, and Mrs. Bradman have been ordered and should start arriving next week.
Thursday Oct. 24: Ruth's vests and skirts are too big so I have to send them back and re-order them in a smaller size.
Fittings
Painting Ruth's Shoes to match her copper dress
I had three pairs of these T-strap sparkly shoes from Chicago, all the same size. She was wearing the gold pair to rehearse in but they didn't match her dress. Instead of painting the gold pair, I painted one of the blue pairs, since it's always best to start with the complementary color. Copper is orange, so blue is the complement. I prepped the shoes using blue painter's tape to protect the sole and the inside. I removed the buckles. I used a metallic copper acrylic paint and brushed it on the entire mesh upper part of the shoes. I built up layers and let them dry for a couple of hours in between. Then I taped off the mesh uppers and used a plastic Kryolan spray paint for the straps and heel. I am very happy with how they turned out.
Lenghtening Ruth's skirts
Joe and I noticed that even though Ruth's skirt was below the knee, every time she sat down on the very low settee, we were looking straight up her skirt. I had ordered the skirts from Amazon and had accidentally ordered the wrong size originally, so had to go back and order a smaller size of each, so I thought it would be easy just to cut up the larger one and add the extra length to the smaller one. The skirts are plaid, so there's always the challenge of matching the plaids. Also, they are both fully lined with kick pleats at the CB and the lining is sewn in all the way around. I did the Act 3 grey one first, because she was wearing the act 2 orange one at the time. That Frankenstein job took 6 hours total. This afternoon I went to tackle the orange one when I noticed that the two skirts have been cut upside down from each other. The plaids don't match. So I ended up having to completely cut up the second skirt, flip the fabric upside down, and recut the pieces in the right shape before I could add the extra length on. Then I had to deal with the gap left by the kick pleat in the CB seam, so that required a patch job with the leftover fabric and some stitch witchery held in place by a discreet brown zig zag stitch over the gap.
Production Photos
Waco Tribune Herald Nov. 21, 2024
Absurdity propels laughs in McLennan Theatre's ‘Blithe Spirit’
A seance unexpectedly brings back an ex-wife’s spirit with comic consequences in McLennan Theatre’s production of “Blithe Spirit,” which opens a four-performance run Thursday.
Joseph Taylor, provided
by Carl Hoover
Ghosts will visit McLennan Theatre’s Music and Theatre Arts building stage this weekend, but it’s a haunting leading to humor and not horror. The theater will perform Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy “Blithe Spirit,” in which a British novelist finds himself harried by not one, but two late wives. The smaller-scale comedy serves as a transition between McLennan Theatre’s opening production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and its upcoming musical “Guys and Dolls” in February, said director Joseph Taylor. “We can get a little caught up with something that’s new and fresh (for students) although I think it’s a fairly well-known show,” he said.
Coward’s comedy starts when British writer Charles Condomine (Holden Rounds) and his wife Ruth (Naomi Hammond) invite friends over for dinner and a seance with psychic Madame Arcati (Azlen Moore) to create material for a story the author has in mind. Arcati’s muddled seance, however, brings back the spirit of his first and late wife Elvira (Madison Gray), who’s not happy that her husband has remarried. Elvira’s other-worldly meddling crosses a line when she tampers with his car to cause an accident she intends will reunite the two of them. Ruth is killed instead and Condomine finds himself on the receiving end of two feuding ghosts.
Taylor noted that Coward titled his comedy “Blithe Spirit — An Improbable Farce in Three Acts” and took that as an inspiration. “I wanted to play into the title and directed it more like a farce than it’s done,” he said, adding the comedy lies more in absurdity than slapstick action. He toyed with the idea of relocating the play to Texas, but decided to stick with its original setting of 1930s England, which would give his cast the chance to work with “proper British accents and dialects,” coached by MCC theater instructor Kelly Parker.
“Blithe Spirit” opens Thursday at MCC’s Music and Theatre Arts building with performances through Sunday. Tickets are $10 and $8.
Ghosts will visit McLennan Theatre’s Music and Theatre Arts building stage this weekend, but it’s a haunting leading to humor and not horror. The theater will perform Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy “Blithe Spirit,” in which a British novelist finds himself harried by not one, but two late wives. The smaller-scale comedy serves as a transition between McLennan Theatre’s opening production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and its upcoming musical “Guys and Dolls” in February, said director Joseph Taylor. “We can get a little caught up with something that’s new and fresh (for students) although I think it’s a fairly well-known show,” he said.
Coward’s comedy starts when British writer Charles Condomine (Holden Rounds) and his wife Ruth (Naomi Hammond) invite friends over for dinner and a seance with psychic Madame Arcati (Azlen Moore) to create material for a story the author has in mind. Arcati’s muddled seance, however, brings back the spirit of his first and late wife Elvira (Madison Gray), who’s not happy that her husband has remarried. Elvira’s other-worldly meddling crosses a line when she tampers with his car to cause an accident she intends will reunite the two of them. Ruth is killed instead and Condomine finds himself on the receiving end of two feuding ghosts.
Taylor noted that Coward titled his comedy “Blithe Spirit — An Improbable Farce in Three Acts” and took that as an inspiration. “I wanted to play into the title and directed it more like a farce than it’s done,” he said, adding the comedy lies more in absurdity than slapstick action. He toyed with the idea of relocating the play to Texas, but decided to stick with its original setting of 1930s England, which would give his cast the chance to work with “proper British accents and dialects,” coached by MCC theater instructor Kelly Parker.
“Blithe Spirit” opens Thursday at MCC’s Music and Theatre Arts building with performances through Sunday. Tickets are $10 and $8.