Blog
Just me talking about costume-y kind of stuff
Updated 8-7-23I got an email from Molly saying that they filed the injunction today. Now we play the waiting game, to see what the judge is going to do about it. In the meantime, while you are waiting, here's a link to the Texas Tribune article about the case against it and how both the Texas Civil Rights Project and the ACLU filed cases. www.texastribune.org/2023/08/03/texas-drag-bill-lawsuit/ UpDated 7-14-23 Happy BAstille Day, Folx!I opened my inbox to find responses to my mass email project: Four theatres sent back what was basically an automated reply saying, we got your email and will respond to you shortly. Michael Meigs, who runs the CTX Live Theatre website responded with, thanks for sending me this, I'll post it on my blog and send it to the guy who runs ATX Live Theatre as well. He wanted to know if I'd sent it to other theatres. The President of Sun City Actors and Theatre Guild, Georgetown, Morgan Fogelman, reached out to say he was going to pass along my concerns to his Board of Directors. But the best response so far was from Molly Petchenik, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, who had gotten my email from Vortex Theatre. Her office is preparing to file a lawsuit to challenge SB 12 as unconstitutionally overbroad and vague, and she wants to interview me, so I spent about two hours on the phone with her this afternoon. Additionally she wanted names of Texas HS theatre teachers to contact for her deposition as well. I gave her 30 names of people to talk to. When I started looking at the list, I was super surprised to realize that exactly half of them were former students. And then I started making memes: Updated 7-13-23Yesterday I emailed an abbreviated version of this post to every major professional theatre in Texas as well as the Texas ACLU. So far I have gotten nothing in reply from anyone. Here's who I emailed: Austin: Zachary Scott Zilker, Shakespeare in the Park Rude Mechanicals Hyde Park The Vortex Austin Playhouse Esther's Follies Salvage Vanguard Theatre The Paramount Bass Hall Teatro Vivo Trinity Street Players Ballet Austin Sun City Actors and Theatre Guild, Georgetown Palace, Georgetown Sam Bass, Round Rock Bastrop Opera House DFW: Dallas Theatre Center Theatre 3 Kitchen Dog Jubilee Theatre, Fort Worth Casa Manana Water Tower Our Productions, Addison Granbury Opera House Texas Shakespeare Festival, Kilgore Houston: The Alley Catastrophic Theatre Houston Ballet Theatre Under the Stars San Antonio: Tobin Center for the Performing Arts The Majestic The Josephine Woodlawn/Wonder Theatre Magik Theatre The Public Theatre Central Texas: Waco Civic Theatre Silent House Wild Imaginings Viva Les Artes, Killeen Temple Civic Tablerock North Texas: Texas!, Palo Duro Canyon Lubbock Community Theatre Backdoor Theatre, Wichita Falls Wichita Theatre West Texas: Viva El Paso! El Paso Playhouse Wagner/Noel, Midland/Odessa The Paramount, Abilene Abilene Community Theatre Miscellaneous: Central Texas Live Theatre (a reviewer) I will continue my emailing efforts with smaller venues, and then extend it to Universities and College Theatre departments. I plan to get the word out to everyone who does theatre in this state BEFORE Sept. 1, when the new law goes into effect. I will continue to update my list every time I contact a new theatre and also what (if any) reply I get back. I've also got some memes I'm working on for a social media campaign, so stay tuned for those. Original PostThe Texas Tribune and other news sources have been following the progress of SB 12 through the legislature. You can read the final version of the bill here. It has now been signed into law and goes into effect Sept. 1st. SB 12 is anti-LGBTQ legislation that criminalizes drag shows and performers. It makes "sexually oriented performances" illegal on public property OR in the presence of a minor" You read that right, it's not in public AND in the presence of a minor, it's in public OR in the presence of a minor, basically criminalizing the state of being a trans person. Let that sink in. Here's a recent article in the Houston Chronicle about how SB 12 is affecting the LGBTQ community. I have been the faculty sponsor of the Gender and Sexualities Alliance on our campus for the last two years. The GSA has hosted a drag show on campus as its main fund-raising venture every spring. We participate in Waco Pride Network's Out on the Brazos event every fall. We support all our trans and non-binary students both on and off campus. At this point I am afraid for what the future holds for the state of our organization and the safety of our LGBTQ students this next school year.
If that wasn't bad enough, no one in the Texas theatre community seems to be talking about the possible ramifications on our profession, so I took the afternoon to write down all of the ways that this piece of transphobic legislation may impact our entire entertainment industry, focusing specifically on live theatre. We need to be concerned with the vague language of the bill as well as the punishment aspect of it being a criminal offense and carrying a hefty civil penalty--$10,000 for the offending business and $4000 for the performer. They've taken out the language that specifically mentions drag but replaced it with this incredibly vague phrase: "sexually oriented performances" which are illegal on public property OR in the presence of a minor" and goes on to state that 'Sexually oriented performance' means a visual performance that: " (ii) a male performer exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience". This bill makes whole categories of plays and musicals illegal to perform. Here are some examples: 1. Shows that are about drag performances: KInky Boots, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, La Cage Aux Folles, Rocky Horror Show, Victor/Victoria. 2. Shows that use cross-dressing as a plot device: Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Twelfth Night, Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It, Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Cymbeline, Servant of Two Masters, Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Charley's Aunt, Torch Song Trilogy, Stage Beauty, M. Butterfly, Les Miserables, Babes in Toyland, Scarlett Pimpernel, Sunset Boulevard, The Producers, Hairspray, Spamalot, Rent, Clue the Musical, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Anything Goes, Die Fledermaus, La Strada, Three Musketeers, Chicago, Shipwrecked, Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) to name a few. 3. Shows that feature anything "that appeals to the prurient interest in sex". This wording leaves the judgement call up to the interpretation of the audience. What one audience member may view as tame, another person may view as lewd. So we can't have the Hot Box dancers in Guys and Dolls, the KIt Kat Club in Cabaret, Miss Mona's girls in Best Little Whorehouse, Reno Sweeney and her Angels from Anything Goes, Philia and the rest of the courtesans in Forum, The Full Monty, the entire cast of Follies, Funny Girl, and Chicago, as well as anything about sex workers in general like Fantine and the Lovely Ladies from Les Miserables, Therese Raquin, "Bring on the Men" from Jekyll and Hyde, MIss Saigon, Sweet Charity, Moulin Rouge, Mimi from both La Boheme and Rent, as well as any consensual sex scenes in any play like Romeo and Juliet, Same Time Next Year, Dangerous Liaisons, Tartuffe, Lysistrata etc... and of course there can be no plays about rape or sexual abuse like Phaedra, Anything, Really, Really, How I Learned to Drive, Stet, Oleander, Measure for Measure, Man of La Mancha, Extremities, Rape of the Sabine Women, Blackbird, Consent, Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, etc... 4. Gender blind casting is something we do at MCC all the time, especially in the opera, mainly because we never have enough men to fill all the male roles. Here is a list of every show we've done in the last 25 years that has included at least one (if not more) actors playing a role that was the opposite of their gender assigned at birth: Addam's Family, Puffs, No No Nanette, Mikado, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice in Wonderland, The Emperor's New Clothes, Hansel and Gretel, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Fortinbras, Much Ado about Nothing, Pirates of Penzance, Daughter of the Regiment, Imaginary Invalid, Henry V, Once Upon a Mattress, Magic Flute, MIdsummer Night's Dream, Treasure Island, and Appointment with Death. There are probably more instances of women playing men in the chorus but these were the ones where it was a lead character. 5. Shows set in any period where men commonly wore tights, heels, wigs, and makeup. Everything written before 1800. All plays by Shakespeare, Moliere, Wycherley, Racine. Hamilton and any other plays about our founding fathers. It could be extended to include any Greek, Roman, or Byzantine plays where men wore "dresses", as well as Egyptian plays were men wore skirts and Scottish plays such as Brigadoon where men wore kilts. It would also not allow directors to set non-period plays in those periods. Additionally, would male actors be allowed to wear makeup or wigs or have long hair? Would female actors be allowed to wear pants and have short hair? 6. The casting of trans or non-binary actors unless they were cast and costumed according to their sex at birth. And this is just how it would impact LIve Theatre. 7. What about the Comicon and Renfaire community? No more cosplaying characters different from your sex assigned at birth. I guess I have to retire my Robin and Doctor Who costumes. My daughter dressed as Penguin one year, she won't be able to do that again. My son always dresses in Wizard robes (no pants) so that's out. My husband can't wear his ancestral kilts. 8. It could also extend to what movies can be shown in theaters, which would have all the same prohibitions on subject matter, time period, costumes, makeup/hair, and casting choices as live theatre. 9. And don't forget the Live Music scene. No more sexy barely dressed female artists: Madonna, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Niki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Shakira. No more hair metal bands with men in tight spandex pants, long hair, and makeup-- KISS, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison, Whitesnake, , Elton John. Just to be safe no singing any songs about sex or wearing sexy clothes while performing or do any sexually provocative movements while performing. Twerking would be definitely out. No more Elvis impersonators, Glee Clubs, or A Capella Groups. 10. It would affect sportsball too: Farewell to Super Bowl halftime shows. Goodbye Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. No more high school and college cheer squads, dance teams, drill teams, color guard, and twirlers. 11. Don't forget the whole array of restaurants with scantily clad, large-breasted wait staff--I'm looking at you, Hooters. No more mimosas at Drag Brunches, birthday parties at Magic Time Machine, or turkey legs at Medieval Times. 12. Not that I'm a particular fan of strip clubs, but those are all illegal now too. Remember it's not in public AND in front of a minor, it's in public OR in front of a minor. So goodbye to any Bachelorette parties at Chippendale's; I've never been, but now I'll never get to. Feel free to comment and/or link to my blog on all your social medias.
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I have always wanted to go to New Orleans. I was supposed to go for New Year's Eve 1999 for the "Y2K Debacle" with my best friends and former college roommates who were from Louisiana, Monique and Heather, to meet our other friend from college, Sam, who actually lived there and was going to show us around and take us to all the great places and make sure we stayed safe because he was a guy. But then my mom had to have a hysterectomy to remove a benign bowling ball sized tumor in her uterus right before Christmas. So I went to Austin instead of New Orleans and instead of exploring the French Quarter, I got to do her Christmas shopping for her at Walgreen's on Christmas Eve. After the surgery, was even more fun. Instead of getting Hurricaness at Pat O'Brien's, I got to insert catheters into her swollen urethra so she could pee, and instead of going to a drag show on Bourbon Street, I got to rent movies from Blockbuster so she could fall asleep on the couch halfway through. My step dad, Joe, and I eventually gave up picking movies that she wanted to watch and just rented movies we wanted to watch because we were the ones who stayed awake to finish them. Joe was an ex-Navy man, with a boat and a vision. He was a survivalist who had taken the whole Y2K thing seriously. He had invested in solar-powered appliances, as well as a generator, and had also amassed gallons of gasoline, sacks of rice and beans, cans of food, and other non-perishables, and had been storing it all in the garage. Had every empty bottle, jar, and glass in the house filled with water. There was so much safety gear, food, and other stuff they could no longer park their cars in the garage. On New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight...the world did not end, as you probably already know. So I went to bed that night still mad that I wasn't in New Orleans with my friends. When Rob and I got married in 2010, he promised me that he'd take me to New Orleans one day since he'd been several times and I'd had my New Orleans dreams crushed. It took 13 years, but we finally got there. I made a bucket list of all the things I wanted to do while we were there. It was four days three nights and there were so many things I wanted to do that we could really only accomplish a handful of them. I wanted to go during Spring Break, so it wouldn't be so damn hot, but they didn't have any rooms available then, so we had to push it back to June. It shouldn't have been so hot already, thanks global warming and the heat cell that was stuck over the South that week. Nothing went to plan, of course, but we made the best of it and managed to make it home safely without dying of heat stroke, so I call that a win. List of things I wanted to do but didn't get to do: Eat beignets and drink coffee at Cafe du Monde. Go to the French Market. Tour St. Louis #1 to see Marie Laveau's grave (Glapion Family Crypt), and Delphine Lalaurie find a grave $25 each for the tour. Closed to public, you have to be on a tour to get in. Lafayette #1: Yellow fever victims. Open to the public. Tour the Garden District. Drink a Hurricane at Pat O'Briens. Ride the streetcars. Eat at Coop's. Go to Jefferson Variety Store. Visit Gator Chateux: a wildlife rescue in where you can pet a baby alligator. You have to do this on the way to N.O. because it's in Jennings which is right after Lafayette. NO is still 3 hours away. If you try and go after you leave NO, you probably won't get there before they close. Things I did get to do: Visit the Mardi Gras Costume Museum: St. Louis Cathedral French Quarter and Bourbon Street. Night Haunted Tour Sazerac House Tour Drink Absinthe Jean Lafitte's Old Absinthe House $20 for one drink. Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo See a real drag show New Orleans Museum of Art: free because of reciprocal museum membership with DMA. Did that first thing. It was great. Got there an hour early and took 99 photos before the tour even started. Our MC was awesome. She sang, danced, and was super nice. She suggested another museum that we wanted to go to but it was expensive to get in and we were already broke. A couple of days later we were walking in the French Quarter and she was driving home after work and noticed us on the street and stopped her car to ask us how we were enjoying our vacation. That's a first. Haunted History Walking Tour $21 each. "New Orleans Ghost Adventures Tour" the only historically accurate tour. Our guide was drunk but he still knew his stuff and was hilarious! We had a great time and learned so much history. It was even better than the Ripper tour we did in London, but only because all the locations we were there to see were actually still there and hadn't been destroyed or built over by gentrification like Whitechapel. Our destinations included: Jackson Square Faulkner's House Pirate Alley Lafitte Blacksmith Bar The Old Absinthe House LaLaurie House Mayfaire Witches House The Ursaline Convent Hotel Monteleone Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo The Vampire Cafe The Ladies of Oz Drag ShowThe only bar on Bourbon street that is owned by a trans woman. They celebrated their 30th anniversary this year. Drag shows every Wednesday and Sunday nights, excluding Ash Wednesday. St. Louis CathedralAlthough we are not Catholic, we do love ourselves an old cathedral and St. Louis is the oldest cathedral in North America, built in 1718. It was named for and dedicated to King Louis IX of France who was canonized in 1297. Anne RiceI have been a big fan of Anne Rice since I read Interview with a Vampire in high school. Back then, there was talk about making it into a movie and casting Rutger Hauer as Lestat, but that never materialized. After that, I read every Vampire novel as they came out and the Mayfair Witches novels, and the other stand alone books. I tracked down the erotica she'd written under a pseudonym. Years later, I even bought the Jesus ones just to see what they were all about and although I still have them, I have yet to actually read them. When I was a senior in college, she was doing a book signing in Houston to promote The Body Thief, which I'd already bought and read. I had to write a paper for my philosophy final that weekend so instead of going myself, I gave my copy to my roommate, Danette, who was also in my philosophy class and also had to do her final paper that weekend, but who had chosen to go to the book signing instead to meet our hero. I gave her $20 for gas since I couldn't/wouldn't go with her, for her trouble. When Danette got there, she was forced to buy me a new copy of the book with my gas money in order to get it signed, because what is a free book signing event for besides selling copies of the book? (We were so naïve back then) Anne said some very nice things to Danette about her hair and signed both of our brand new books. Cut to years later. I'm in graduate school in Long Beach, CA. I'd just moved there and was exploring the local mall's bookstore. Lo and behold as I was browsing the sci-fi shelves, a worker bee was setting up a table for a book signing and the author was just getting settled in. No one else was in the store yet. You guessed it, it was Anne Rice promoting Memnoch the Devil! I just had to tell her the story of the earlier book signing that I forsook to do my philosophy final instead. That just tickled her pink. She said that I definitely did the right thing by doing my philosophy final instead. Then the worker bee kicked me out because the store was closing to get ready for the book signing. So when Anne died in 2021, I felt all the feelings. Anne's Rice's house in the Garden District 1239 1st Street Metairie Cemetery: Anne Rice's Grave New Orleans Museum of ArtThere is no parking lot here. You just have to park on the side of the road, but at least it's within the museum grounds. There is a huge sculpture garden that we did not go see because it was already too hot. We got in for free because we are members of DMA and they have a reciprocal agreement. SNAP recipients also get in for free.
The Crown to Couture exhibition was advertised in the cafeteria of the Tower of London. I looked it up and it was free if you had the London pass but you still had to email for a ticket because it was a timed entry and the website said it might take 2-3 days to get a response. I took a chance that it would all work out, so I emailed them on Tuesday that we wanted tickets for Thursday and I got a response back that night. We took the Tube to Kensington but then had to walk through Hyde Park and then Kensington Gardens all the way to the Palace. I didn't remember the walk being so very long to get there. Plus it was hot that day, even for a Texas girl. We had to stop a lot and rest. When I got home I looked up the blog I'd written about our last trip, which you can read here and we didn't get to Kensington that way. We did the Royal Albert Hall tour first which put us halfway there already. We should have gotten off one Tube stop later. Anyway Kensington Palace is wonderful all by itself. Last time there was a Diana fashion exhibition that we also went to. I was hoping to get two more Cornettos like last time in honor of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but we couldn't find anyone selling them this time. "CRown to Couture" Kensington PalaceHere's a video reviewing the exhibition. Big BenBig Ben was being renovated last time we were here and was completely covered in scaffolding. It was really nice to see him all shiny and new this time. Here's a documentary that the BBC did on the renovation project, full of interesting facts and behind the scenes stuff. For example, I did not know that Big Ben is actually the name of the largest bell in the tower, whose name is actually The Elizabeth Tower. ParliamentThere was a protest going on right in front. We saw a couple of the guys with their drums on the Tube from earlier in the day, who were participating. I looked it up when we got back to the hotel. It was the 14th anniversary of the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka. Here's an article from the Tamil Guardian where you can read all about it. Although Parliament officially recognized the human rights violations committed by Sri Lanka as genocide in 2019, four years later the Tamils have yet to receive justice for their families.
The Golden HindeThe Golden Hinde was the ship that Sir Francis Drake sailed to circumnavigated the world. Like the Globe Theatre, the original has been gone for centuries. It took another American, Art Blum from San Francisco, to commision a replica ship. It took 3 years of research to make sure that it would be historically accurate using only original materials and methods to do so. The video below is from 1973 and captures the whole process. This year was the ship's 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, the video owners won't let anyone share or embed their video, so you have to click on the link to watch it directly on YouTube. It's just 20 minutes long, but it's well worth it. This video was made during the Pandemic and features an interview with Anthony Lewis, an expert on the history of the actual Golden Hinde. It is a surprisingly small ship compared to what I was expecting. It is amazing to me that this craft actually did sail around the world in 1974, just like the original Hinde did in 1577. The CLink PrisonFrom the website: The Clink Prison dates back to 1144 making it one of England’s oldest and most notorious prisons. Positioned in the heart of modern-day Southwark and built on the original site, The Clink Prison Museum presents the scandalous truth of Old Bankside through a hands-on educational experience. There are opportunities to view archaeological artefacts, experience the sights, sounds and smells of the prison, handle torture devices, and to view and hear all about the tales of torment and many misfortunes of the inmates of the infamous Clink Prison. Spanning for over 600 years, it witnessed a remarkable amount of social and political change in England, and thus housed a multitude of sinners throughout its existence, including debtors, heretics, drunkards, harlots, and later religious adversaries. Positioned in the heart of modern day Southwark, the prison was situated in an area that has long been associated with more raucous, vivacious and unruly behaviour; it was the louder, ruder and wickeder neighbour to The City, and a place where Londoners sought entertainment. The TAte ModernLast time we were here, we only visited the Tate because we were in urgent need of a toilet, and we didn't have time to stick around and see anything. So this time, I made sure that we would do that. From the website: Entry to the gallery is free – there’s no need to book. Booking a ticket is recommended for exhibitions but some tickets may be available at the door. Members enjoy unlimited free entry to exhibitions with no need to book. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, however, still requires a free Members ticket, given the show’s special and intimate scale. Tate Modern has over a hundred years of art, from modernism in the early 1900s, to exciting works created today. This includes paintings, sculptures, and more made by artists all over the world such as Pablo Picasso, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and Jenny Holzer. Experience Tate’s iconic Turbine Hall. In the Natalie Bell Building you can see how artists create new ideas. In the Blavatnik Building you can explore the underground Tanks, dedicated to performances, installations and video works. Globe Theatre TourWe toured the Globe last time as well, but the exhibition has changed since then. To see what it looked like last time, you can read all about it here. From the website: In our brand-new, walk-through exhibition space, you’ll be immersed in the sights, sounds, and secrets of Shakespeare’s London, travelling through over 400 years of fascinating history. You’ll be able to relive some of our most iconic shows with seasonally curated displays, and even have the chance to get ready for the stage yourself with interactive costumes and props. Venture into the Globe Theatre itself where our expert Guides bring to life the thrilling story of our iconic wooden ‘O’. Hear how the original 1599 theatre survived the plague, fire and political oppression and rose again in the 1990s as part of one man’s radical vision. Wonder at its craftsmanship and imagine how thousands of Londoners once packed in to see the greatest actors of the day. All tours are in English and suitable for all ages. Information sheets are available in a number of languages. We are an open-air theatre and tours go ahead in all conditions so dress for the weather. MIdsummer Night's DreamCheck back here for more info Today was our leaving day and frankly I was very glad to be leaving Paris. Sarah Bernhardt ExhibitionSarah Bernhardt was a French actress famous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I don't know why the train station had an exhibition on Sarah Bernhardt. Maybe they put it up for her 100th Death Day anniversary in March and just left it up. I don't read French, so I couldn't tell you. I did take photos of all the text that was in the exhibit, so if any of you actually read French, I'd love to know what it all says, especially the quotes. If you don't know anything about Sarah Bernhardt, I've included some highlights of her "stranger than fiction" life/career courtesy of my extensive research on Wikipedia. After doing more research, I learned it was advertising this exhibition: "Sarah Bernhardt: And the woman created the star" at the Petit Palais Museum which opened in April and runs through August. I downloaded the English version of the press kit which is great, but it doesn't have the translation of the pull quotes, so I still have no idea what they say.
Sarah Bernhardt born Henriette-Rosine Bernard 22 October 1844 – 26 March 1923 Born to a Dutch Jewish mother who was a high class courtesan with an elite clientele which included the Duke Charles de Morny, who was the President of the French Legislature and Napolean III's half brother. de Morny was not Sarah's father, her father was a wealthy lawyer whose identity was a mystery for years. Her mother sent her off to boarding school when she was 7. Her father's family paid for her Convent education when she was 10. She wanted to be a nun but was accused of sacrilege when she performed a full Christian burial with procession and last rites for her pet lizard. She had her first role in Clothilde as Queen of the Fairies in the school play in which she had a very dramatic death scene. When her father died, de Morny suggested to her mother that Sarah become an actress. He took her to see her first professional play at the Comedie Francaise with Alexander Dumas pere when she was 16. They saw Racine's Britannicus and she sobbed so loudly that she disturbed the rest of the audience, which upset Morny but delighted Dumas, who got her an audition at the Comedie Franciase. She was accepted and studied there for two years. She quit the theatre and ran off to Brussels to take a lover and ended up having an affair with the Prince Henri de Ligne and got pregnant. She gave birth to her only child, Maurice, without telling the Prince that she was pregnant. She came back to Paris to work at the Theatre de L'Odeon, the second most prestigious theatre after the Comedie Francaise, where she played Cordelia in King Lear. She continued to charm audiences for the next six years receiving many proposals of marriage and expensive gifts from her many admirers. During the Franco-Prussian war she converted L'Odeon into a hospital and tended to wounded soldiers. assisting with amputations and other surgeries. When the "hospital" ran out of coal, she burned scenery and props to keep the patients from freezing. After the war she returned to the Comedie Francaise and played all the most challenging roles written by France's most famous playwrights, Racine, Voltaire, Hugo,and Beaumarchis. While the Comedie was being remodeled she toured London and the United States and played to full houses and in private homes. After her first performance in New York, she made 27 curtain calls. She did 157 performances in 51 cities and earned $194,000 in one year; that's six million in today's dollars. Back home she leased a 1,700 seat theatre from the city of Paris for a 25 year term. She renamed it the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt. She staged new plays that were written just for her by Sardou, Hugo, Rostand, Corneille, and others. This is where she played her most famous roles: Jeanne D'Arc, Phaedra, Theadora, Camilla, Dallia, The Samaritan Woman at the Well, and the Melancholy Prince himself, Hamlet, in a version that was specifically adapted for her. She actually became quite famous for playing male roles and received both praise and criticism for it. She employed Alphonsa Mucha to design all her theatre posters and was the first person to sell them as souvenirs. After her death, her son Maurice continued to run it. During the Nazi occupation of Paris, the Germans renamed it because of her Jewish heritage, but once Paris was liberated, the French people changed it back. It kept her name until 1968 when it was changed to Theatre de la Villes and still operates to this day. On her second US tour, she was not allowed to perform on any stages in Texas because they were all owned by a very powerful theatre syndicate, so she performed in circus tents and skating rinks instead. She went down to South America for the last leg of the tour, doing a revival of La Tosca, a play written by Sardou specifically for her, where her character bravely jumps to her death in the Tiber at the end of the show. Sarah did her own stunt by landing on a mattress hidden by some scenery. On the last date in Rio de Janiero, the mattress was positioned incorrectly and she landed on the stage instead hitting her knee on the floor. She refused to see a doctor and sailed home to Paris instead. By the time she arrived her knee was better but the French people were angry with her for leaving to perform abroad for all that filthy foreign lucre, so she was offered no roles. She went to England again and performed for Queen Victoria and Prince Edward, then returned to Paris in time for the Bastille Day celebration in which she recited La Marseillaise, dressed in a white robe with a tricolor banner, and at the end dramatically waved the French flag. The audience gave her a standing ovation, showered her with flowers, and demanded that she recite the song two more times. (Click here for a short history of La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, including the lyrics in both French and English.) She toured every summer while her own theatre was closed, raking in enough money to keep her theatre afloat for the rest of the year. She did a total of eight US tours and many more European tours and continued to play to packed houses right up until the outbreak of WWI. She hurried back to Paris only to realize that her earlier untreated knee injury in Rio de Janeiro had finally caught up to her and she had developed gangrene. The surgeon was forced to amputate her leg up to the hip. She refused to use a prosthetic leg, crutches, or a wheelchair to get around and instead hired two handsome and strong men to carry her around on a gilt sedan like Cleopatra. She continued to perform despite the amputation, traveling to soldiers on the battlefield to entertain the troops. Another famous French actress, Beatrix Dussanne, described her performance: "The miracle again took place; Sarah, old, mutilated, once more illuminated a crowd by the rays of her genius. This fragile creature, ill, wounded and immobile, could still, through the magic of the spoken word, re-instill heroism in those soldiers weary from battle." She sailed across the Atlantic despite the threat of German submarines, to perform in the US, but immediately set sail for Paris the day the Armistice was signed. She died of kidney failure, while preparing to perform Cleopatra. 30,000 people attended her funeral. She was 79 years old. Rocky HOrrorGreat show! More opinions to come. I should start with the information that although we were seeing this show at The Opera Bastille, it was an entirely brand new building, all shiny glass and metal with not even one brick left of the Bastille Prison that used to occupy the site in 1789. No, I didn't know that there was nothing left of the prison before I started doing research for the trip. So I was super sad to find that out. Once I saw the opera house, I was even more disappointed that it looked nothing like the fortress. I know, I'm weird. So here's some background information about the original fortress and its astonishingly benign history. The Bastille was originally built in the 14th C as a fortress but quickly became a prison for the wealthy/aristocratic people who had offended the king. Under Louis XIV, prisoners were numerous but well-treated. Excerpted from Wikipedia: "By Louis's reign, Bastille prisoners were detained using a "lettre de cachet", "a letter under royal seal", issued by the king and countersigned by a minister, ordering a named person to be held. Louis, closely involved in this aspect of government, personally decided who should be imprisoned at the Bastille. The arrest itself involved an element of ceremony: the individual would be tapped on the shoulder with a white baton and formally detained in the name of the king. Detention in the Bastille was typically ordered for an indefinite period and there was considerable secrecy over who had been detained and why. Although in practice many were held at the Bastille as a form of punishment, legally a prisoner in the Bastille was only being detained for preventative or investigative reasons: the prison was not officially supposed to be a punitive measure in its own right. The average length of imprisonment in the Bastille under Louis XIV was approximately three years." "Contrary to its later image, conditions for prisoners in the Bastille by the mid-18th century were in fact relatively benign, particularly by the standards of other prisons of the time. The typical prisoner was held in one of the octagonal rooms in the mid-levels of the towers. The calottes, the rooms just under the roof that formed the upper storey of the Bastille, were considered the least pleasant quarters, being more exposed to the elements and usually either too hot or too cold. The cachots, the underground dungeons, had not been used for many years except for holding recaptured escapees. Prisoners' rooms each had a stove or a fireplace, basic furniture, curtains and in most cases a window. A typical criticism of the rooms was that they were shabby and basic rather than uncomfortable. Like the calottes, the main courtyard, used for exercise, was often criticised by prisoners as being unpleasant at the height of summer or winter, although the garden in the bastion and the castle walls were also used for recreation.. ."The medical treatment provided by the Bastille for prisoners was excellent by the standards of the 18th century; the prison also contained a number of inmates suffering from mental illnesses and took, by the standards of the day, a very progressive attitude to their care." Card games and billiards were played among the prisoners, and alcohol and tobacco were permitted. Servants could sometimes accompany their masters into the Bastille, as in the cases of the 1746 detention of the family of Lord Morton and their entire household as British spies: the family's domestic life continued on inside the prison relatively normally." The myth of Voltaire's The Man in the Iron Mask grew out of this period. Under Louis XV, the Bastille began to change what type of prisoners it held. "The Bastille was essentially a location for imprisoning socially undesirable individuals of all backgrounds – including aristocrats breaking social conventions, criminals, pornographers, thugs – and was used to support police operations, particularly those involving censorship, across Paris. Under Louis XVI, "Between 1774 and 1789, the detentions included 54 people accused of robbery; 31 of involvement in the 1775 Famine Revolt; 11 detained for assault; 62 illegal editors, printers and writers – but relatively few detained over the grander affairs of state. Many prisoners still continued to come from the upper classes, particularly in those cases termed "désordres des familles", or disorders of the family. These cases typically involving members of the aristocracy who had, as historian Richard Andrews notes, "rejected parental authority, disgraced the family reputation, manifested mental derangement, squandered capital or violated professional codes." Their families – often their parents, but sometimes husbands and wives taking action against their spouses – could apply for individuals to be detained at one of the royal prisons, resulting in an average imprisonment of between six months and four years. Such a detention could be preferable to facing a scandal or a public trial over their misdemeanours, and the secrecy that surrounded detention at the Bastille allowed personal and family reputations to be quietly protected." "The Bastille was considered one of the best prisons for an upper-class prisoner to be detained at, because of the standard of the facilities for the wealthy. In the aftermath of the notorious "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" of 1786, involving Queen Marie Antoinette and accusations of fraud, all the eleven suspects were held in the Bastille, significantly increasing the notoriety surrounding the institution......"most wealthy prisoners continued to bring in additional luxuries, including pet dogs or cats to control the local vermin. The Marquis de Sade, for example, arrived in 1784 with an elaborate wardrobe, paintings, tapestries, a selection of perfume, and a collection of 133 books." He remained there for five years and was finally transferred to the asylum at Charenton July 4, 1789 just 10 days before the storming of the Bastille on July 14 during the French Revolution. He was transferred in part because two days earlier he had incited a riot by yelling out the window that the guards were killing prisoners...they weren't. The French revolutionaries only broke into the Bastille to steal the guns and gun powder that was being stored in the dungeons. Contrary to the popular belief that it held masses of poor people who couldn't pay their taxes, the Bastille only held seven prisoners by that time. Historian Simon Schama observes how the captured prison "gave a shape and an image to all the vices against which the Revolution defined itself". Indeed, the more despotic and evil the Bastille was portrayed by the pro-revolutionary press, the more necessary and justified the actions of the Revolution became. Consequently, the late governor, de Launay, was rapidly vilified as a brutal despot. The fortress itself was described by the revolutionary press as a "place of slavery and horror", containing "machines of death", "grim underground dungeons" and "disgusting caves" where prisoners were left to rot for up to 50 years." By November of that year, the Bastille had been taken apart to its foundations and sold off brick by brick as memorabilia. "BAstille DAy" RushThis was my introduction to the Bastille: Lyrics: (in case you can't understand Geddy's vocals) There's no bread let them eat cake There's no end to what they'll take Flaunt the fruits of noble birth Wash the salt into the earth But they're marching to Bastille Day La guillotine will claim her bloody prize Hear the echoes of the centuries Well, power isn't all that money buys Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace Naked fear on every face See them bow their heads to die As we would bow and they rode by And they're marching to Bastille Day La guillotine will claim her bloody prize Sing, o choirs of cacophony Well, the king must kneel to let his kingdom rise Lessons taught but never learned All around us anger burns Guide the future by the past Long ago the mould was cast For they marched out to Bastille Day La guillotine claimed her bloody prize Hear the echoes of the centuries Power isn't all that money buys The Opera building was erected on the site in 1989 on the bicentennial anniversary of the prison's destruction. Here's a photo of it. You'd never even know that a prison once stood here. Before we go on, just know that this is the first time I'd ever seen La Boheme. I was only passingly familiar with it as the source material for Rent, which I'd only seen staged once. I did google the plot before we went and I had already seen the trailer so I knew it was set in space. Before I saw the production I have to say that I wasn't looking forward to it. As a costume designer, a whole show in space suits just wasn't going to be exciting to me. And for the most part, I hate when directors impose some random "concept" on a show just for the sake of making it different. I like to watch Shakespeare in period costumes because that's what I came there to see. I can see jeans and t-shirts on TV whenever I want. So, yes, the costumes were nothing to write home about, especially since we were sitting in the nosebleed section and I couldn't really see them that well to begin with. HOWEVER, this show was not about the costumes but about the actors interacting with the setting that was MINDBLOWING. If you are a fan of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you'll love this version of La Boheme. Excerpt from the AP Press release on the 2023 revival of La Boheme in space, written by Ronald Blum. "Claus Guth was pleased with initial reaction to his outer space version of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at a special pre-premiere show limited to people under age 28. “They were extremely euphoric,” he said. “It was an amazing performance with standing ovations.” Three nights later at the official opening of the Paris Opéra’s first new “Bohème” in 22 years, a high-profile occasion featuring conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s formal company debut, the response was far different. “The real premiere was bizarre because some people freaked out so early that Dudamel had to stop conducting once because there was just too much booing,” Guth recalled." That uproar on Dec. 1, 2017, weighed on the German director’s mind when he arrived at the Bastille Opéra last week to supervise the first revival of his staging, which opens Tuesday night for a run of 12 performances through June 4." Excerpt from blogger, NPW, who saw it on its penultimate performance in 2017: "This rich year also ended on a high note with Claus Guth’s La Bohème at the Paris Opera. The new production thankfully chucked out the usual dismal garret with its dirty windows - though some people must like gloomy attics and or grimy glass, as the initial reception was mixed. In its place, Guth ingeniously and skilfully meshed the opera plot with Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Solaris*. Four astronauts struggle to maintain an ailing spaceship with spitting, sparking electricals. As they lose contact with Earth, run out of food, power and oxygen and face slow but inevitable death, they slip deeper and deeper into hallucinatory, part-phantasmagorical flashbacks of their former lives. It isn’t always clear who’s real and who isn’t, who’s alive or who’s already dead - Benoît for example, is the already gamey corpse, in a body-bag, of a colleague they play with in a particularly macabre instance of light-headed tomfoolery.".... "This was easily the best Bohème I've ever seen and I hope the management of the Paris opera noticed that by the end of the run there was not a single boo. The ONP has a frustrating and wasteful habit of discarding supposedly controversial productions after a single season - Warlikowski's magnificent Parsifal, for example, has never been seen again and is soon to be replaced. It is not even available on video. This remarkable Bohème reconciled me with an opera I have tended to avoid almost as assiduously as The Magic Flute. I would like to be able to see it again." No one was booing the night we saw it, so clearly ONP felt that it was deserving of a revival and only six years later. IN FEW WORDS: From the Opera National de Paris website: Was it because the writer Henry Murger had himself known such a life during his youth? That would explain the veracity with which, in his Scènes de la vie de bohème, he depicts those half‑starved, struggling artists, ready to burn their manuscripts for a bit of warmth whilst, in an age of triumphant bourgeois materialism, they dream of another life. Taking up these scenes, Giacomo Puccini offers us the heart‑breaking story of the poet, Rodolfo, and the fragile Mimi, and some of the most beautiful pages in the repertoire. The director, Claus Guth, sets their broken love affair in space, creating a universe in which the past resurges in the form of hallucinatory flashbacks. In this surprising setting, Puccini’s music resounds sublimely, highlighting the very essence of the work: memory as the thread that attaches us to life. Act 1 Day 126 – 40°45’53’’N 74 – Expedition in danger – off course – engines inoperative – life-support resources almost exhausted – we are working without respite – time is running out – water is rationed – life depends on the last reserves of oxygen – a constant struggle with the darkness and the cold – each day increasingly difficult – last remnants of humour – using our imagination – to evoke times long past. Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard and Colline. The atmosphere is morose. It is cold and there is practically nothing left to eat. Nevertheless, Schaunard manages to finds a few scraps. Meanwhile, in a stream of words, everyone starts to reminisce and evoke memories of better times. The four friends, having regained a degree of good humour, recall an evening spent in their favourite café in the Latin Quarter. When they evoke Benoît, their former landlord, the latter suddenly appears. They strike up a conversation with him, and then he vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. Colline, Schaunard and Marcello leave Rodolfo alone for a moment. Mimi appears, in the clutches of a coughing fit... Their hands touch in the darkness... They draw closer. Rodolfo asks Mimi to stay with him. Act 2 Day 129 – 41°43’63’’N 54 – Situation hopeless – time fluctuates between states of sleep and wakefulness – Mimi has returned – in the space capsule reality begins to blur – delirium takes root – Mimi, always Mimi – like a spectral dream – dreaming soemtimes transports us back into our past – the happiest times of our lives are revived – moments of exuberance and ecstasy. Rodolfo and Marcello are overwhelmed by a variety of physical sensations: the crowds of people, the colours and smells of the street. The atmosphere of the city takes over the entire space. They find themselves in their favourite café in the company of Mimi, Colline and Schaunard. In an atmosphere brimming with euphoria, Rodolfo, very much in love with Mimi, buys her a bonnet. Musetta, Marcello’s one-time mistress, arrives accompanied by her new lover Alcindoro. Marcello falls under her spell and can no longer take his eyes off the vision. She makes Alcindoro pay the bill and comes back to Marcello. Just then, an annoying military Act 3 Day 132 – 45°47’73’’N 57 – Impossible to continue the voyage – forced landing – our last refuge is lost – attempts to make contact unsuccessful – giant heaps of dust everywhere – dense fog – every outline is blurred – we are at the mercy of the emptiness – our days are numbered – Mimi... – if only I could touch her face again one more time... Time has passed. The cold, the snow, the emptiness and the isolation take hold over everything. In the distance, we can hear the customs officers inspecting the farmers and the dairy maids. One by one, we catch sight of familiar faces. Mimi arrives. She confides in Marcello: Rodolfo’s jealousy is making her life a living hell. Rodolfo in turn confides in Marcello and reveals the truth to him: Mimi is suffering from tuberculosis and is very ill. He knows that he can only offer her wretched living conditions, and that if they stay together she will die. Overwhelmed by her suffering, he decides to leave her. The two separate but the memory of happier days endures. Act 4 Day 159 – 46°77’75’’N 69 – The end – where are we? – No more contact – Death has reared its head – Schaunard and Colline have already lost the fight – solitude is total – acceptance of the situation – I am extremely calm – feverish delusions – nightmares – my life flashes by in isolated images as if on a stage – there is little time left – but Mimi is still here. Once again, time has passed. Marcello and Rodolfo, trying to overcome their grief in order to continue living, are possessed by the idea of love, women, good food, and the joys of life. Schaunard and Colline appear and everyone engages in a grotesque game: they improvise, vent their passions, fight and then enjoy a sumptuous meal: a bottle of water becomes champagne, a herring is transformed into an exquisite fish. Musetta then reappears with a dying Mimi. Distressed, the others decide to leave Rodolfo and Mimi alone. They reminisce about their first encounter, the happy times they spent together, and promise never to leave each other again. But Rodolfo must let Mimi go… he is alone. Costume Designer Eva DesseckerEva Dessecker has been working since 1992 on the greatest international opera stages (Vienna, Zurich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris, Salzburg). She has been regularly working with the director Klaus Michael Grüber on From the House of the Dead at the 1992 Salzburg Festival, Roberto Zucco and Tagebuch eines Verschollenen as part of the Wiener Festwochen, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Idoménée, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Doktor Faust at the Zurich Opera. She also designed costumes for Pinter’s Le Retour and Tartuffe at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Der Rosenkavalier in Antwerp, Jakob Lenz in Stuttgart, Macbeth in Amsterdam and Le Château de Barbe-Bleue / Thème et variations at the Vienna Festival, The Little Match Girl at the 2014 Ruhrtriennale, and Il Trovatore at the Salzburg Festival. In 2016, she designed Manon Lescaut, in Amsterdam. She met Claus Guth for the first time designing costumes for his production of Juliette at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and in 2017 was asked to design costumes for his original conception of La Boheme in space. The V&A Theatrical CollectionKatherine of Aragorn's costume from Six was the newest installation in the exhibit and in fact they were filming the installation while we were there. There were other new costumes such as Satine's Diamond from Moulin Rouge the Musical, Lola from Kinky Boots, Shirley Bassey's costume from Diamonds are Forever, a corset/flying harness from Peter Pan, a Stormtrooper, Solange from Follies, and a recreation of Kylie Minough's dressing room. Harry Potter and the Cursed ChildCostume Design by Katrina Lindsay
There's a book out called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child The Journey. The Wizarding World published excerpts from it in 2019. The links are below.
St Paul's CathedralRob and I loved St. Paul's the last time we were here in 2018, but we stayed firmly on the ground and only ventured down into the crypts. The students climbed all the stairs to the top, but we knew better than to even try at our age. Sylvan, however, was determined to do it as soon as he heard about it and didn't want to do it alone, so I humored him and up we went. It's 257 steps up to the first stopping point, the Whispering Gallery where, when you are done, you are at the bottom of the dome on the inside of the cathedral looking down at the floor below. It's a circular walkway around the perimeter of the dome with a lovely bench for sitting and resting and whispering. If you whisper into the walls anyone else next to the wall will be able to hear you, even if they're exactly opposite you, 33 meters away. Christopher Wren didn't intend for that to happen, it was just a happy coincidence. Unfortunately, the Whispering Gallery was closed on the day we were there, which was a huge disappointment to me because I wanted to climb the least amount of steps and figured I could talk Sylvan into stopping there. No such luck. There are two more galleries above the Whispering Gallery so, Sylvan insisted we keep going to the next gallery, another 119 steps. The thing about the steps is that they are stone and circular, so wider at the outer edge and much narrower toward the middle. Which is fine if this cathedral had been build in the USA where we walk on the right side of anything, because that's where the handrail is to assist you when you are coming down those same steps, not going up. Going up you have to walk on the left hand side, where the steps are very narrow, WITH NO HANDRAIL. And the reason us Americans were forced to walk on the left side is that while you are still going up, everyone else in the world is already done and coming back down on your right side on the same circular staircase. So we rested on benches by the closed door to the Whispering Gallery catching our breath for the next bit of the climb. By this point the air is getting thin, and we are sweating and out of breath. It's getting hot and our legs are becoming rubbery. Here's perhaps a better explanation from Travel with Kat. The next gallery is the Stone Gallery. Once you climb the additional 119 steps on the inside of the dome, the actual gallery is on the outside of the dome and gives you a great view of London, plus a chance to catch your breath. The gallery goes all the way around the outside and has benches and a defibrillator and employees who know how to use it. We stopped and took photos, rested, drank water, enjoyed a very nice breeze and by that point I was really hurting. Sylvan still insisted that he'd come that far, he wasn't leaving until we'd gone all the way to the top, another 152 steps to the Golden Gallery. This is where the climb gets scary. No more stone steps with a wide end that you could cheat and hang onto its handrail. These steps were a very old looking wrought iron spiral staircase that just went straight up. At that point Sylvan made me walk in front of him in case I got dizzy and fell, he would catch me. When we finally made it up there, an employee with her defibrillator greeted us, asked us how we were, made sure we'd caught our breaths, and then let us through the tiny gate to the outside of the dome. The Golden Gallery is very small in circumference and very narrow and hard to get around with other tourists there. It's got stone pillars all around it, so you're really having to peek in between to see the view and get some photos. And at some point you've all too quickly gone all around the top of the dome, back to the entrance, and are faced with going back down the 528 steps. At this point, Sylvan told me that he was going down first so that if I fell, he'd catch me. We were both hurting and our legs and lungs were giving out on us. I felt lucky that I'd made it back down to the ground. We were both dizzy, nauseated, and exhausted. We grabbed some lunch right outside the Cathedral and sat down on the steps to eat it. Unfortunately, it took us so long to do that, that the rest of the group had already left for the Tower of London without us, so we had to play catch up the rest of the day. By the time we got there, the Tower was closing in an hour and there was no way we could have even walked to the entrance. Luckily that wasn't the plan anyway. We were meeting my former student, James and his partner Laura at the Paul's Patisserie right outside for a visit. We hadn't seen each other since he'd left the US to do his MA in Dublin pre-pandemic. FYI, at the end of the day my fitbit reported that I'd done 21,859 steps total that day which included 44 floors totalling 8.83 miles. Moulin RougeCostume Designer Catherine Zuber
Live Design Interview with Catherine Zuber on her costume designs for Moulin Rouge: The Musical. Adelphi Theatre - Strand, London It's where we saw Kinky Boots last time. Production PHotosAll photos by Sean Ebsworth Barnes from the https://www.theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/shows/back-to-the-future-the-musical/ website. Behind the ScenesThis video is mostly about the music and songs. Set & Costume Designer: Tim Hatley
Our first day in London after a nine hour flight, I had been up more than 24 hours. Sylvan and I couldn't sleep on the plane. We left Waco at 12:30 on my birthday and arrived in London the next day at 9:30 am. We watched King Charles' coronation on the TV at the Travelodge hotel, while we were checking in and storing our luggage. We ate lunch at an Asian Fusion place that was too expensive and crowded and that charged us for water. It was pouring down rain and we got soaked walking through Trafalgar Square. It felt great at first after being so hot on the bus and the plane, but then it got very cold once I was soaked through. There were lots of bobbies and protestors. They had blocked off much of the street to prevent any vandalism to the statue of Admiral Nelson. Lots of signs saying, "not my king". Had enough time to go back to the hotel and take a hot shower before the show. Kelly had planned well and Six was the shortest of all the shows with no intermission so we got back to the hotel early and finally got a good night's sleep. Vaudeville Theatre - 404 Strand, London My View of the StageWe were on the very last row of the very last balcony. My advice for next time is to buy a pair of really good opera glasses and remember to pack them. The old theatres have them on the back of all the balcony seats but you have to have a pound coin to use them. I paid for the nice program with all the photos, but they kindly also gave us a QR code. During the encore, they told us we could take photos, so I did. Gabriella Slade, Costume DesignerInterview with Playbill Interview with Variety http://www.gabriellaslade.co.uk/six Women's Wear Daily Interview with Gabriella Slade where she talks about giving the original West End costumes a "glow up" for their Broadway run. Rachael Dickszen's extremely detailed and well researched posts on Six. Victoria and Albert Museum VideoOur second Europe study abroad trip was cancelled in 2020 due to Covid. So here we are finally getting back to London. Additionally we'll be spending 4 days in Paris as well. We're taking 5 faculty and 31 students from Theatre, Opera, Marketing, and Hospitality. I'll be blogging the whole way, so you can follow along on our adventures. ITINERARYFriday, May 5…Travel day 12:30 pm Meet at MCC; Take the bus to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport 6:20 pm Depart Austin Airport on British Airways, Flight BA0190 Saturday, May 6 - London 9:45 am Arrive London Heathrow airport 11:45 am Take Heathrow Express to Paddington Station 12:00 pm Arrive Paddington Underground station 12:30 pm Take Elizabethan Line to Tottenham Court Road Station 1:00 pm Arrive at Travelodge Covent Garden to drop off luggage 1:30 pm Lunch Trafalgar/Leicester Square 3:00 pm Check into rooms at Travelodge Covent Garden 5:00 pm Dinner 7:00 pm Walk to Vaudeville Theatre 8:00 pm Six – Vaudeville Theatre - 404 Strand, London 10:00 pm Return to the hotel Sunday, May 7 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 11:00 am Walk to British Museum 1:00 pm Lunch 2:00 pm Return to Hotel 4:00 pm Leave for Heathers 5:30 pm Heathers – The Other Place - 12 Palace St, London 8:00 pm After the show bite 10:00 pm Return to the hotel Monday, May 8 - London 7:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 8:00 am Leave for Victoria Station/Walking and Tube 9:15 am Bus for Harry Potter WB Studios Tour (90 minutes) 11-3 pm Harry Potter WB Studio Tour 4.5 Hours/Lunch 5:00 pm Arrive at Victoria Station/Return to the hotel 5:30 pm Dinner 6:30 pm Leave for Back to the Future 7:30 pm Back to the Future – Adelphi Theatre - Strand, London 10:30 pm Return to the Hotel Tuesday, May 09 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 10:00 am Leave for St. Paul’s Cathedral 10:30 am St. Paul’s Cathedral 12:00 pm Lunch with James Phelps 4:00 pm Return to Hotel/Dinner 6:30 pm Leave for Piccadilly Theatre 7:30 pm Moulin Rouge – Piccadilly Theatre - 16 Denman St, London 10:30 pm Return to the hotel Wednesday, May 10 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 11:30 pm Lunch 1:00 pm Leave for Place Theatre 2:00 pm HP & Cursed Child Part 1 – Palace Theatre -113 Shaftesbury 5:00 pm Dinner 7:00 pm HP & Cursed Child Part 2 – Palace Theatre - 113 Shaftesbury 10:30 pm Return to the hotel/Pack for Paris Thursday, May 11 - Travel to Paris 7:30 am Breakfast at Hotel – Check out of Hotel 8:00 am Depart for St. Pancras Station 10:22 am Eurostar to Paris (2.5 Hours) 2:00 pm Arrive at Paris - Gare du Nord Train Station 2:30 pm Customs/Change money/Acquire Metro cards 3:00 pm Metro to Hotel 3:30 pm Check into Yooma Urban Lodge Hotel – Eiffel 5:00 pm Dinner 6:00 pm Leave for Opera Bastille 7:30 pm La Boheme – Opera Bastille - Pl. de la Bastille 11:00 pm Return to Hotel Friday, May 12 - Paris 8:30 am Breakfast 9:00 am Depart for Versailles 11:00 am Palace of Versailles 1:00 pm Lunch at Versailles 3:00 pm Metro back to Hotel 5:00 pm Dinner Saturday, May 13 - Paris 8:30 am Breakfast 9:00 am Depart for Louvre Museum 10:00 am Louvre Museum 1:00 pm Lunch 2:00 pm Palais Garnier 6:00 pm Dinner 7:00 pm Eiffel Tower 10:00 pm Return to Hotel/Pack for London Sunday, May 14 - Travel to London 8:00 am Check out of Hotel Yooma/Breakfast 8:30 am Metro to Gare du Nord Train Station 10:15 am Customs at Gare du Nord Train Station 12:13 pm Eurostar to London (2.5 hours) 3:00 pm Customs/Change money/St. Pancras Station 3:30 pm Tube to Travelodge Lodge Covent Garden 4:00 pm Check into Travelodge Covent Garden 5:00 pm Dinner 6:00 pm Rocky Horror Show 10:00 pm Return to Hotel Monday, May 15 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 10:00 am Leave for Royal Opera House Tour 10:45 am Backstage Tour Royal Opera House 12:00 pm Leave for British Library 1:00 pm British Library Lunch with Jason Price 3:30 pm Return to Hotel/Dinner Break 6:30 pm Leave for Royal Opera House 7:30 pm Sleeping Beauty - Royal Ballet - Bow St, London 10:00 pm Return to hotel Tuesday, May 16 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 10:00 am Leave for the Tower of London 11:00 am Tower of London 5:00 pm Dinner 6:00 pm Leave for Bridge Theatre 7:30 pm Guys and Dolls – The Bridge Theatre - 3 Potters Flds Pk 11:00 pm Return to hotel Wednesday, May 17 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 10:00 am Leave for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre 11:00 am Globe Theatre Tour 1:00 pm Lunch 3:00 pm The Clink/The Golden Hinde/The Tate Modern 5:00 pm Dinner 6:00 pm Leave for Globe Theatre - 21 New Globe Walk 7:30 pm A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe Theatre 11:00 pm Return to hotel Thursday, May 18 - London 9:00 am Breakfast at Hotel 10:00 am Leave for Kensington Palace 1:00 pm Lunch 2:00 pm Big Ben/Parliament/Westminster 5:00 pm Dinner 6:00 pm Return to hotel/Pack for flight to Austin Friday, May 19 - London 7:00 am Breakfast at Hotel/Check-out of Hotel 7:30 am Leave for Airport/Tube/Heathrow Express 8:30 am Arrive at Heathrow Airport 11:45 am Depart to Austin - British Airways Flight 0191 3:50 pm Arrive in Austin – British Airlines Flight 0191 4:30 pm Bus back to MCC 6:30 pm Arrive at MCC Travelodge Covent Garden 10 Drury Ln, High Holborn, London WC2B 5RE, UK +44 871 984 6245 www.travelodge.co.uk Yooma Urban Lodge Eiffel 51 Quai de Grenelle, 75015 Paris, France +33 1 44 09 00 13 www.yooma-eiffel.com
Made plans to meet Casey Bellows at Gil's Broiler in San Marcos for lunch. It happened to be graduation for Texas State, Farmer's Market, Christmas Festival, and an Art Show all happening at the same time downtown. Parking was a nightmare. But Gil's was worth it.
Holiday Inn Express
We checked in at 3 after going to the wrong one on Cameron a few blocks away. The correct Holiday Inn was on Commerce. Further from the River Walk, but free parking, two pools, and the elevator wasn't broken like the one on Cameron. Also, no front steps so way more accessible.
Had some tea and took a nap. Walked down to the river and ate Mexican food and had a margarita. Found an awesome little spice and tea shop and bought 3 spice packs and 3 teas. The weather was beautiful but the River Walk was entirely too noisy and crowded. Free breakfast the next morning which ended at 9 so we got to sleep in and still had plenty of time to get packed up and checked out by 10 which was when SAMA opened. San Antonio Museum of art (SAMA)
Got in for $3 with our SNAP card. Musuem opened at 10.
Lunch at El Milagrito
It was on the way to the McNay and by the time we got there, there were only a few people there. Our food was most delicious and came out really fast.
McNay Museum
It was free with our SNAP card. Opened at noon. This was the big attraction for me because Susan HIlferty, the costume designer from Wicked, had an exhibition going on. Museum closed at 5 so we had two hours to kill before the wedding.
World-renowned costume and set designer Susan Hilferty has designed more than 300 productions across the globe. Hilferty’s designs include Broadway (Wicked, Funny Girl, Present Laughter, Spring Awakening, Lestat, Into the Woods, and August Wilson’s Radio Golf), over 100 off-Broadway shows, innumerable regional-theatre productions, opera, circus, live-music events and dance. Something Wicked: Susan Hilferty Costumes pays tribute to Hilferty’s process, and gives an in-depth behind-the-scenes look at everything it takes to bring designs from page to stage, across this broad diversity of forms.
Hilferty’s many honors include the US Institute for Theatre Technology’s (USITT) Lifetime Achievement Award, the Irene Sharaff Award for Lifetime Achievement, an OBIE for Sustained Excellence in Design, the Lilly Award, the Ruth Morley Design Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, and Tony, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk awards for the Broadway Musical Wicked. Hilferty is on faculty in the Department of Design for Stage and Film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, having served as chair for 25 years, and continues to design prolifically from her studio based in New York City. Something Wicked: Susan Hilferty Costumes is a celebration of Hilferty’s collaborations with the makers and artisans who bring her designs to life, including dress makers, drapers, tailors, shoe makers, milliners, wig makers, embroiderers, painters, and mask makers. When Hilferty received the Tony Award for Best Costume Design for Wicked, she wore an evening coat embroidered with the names of all her creative collaborators to honor them. Wicked Costume ExhibitOther ProductionsHabibi Cafe
Mediteranean food like shwarma and gyros. We were planning on having supper there before the wedding, but we ended up being there at tea time instead. So I got chai and baklava, and my husband got mint lemonade and kunafe. We were the only ones in there because it had just opened at 4, which was nice. The food was great.
Afterwards we went to a rare and used book store Cheever's. We both sneakily bought each other Christmas presents while we were there. I Then ate an early supper of breakfast at IHOP which was right across the street from The Witte.
Witte Museum
Wedding started at 7. Tapas for the reception among the dinosaurs.
John Singer Sargent painted Ellen Terry wearing this costume after he's seen her perform in it in 1888. Until just recently, this is the only source available for what it looked like. However, due to years of being worn and taken on tours, the dress was in desperate need of restoration. In 2011, the National Trust spent 110,000 pounds doing just that. Textile conservator Zensie Tinker spent 5 years on the iconic dress and the results are amazing. The 'Beetle Wing Dress' worn by actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928) for her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in Henry Irving's production of Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre, London in 1888 – 1889. The gown was designed by Alice Laura Comyns-Carr and built by Ada Cort Nettleship. The dress consists of a knitted bodice, crochet sleeves and skirt lined with a plain-weave silk. The dress is embellished with green iridescent beetle-wing cases designed to shimmer under stage lighting. The costume is accessorised with a bejewelled heather coloured cloak, costume jewellery, a belt and a hanging scabbard and knife. When our family needed new costumes to wear to Sherwood Forest Faire, this dress was my inspiration for my costume, which you can read all about in the link to my blog.
Today I found another costume maker's blog It's all Frosting, where she recreated this gown to wear to Costume College in 2019 and I'd like to share her journey with you. I'm mostly doing this so I can find it later. Part 1: Inspiration Part 2: Supplies Part 3: Patterning and Mockup Part 4: Cutting Part 5: Bodice and Construction Part 6: Beetlewings Part 7: More Beetlewings Part 8: Skirt Part 9: Sleeves Part 10: Collar and Brooch Part 11: Belt Part 12: Wig Styling Part 13: Crown Part 14: Final Photos Part 15: Final Thoughts Broadway World Review of Do No Harm written by Zac Thriffiley. IMO this review is very thorough and Thriffiley perfectly captures how I felt when I saw the play. I didn't see it on opening night like he did, but the technical problems he mentioned were fixed by the time I saw it two days later. Luckily, after the show they held a talk back to give the audience a chance to hear from the creative team and ask the questions. Listening to them talk was even more enlightening and watching the rapport they all had with one another. DO NO HARM Streaming Tix Purchases Available APRIL 1, 2022 Dallas Art Beat review of the film version. Soul Rep Theatreon Soul Rep Theatre Company’s stage - BLACK art, BLACK narratives, BLACK joy, BLACK families, BLACK history, BLACK love, BLACK struggle, BLACK brilliance, and BLACK LIVES have ALWAYS MATTERED. Elevator ProjectIn 2014, the AT&T Performing Arts Center created the Elevator Project to provide small, emerging and historically marginalized arts organizations and artists with a performance platform in the Dallas Arts District. It has evolved into an exciting, curated season of work stretching across genres, with the projects chosen through a competitive process by a panel of arts professionals and advocates.
Presentations may range from single-night performances to a two-week run for a play. They may include music, theatre, dance, spoken word, cabaret, comedy, opera, and more. Most shows are performed in Hamon Hall in the Winspear Opera House or in the 6th Floor Studio Theatre in the Wyly Theatre. Applicants must be Dallas-based and special consideration is given to groups or artists that do not have a performance space they call home. Successful projects may include new and experimental works, ethnically and/or culturally specific projects, and performances designed for unique spaces on the Center’s campus. 2021/2022 Season
Dallas Museum of ArtNaudline Pierre (b. 1989, Leominster, MA), lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She creates works that explore a mysterious alternate universe full of characters that often interact with each other in tender ways. Pierre holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from Andrews University. Pierre’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Armory Show, New York; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; Perrotin, Seoul; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Nicodim Gallery, Bucharest among others. Pierre’s works are in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami; CC Foundation in Shanghai; Dallas Museum of Art; The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City. Pierre was a 2019–2020 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. The works produced at the residency were on view at MoMA PS1 as part of the exhibition This Longing Vessel: Studio Museum Artist in Residence 2019–20 from December 10, 2020 through March 14, 2021. In 2021, her work will be featured in Prospect.5 New Orleans, and is the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. MUDclothSoundcloud interview with Dr. Roslyn Walker on Mudcloth Octavio medellin, sculptor
Gaudalupe RosalesDMA Soundcloud interview Los Angeles-based artist Guadalupe Rosales is creating an immersive mural in the DMA’s Concourse that pays homage to lowrider culture and the community it fosters. Hear directly from the artist about her work, and see "Guadalupe Rosales: Drifting on a Memory" when it opens for free at the DMA on December 10. Slip Zone: A new look at postwar abstraction in the americas and east asiaJudy ChicagoGigaku MasksTAntric Buddhist Initiation CrownsFiddler on the Roof, Ursaline AcademyWe went to see Fiddler on the Roof at Ursaline Academy, where MCC alum Whitney Coulter teaches costume and makeup classes. Whitney designed the costumes for the show. I got to meet her colleagues and her students. The talent there is amazing, such good singers and dancers.
I wasn't happy with my first tail that I made for The Wind in the Willows or the wig that I used. And I screwed up Doom's armor the first time I tried to do it because the weather was both too hot and humid for painting outside. So I threw it aside in frustration and just finished my costume to wear to Geekfest. You can check out all of that backstory at the link above. Reboot: Still not happy with the tail, but not having time to start a new idea, I replaced it with an inflatable one I bought online that popped after I wore it to the Skellington Halloween Costume Contest. I gained 40 pounds during the pandemic so I came up with a different bodysuit, I cut my brown leo in half so I could still wear the top half and bought a coppery corset to suck in my gut and then bought brown shorts to wear on my bottom half that I trimmed with fur. I found better looking boots as well and I bought a much better wig. Again, last minute I was only able to get some of Doom's armor together (the upper body pieces) but I did manage to make a helmet that was also crap and didn't sit right on his head. You can read all about that at the above link. squirrel girl So here I am making yet another version of my tail. After all the work on She Kills Monsters making things out of coat hangers and pool noodles, I came up with a new plan for my squirrel tail. I've been saving bubble wrap and the larger pillow packs to use for lightweight padding to bulk up the tail. The pillow packs were the first layer, then I wrapped all that completely in bubble wrap. I used packing tape to tape it all onto the pool noodle and to itself. I left a hole to wrap some wide flesh colored elastic around the top of the pool noodle, even with my bra straps. Once I cut the fun fur out and sew it up, I'll have to leave a slit open in the front to put the elastic through. I'll also have to cut two slits in my leather jacket to attach the elastic to my bra straps. Once that's done the tail should stay upright and be very secure on me without putting too much strain on my back or waist and I should still be able to sit down comfortably. Update: I can sit down comfortably as long as the chair doesn't have a back. Now that I have the structural elements done, my husband, my daughter, and I all ended up with Covid and I was out for 12 days and couldn't work on anything, much less my own costume. I had planned to premiere this and the new and improved Doctor Doom at a local comic con in February, but we were still home sick and besides, our costumes were nowhere near being finished. So, I had to wait until the opera was over so I could go back to work on at least my costume for the next comic con in Waco in April, the week after the opera. I took all the fur off my first tail and used it to cover my third tail. I safety pinned everything in place to get an idea of how it needed to sew together around the curved shape. I had been working with a scrap to begin with from the second squirrel I made for Wind in the Willows and there wasn't any more of this same fur left in the shop. I thought I was going to need more fur, so I took apart the second tail that had popped to use it. As you can see from the photo it reads significantly darker than the original fur, so I was going to put that piece in the part of the tail that is the least seen, and theoretically would be in shadow. Once I had the whole thing pinned, I slipped it off like a sock and turned the thing inside out. At that point I could see that I actually had plenty of fur and didn't need the extra piece. I just did a little creative cutting and basically trimmed off two triangle shapes from the sides of the lower portion, sewed them together up the middle and then added them back upside down in the spot where the darker fur had been. Then it was just a matter of sewing all the sections together and slipping it back on the frame. I sewed bias tape on the top and bottom and ran elastic through the channel to close it up. I sewed snaps onto my elastic straps to go around my bra straps. Then the last thing to do was to cut slits in my jacket to run the wide straps through to go around my bra straps to keep it upright. I guessed wrong the first time and cut the slit too high. Luckily I still had scraps from when I altered it originally and used barge cement to patch the slit back together. The next slit I put in below the yoke and that was the perfect height. At the same time, I've now lost 30 of my 40 pandemic pounds, so I needed a new body suit as well. I used the pattern that I drafted for my Scarlet Witch cosplay and made it up in quilted brown velveteen. I'll use a separating zipper to close up the CB seam but install it above where the tail attaches to the lumbar support belt. After I did the first fitting I realized that I needed the leotard to come much further down to cover up more of my butt, so I patterned an inset piece to add some extra coverage. I hemmed the legs and armholes as well as the neckline, then I installed the zipper. After that I used twill tape to add some lingerie straps to keep everything in place since so much is riding on being attached to my bra straps. I still need to add fur trim to my bodysuit around the neckline in the front and the legs. I have the right fur that matches my jacket, but I couldn't find it Friday, so that will have to be put on later. Originally the bodysuit pattern called for snaps in the crotch. I didn't want to deal with that, but now that I've worn it to a con, I realize that if I had installed snaps, then I might have attempted to use the bathroom while I was there. As it was, I just didn't drink or eat anything for the 4 hours we were there. And, I discovered when I got home, that my stitching had ripped almost all the way at the seam. So I will add in an extra couple of inches there, maybe a lycra panel with some stretch to it and then install snaps, I have been unhappy with my ears since I first made them. I had used matching fur for the outside but a darker fur for the inside instead of pink. I don't know why I decided to do that, but I immediately hated it and had been wanting to replace it with pink ever since. I ripped them apart and replace the brown fur with pink flannel for the insides of the ears and then restitched them back on the headband using a curved needle. My Goodwill Uggs are difficult to walk in, they are slightly too big and have no arch support. I bought really great insoles from Amazon and those helped tremendously. Getting into the whole thing I can do almost completely by myself. I need someone to zip me up in the back, but that's it. Getting out of it though, I need help. Once I get the tail elastic snapped around my bra straps, I can't reach them again to unsnap them. It's the quantum. I also can't unzip myself. The other thing that was odd was that my tail seemed to lean heavily to my left side. I don't know if that's an elastic issue or what. I kept whacking people going up and down the vendor rows without meaning to. I did get a lot of compliments on my costume. Squirrel Girl seems to make so many people happy. I was asked to sign an autograph, I lost count of how many people took my photo. And when I was sitting down the people behind me asked if they could pet my tail. One guy refused to believe that it was faux fur. Everyone asked how I made the tail. One person thought that my wig was my real hair. Doctor DoomI never did finish attaching the Doom armor for the Skellington contest and then the upper body pieces fell apart anyway because all I could get at the last minute was brads. Plus the helmet shape was all wrong and didn't sit correctly on his head, so I'm remaking the helmet as well using the Kamuri Cosplay patterns from She Kills Monsters.
Rob and I are just in love with WandaVision. When the Halloween episode aired I just knew we had to do that for our next cosplay. Our anniversary is on Valentine's Day so I got us these super cute matching T-shirts. Since I'm done with both the musical and the opera costumes way ahead of schedule, I decided to start working on this project during Spring Break. I have never in my 20+ years of working at MCC, not had to work on the opera during Spring Break, so I am very excited that I get to do this so soon. Hopefully we will have conventions again soon. If Greater Austin Comic Con happens, we'll be ready. Vision As you know, Amazon is my go to place these days for online shopping. I was able to order most of the things I needed for Vision's costume. The Sentai suit will need to have it's face cut out and it's hands and feet cut off. I'll have to make his cape with the stand up collar out of 5 yds of yellow poly satin that I got from Amazon. Then I can use a lycra scrap for the diamond on his chest. I'll use the scraps from the Sentai suit to make the green stripe down the sides of the shorts. I have a ton of plastic gemstones for his mind stone too. Easy peasy. Production ProcessVision's suit was super simple to do. I cut the hands and feet off of the morph suit, since he had shoes and sock and gloves that went over it and didn't need the extra layer. I cut a hole in the face and used some fabric from the feet to widen the top of the forehead to give the mindstone a place to be glued to. Then I hemmed the opening with a channel for elastic so it would fit snugly around his face. I used some scrap yellow lycra to make the patch for the chest and used stitch witchery to heat set it in place and then zigzagged around the edges to keep it there. I used E6000 to glue the mindstone to the morph suit. Then all I had to do was make the cape out of the poly satin that I bought. I used boning in the collar to keep it upright. Scarlet WitchI have gained 40 lbs during the pandemic and as we all know, plus sized anything is hit and miss, so I decided pretty early on that I would need to make the bodysuit. I chose red stretch velvet which I will back with coutil so that it keeps it's structure like a corset.. I'm using the Yana Han cosplay pattern for that. It calls for lacing up the back like a corset, but Rob is lousy with lacing, so I'm putting a zipper up the back instead. On the show Wanda only wears pink tights underneath, I'll probably wear it over flesh colored tights too. My calves have always been too big for most boots, so I found boots that were shorter and much lower in the back, hopefully they'll fit. I'm also making the cape and the headpiece. The headpiece will be out of L200 foam and painted red. I found a great tutorial on you tube, which I will share here. I'll either wear my Nightmare Nurse or my Squirrel Girl wig, even though my hair is currently dyed red. Check back during Spring Break for more updates! Production ProcessI did the first mock up for my body suit during spring break. That's the first and second set of photos. The legs were cut way too high and the neckline was way too low. Also, the pattern didn't have any straps to keep the bodice up. So I had to alter the pattern a lot. My second attempt was out of muslin, and even though I made the legs lower and the neckline higher, it still wasn't working. I definitely needed straps. That's the third row of photos. I ended up draping a new pattern based on the design lines of the Yana Han pattern. At that point I gave up on the idea of backing it with coutil and just went with buying a new bra and a pair of Spanx. Also, I lost the 40 lbs I'd gained during the pandemic, so that helped a lot. That's the fourth row of photos. At that point I felt pretty confident that my new pattern would work so I went ahead and cut it out of my four way stretch fabric, nixxed the zipper up the back and the hook and eye closure in the crotch and just sewed it together. I put in the elatic at the legs like the pattern called for, and also put in elastic at the armholes. I thought I might need elastic at the neckline, but as it turned out, I didn't. That's the fifth row of photos. In the mean time I made the cape. Disappointingly, even after losing the 40 lbs, I still couldn't zip up the boots, so I removed the zippers up the back and added in a couple of inches of red vinyl on either side and then put the zippers back in. Now I don't even have to unzip them to slip them on. I did the headpiece last. I used all my experience on She Kills Monsters, to do a much better job on it than I would have had I tried to do it before. I learned so much from Jason on that show. So I traced the pattern off the screen on the youtube video and cut the shapes out of EVA foam. I glued them together with contact cement and then painted them with two coats of plastidip. I used gray primer, then two coats of gloss red and two coats of glossy clear coat to protect the paint job. I used spray adhesive to back to foam with pink felt and used wig pins to attach it to my wig as per the instructions in the video. GalleryMy first experience of Conan was the Schwarzenegger movies, which I loved. About 20 years later, when my son was in daycare, we spent a lot of time hanging out with his buddy Robbie and Robbie's mom Beth at our pool on summer afternoons while both of our husbands were still at work. She was (and still is) one of our librarians at MCC and loved REH. Beth introduced me to a movie about his life called The Whole Wide World that had come out in 1996 with Vincent D'Onofrio as REH and Renee Zellweger as Novalyne. I hadn't known that REH was from Texas. The movie was very interesting and sad (I also didn't know that he'd killed himself). Beth also told me that they had a Barbarian Festival in his hometown of Cross Plains and that she had wanted to go to it. That was such an exciting thing. We had already missed it that year, but we wanted to make plans to go next year. Unfortunately, that never happened. Fifteen years later my husband and I took a trip to Odessa to see their replica of the Globe Theatre and on the way back home we drove through Cross Plains to see REH's house that had been turned into a museum. It was 11:00pm when we got there, so we sadly took some bad photos in the dark and then went on home. We wanted to go last year, but the pandemic cancelled everything. So here I am, seventeen years later, finally getting to go experience this wonderful, weird experience now called Robert E. Howard Days. Groups that make Howard Days Happen The Robert E. Howard Museum is located at the junction of Texas State Highway 36 and Avenue J in Cross Plains,Texas. The museum was the family home of author Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in 1994 and this year, a Texas State Historical Marker was added to the site. Since 1986, people have been coming from all around the world to Howard Days to celebrate the life and writings of acclaimed author Robert E. Howard. Held at the Robert E. Howard House & Museum in Cross Plains, Texas, it is a two-day gathering of fans, scholars, writers, artists, historians and enthusiasts, all gathered together in fellowship to celebrate and discuss the life, work and legacy of the incomparable Robert E. Howard. The Foundation was created in 2006 and is organized to foster understanding of the life and works of Robert E. Howard. Its goal is to honor Howard’s legacy as a skillful, prolific and successful writer of fantasy, regional, horror, action and adventure stories in a wide variety of genres. The mission of the Foundation is to promote its belief in the importance of imagination and creative writing. The REH Foundation Press was created in 2007 to help insure that all of REH’s works would be available to readers in their original form as they were written, with an absolute minimum of editing. Those familiar with the history of REH publishing know that various editors over the years have taken liberties to edit as they please, changing stories and poetry in all kinds of ways. The Wandering Star series of books that began in 1998 with The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, followed by more books from Subterranean Press and Del Rey, returned REH’s most famous characters and stories to their original form, with editing by various REHF Board members. The REH Foundation Press series continues this work, extending it to ALL of the works of REH. Each book in the 22 volume REHFP series has been edited by REHF board members, and includes many works first appearance in print. REHFP also publishes collections of works related to REH’s friends, family and life, for those that want to know more about REH the person. Welcome to Howard History, a repository for the Robert E. Howard-related writings of Rob Roehm. Roehm has "written articles for all of the Howard publications that I’m aware of, contributed to most of the Howard websites, edited books, and even wrote a couple. I’ve unearthed “new” Howard letters and stories. I’ve been to every place in the United States that Howard mentions going to, and every known place that his family lived." ScheduleFRIDAY JUNE 11 8:30 am until gone: Coffee and donuts at the Pavilion, compliments of Project Pride 9 am – 4 pm: Robert E. Howard House Museum and Grounds open to the public. The adjacent Alla Ray Morris Pavilion will be open all day until late night. 9 am – 4 pm: REH Postal Cancellation Souvenir-Cross Plains Post Office. FRIDAY ONLY. 9:15 am – 12 Noon: Bus Tour of Cross Plains & Surrounding Areas. FRIDAY ONLY. 10 am to 4 pm: REH Foundation Press canopy and Dealers Area open on grounds east of Museum. 10 am – 4 pm: Cross Plains Public Library open. Original Robert E. Howard typescripts along with original Weird Tales magazines will be on display. NOON: Hot Dog Lunch hosted by Project Pride at the Pavilion. Donations are welcome! 12:45 p.m.: Historical Marker Presentation at the REH Museum. 1:30 pm: PANEL: REH in the Comics. This overview panel will discuss the history of Howard characters and stories presented in a comic book format. Mark Finn moderates Roy Thomas, Fred Blosser, Patrice Louinet, Jay Zetterberg. AT FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Following this panel: Presentation of the 2020-2021 Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards. 3:00-4:00 pm PANEL: Roy Thomas Autograph Session. AT FUMC. 5:30 – 6:30 pm: Silent Auction items available for viewing & bidding at Banquet site 6:30 pm: Robert E. Howard Celebration Banquet & Silent Auction at the Family Life Center of the Baptist Church on Main Street. Guest of Honor Speaker: Roy Thomas. 9:00 pm PANEL: Fists at the Ice House. Our perennial favorite panel about Howard’s boxing (and most prolific) writings. Panelists Mark Finn, Patrice Louinet Afterward there will be Howard Fellowship at the Pavilion. All are welcome and adult beverages are allowed. SATURDAY JUNE 12 9 am – 4 pm: Robert E. Howard House Museum open to the public. The adjacent Alla Ray Morris Pavilion will be open all day until late night. 9:15 am – 10:30 am: Cross Plains Walking Tour, conducted by Rusty Burke. Meet at the Ice House (Reed Construction) on Main Street and walk in the steps of Bob Howard. 10 am – 3 pm: Cross Plains Public Library open. Original Robert E. Howard typescripts along with original Weird Tales magazines will be on display. 10 am to 4 pm: REH Foundation Press canopy and Dealers Area open on grounds east of Museum. 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PANEL: The Roy Thomas Interview. Come hear an engaging chat and a Q&A session with our Guest of Honor. AT FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. 1:00-2:00 pm PANEL: Roy Thomas Autograph Session. AT FUMC. 2:30 pm PANEL: What’s Up with REH? This is our wrap-up panel, devoted to All Things Going On with Robert E. Howard in 2021. AT FUMC 4:00 pm: Tour of REH House Grounds. Rusty Burke will lead a tour around the outside of the Howard Museum. 5:00 pm: Sunset BBQ at the Pavilion. Come and enjoy a real Texas chuck-wagon barbeque! After BBQ: Porchlight Poetry: Listen to a multi-language reading of Howard’s poem “Cimmeria” + more REH poetry read aloud from the Museum porch. We have a microphone this year! Afterward there will be Howard Fellowship at the Pavilion. All are welcome and adult beverages are allowed. Bus Tour Rusty Burke narrated our bus tour of the Cross Cut and Burkett areas that were significant to REH. Unfortunately, the landmarks of Bob's time have all but disappeared. His school in Cross Cut is now a field, and even the school that replaced it has nothing left standing but the arched entryway. The graveyard that Dr. Howard would walk through to visit patients is still there. Patients and their families would know that he was near because they could hear him whistling. The Howard family moved around quite a bit when Bob was young, and spent time staying at the home of another doctor in Burkett, whose house had a gazebo nearby. Scholars located a gazebo in the correct area and assumed that it was THE gazebo and that the house had already disappeared. After more research it was discovered that the gazebo and house belonged to an entirely different doctor and was not somewhere that REH had stayed. The doctor whose house it actually was, was the father of Kathryn Cochran Cravens, an actress and the first female wartime radio correspondent during WWII covering Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The doctor's house that the Howard family had actually stayed at in Burkett, was only recently demolished but Rusty was able to take a photo of it the day before the demolition. The bridge that REH would have driven over to get from Burkett to Cross Plains is still there. That's what we got to take photos of. Cross Plains LibraryThe public library owns all of REH's original manuscripts. They were on display this week. They also sell photocopies of them. Rob bought "The Sword Woman" a Dark Agnes story. They also had a display of many of the issues of Weird Tales that REH had his stories published in. Rob and I were both delighted to see an actual Weird Tales magazine but were surprised to find out how thick they were in real life, like thicker than a National Geographic. It was certainly obvious that what we heard in the panel was true: whoever wrote the most lurid story, got the cover painting. REH Commemorative Cancellation StampThe special postal cancellation stamp is shown above, designed by Marvel artist Becky Cloonan. This is an exclusive souvenir available to HD attendees, only Friday only at the Cross Plains Post Office. So, the price of a stamp gets you an exclusive REH collectible! We got ours on the free postcards of the house from the gift shop. PANEL #1 Conan Becomes a Comic BookI was too busy taking notes to get a photo of the panel and Rob didn't think to take one either, so here's some thumbnails from Google. Fred Blosser has no photos up on the internet at all. I don't know how he managed that after publishing hundreds of books. But here's a snap from the book signing. The panelists from left to right: Mark Finn moderator, author of Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E Howard, Editor of the magazine The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E Howard Studies, as well as numerous essays on REH. Jay Zetterberg: Swedish Game Designer, Entertainment VP in charge of licensing at Cabinet Entertainment. Roy Thomas: Guest of Honor, comic book author, Marvel Editor in Chief under Stan Lee. Worked on Conan from 1970-1980 and again from 1994-1996. Co-created many other Marvel characters such as Vision, Wolverine, Ultron, Valkyrie, Red Sonja, Morbius, and Ghost Rider. Uncredited screen writing work on Conan the Barbarian, co-credited story on Conan the Destroyer. Author of the three volume set Barbarian Life: A Literary Biography of Conan the Barbarian, as well as many essays. Patrice Louinet: French, author of The Robert E Howard Guide and numerous essays on REH and his books as well as French adaptations of the comic book. Fred Blosser: REH/Conan historian, published numerous non-fiction books and essays on REH's writings. These are my notes from the panel that I fleshed out with last names and some dates. It's mostly all paraphrased from what the speakers said. There are some instances where the exact phrasing was important and those are noted with quotation marks. Roy: Readers wrote to Marvel requesting comic book adaptations of other books--LOTR, Doc Savage, Tarzan as well as REH books. I had bought a few of the Conan paperback editions but never really read any of the books, just a couple of pages of the first story in 1969, because I loved the Frank Frazetta covers. Kull was the first character that was adapted. I wrote to Len Wein who had the rights at that time. Stan Lee offered $150 an issue, no royalties. I was embarrassed to offer so little for the intellectual property. I felt that was a "paltry sum", so I upped to $200 for Conan; I figured if they didn't sell well, Stan would take it out of my salary. Stan Lee didn’t know anything about S&S genre so he left me alone to work on it with very little oversight. I really wanted to get John Buscema to do the art, but I couldn't afford him at the time, so my second choice was Gil Kane, but Stan wouldn't pay for him either, so he got Barry Smith, who was a newbie. I didn't want to change REH more than I needed to but I still had to appeal to Marvel readers. Plus we still had to get Comic Code Authority approval. There were a bunch of rules like you couldn't show exit wounds. Roy said, "if I'd done it 20 years later", after Marvel stopped adhering to the CCA, "I’d have done it differently." "We did everything we could to subvert the CCA". Fairly early on we took off his horned helmet and gave away his medallion. Eventually we realized he didn’t need a costume anymore. “He was naked but for a loincloth.” Roy made sure REH’s name was on the book, which was something that hadn't been done before for other Intellectual Property. The first seven issues of Conan the Barbarian each sold less than the previous one, so Stan suggested to put humans on the cover, the previous ones had animals on the cover. So the eighth issue had a human on the cover and that one sold more than the last one. The next issue also sold more than the last one and Conan was up and running. It wasn't long before we could afford Gil Kane, and finally John Buscema. Conan was the most popular book in the mid 1970’s. For the next 20 years, humans were on the cover, and Conan was never in danger of being cancelled. Fred: Roy contacted me, in 1971, looking for story plots, for Conan the Barbarian. In 1974 I got a letter from Roy who was starting a new magazine under the Marvel imprint of Curtis Magazines, to not just attract comic book fans, but to introduce them to the books with background articles etc.. which was Savage Sword of Conan, published in 1974, for which I finished two of REH’s unfinished stories and wrote an original that was a sequel to an original REH. (There will be more about Curtis Magazines and Savage Sword of Conan in the next panel.) My favorite book is King Kull, which took a secondary character in terms of reader interest and make him popular, with artwork by John Severin, about the time when Kull lost the throne and became a wanderer. Kull, the panelists agreed, is an underappreciated book. Esp. the John Bolton ones. Roy: In 1976, after I had moved to California, I had a friend, Ed Summers, who ran a bookstore, who asked me, Who owns the rights to Conan? I said Lyon Sprague de Camp controls some, Glenn Lord of Pasadena Texas, owns some others. "They don’t talk to each other, it’s complicated". Ed Summers, Ed Pressman, a Hollywood producer, and me saw Pumping Iron together, and Ed Pressman thought Arnold really had star appeal. Ed Summers suggested Conan as a star vehicle for Arnold, Ed Pressman had never heard of Conan. At that point the Conan paperbacks were out of print. Ironcially, Arnold's ads for body building products were heavily featured in the Conan comics at the time. The movie idea was shopped to all the film studios, and no one really wanted the property. Arnold couldn’t speak English which the studios cited as a big problem. Later Arnold was a guest on a Sammy Davis Junior special. He said he was going to play Conan and SDJ said, “Oh, the comic book character.” Marvel started running promotional ads in Conan books for Arnold Schwarzenegger starring as Conan, but it still took years to get the film made. Patrice: I grew up on Kirby’s Fantastic 4. I was a "Marvel zombie” I loved Neal Adams' X-Men. When I bought my first Savage Sword of Conan, it was black and white, there were no super heroes, and I thought, "Where’s Spiderman? " I hated it. Later, I bought a second one and then decided that it was good, then read the paperbacks. My favorite issue is Hawks from the Sea issues #19-27 with Barry Smith art. That run was also Roy’s fav. I also liked issue #23 Shadow of the Vulture, which introduced Red Sonja into the Hyborian Age. Roy: Luckily others--L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter--had already pieced together the timeline of Conan’s life for the ACE paperbacks released in the 1960's, so it was easier for me to piece together stories. Roy feels that, "If you don’t like it, it’s exploiting, if you like it, it’s extended." I liked writing the Conan comics, but I don't like reading them. I quit writing Conan for 10 years when I went to DC, so I didn’t read them. When I went back to Marvel, and started writing Conan again, I had to go back and buy the 10 years worth of comics to catch up to where the character was now. Mark: My favorite book is Conan #37 "Curse of the Golden Skull" with Neal Adams guest starring. "It wasn’t supposed to be in color", says Roy. "It was supposed to be B&W". My other favorite book is Black Colossus. I loved the art, and the inking. Roy on working with Neal Adams on "Curse of the Golden Skull": Neal drew an "obscene snail". I used the character Rotath and it became the best selling issue of all time, because there was a paper strike, everything went on sale and stayed on sale because they weren’t printing any more new issues. For DC it was Kirby’s Sandman which sold great but it was supposed to be a one shot, so they ordered a second issue which didn’t sell. ”Neal Adams was a pain in the ass to work with but his great art made it almost worth working with him… almost.” Fred: I didn’t like any of the 80’s Conan comics because Roy had left Marvel and wasn't doing them anymore. Eclipse Comics did an adaptation of Pigeons from Hell in 1988. It was Scott Hampton’s passion project. I liked that run. Marvel had an enormous influence with Conan, making the movies happen, and the video games in late 80’s. Roy: Stan wanted to start more horror books b/c they were selling a lot at DC. Instead they did some Lovecraft adaptations, Cthulhu stories, Harlan Ellison, more Howard. I thought if they like Conan, they’d like these stories too. My Conan stuff was still coming out in the early 80’s even after Ient to DC. Conan comics sold well throughout the early 1980's due to the movies popularity but then tanked. I had hired the artists originally and wasn’t overmanaged by Stan, but when I came back in the 90’s, I wasn’t able to choose my artists and had to get approval for things, so I wasn’t happy being micromanaged, and I quit again after two years. Marvel dropped Conan after that. Jay: Marvel was paying a ridiculously low, one time, flat fee per comic for the intellectual property. Marvel was not smart to drop Conan, because later, they had to buy it back. Patrice: In 1980, Roy did a comic book version of Almuric with art by Tim Conrad, for Epic illustrated, an adult Marvel imprint, not subject to the Comics Code Authority. Almuric was originally published posthumously in Weird Tales in serialized form. When Howard died, the first half was finished, but the second half was just a first draft and unfinished. Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, pieced them together and finished the story. At that point Marvel had the rights to sell it as a movie and it was shopped around. However, movie studio executives told them that “Tim Conrad can’t draw women” so we don’t want to buy your movie. In 1986 Epic Illustrated was shut down due to it being too expensive to run. The last issue was #34; in it was Death of a Legend, as tribute to REH, story by Roy and pencils and inking by Sandy Plunkett. There was no color. It was about REH’s life and death. Roy: The 1990’s were the dark ages of Conan comic books. Dark Horse reprinted Almuric in 1991. I came back to Marvel in 1994 and stayed till 1996 to write Conan. Cross Plains Comics existed from 1999-2001. It was almost entirely reprints , but they were good reprints. They kept the ball in play in a way that Marvel didn’t. It was REH focused. I was a silent partner, Richard Ashford was the brainchild and had been an editor of the comics at Marvel before starting Cross Plains Comics. Richard got me on board. Cross Plains Comics won an award for best new company. It was the only time I got to work with Richard Corben. I got to do Wolfshead and one issue of Red Sonja. Patrice: In late 2000, I adapted and edited the Conan stories for the European market on Wandering Star Press. Robert E. Howard's Complete Conan of Cimmeria, Vol. 1 1932-1933. There was a different writer and artist for every graphic novel. It took a long time to develop the series. One Howard story by one creative team and no one is allowed to do more. Each book has a very different style to the others; there is not a standardized look to Conan. Volume 1 was published in 2003. They are now on their 12th book. (Click here to read an interview with Patrice on his labor of love.) Jay: I'm a little young to remember Bronze Age comics, and when I was growing up, there weren't any comics in Sweden at the time. Red Nails is my favorite. Dark Horse ran six Conan series from 2004-16. My favorite Conan was the first series by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord, who brought the title back from the dead. The art was only pencils and color, no inking. It had a “weird non-focus on Conan’s face so that you can imagine what he looks like yourself.” Dark Horse published ten issues of Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword. It featured more of REH's characters besides just Conan: Kull, Dark Agnes, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Sailor Steve Costigan. When Marvel got the rights back in 2018 it had to fight tooth and nail to get Dark Horse to reissue the series in a three volume anthology. Fred: Bob McLain, founder of Pulp Hero Press, had already published my book Savage Scrolls Vol 1: Scholarship from the Hyborian Age in 2017 in both paperback and e-book formats. This book was purely literary criticism. Bob wanted to start a new line of sword and sorcery books and wanted to include my fiction. It was to be called Savage Scrolls, after my previously published book, and was a collection of eight short stories in the sword and sorcery genre. Volume One was released in 2020, Volume Two is already in the works, and there are plans for a third and fourth installment. Patrice: I took a long rest after my PhD dissertation on REH was published in 1990. Then I wrote the English translation of his dissertation. Since then I have written numerous things for Howard Foundation Press. Roy I wrote a lot of introductions to books that were translated into Spanish but I didn’t keep the original articles. Later I was contacted because (someone, didn't catch the name) wanted to reprint my essays in English, I had to track down the Spanish copies and have them re-translated back into English. I wrote a three volume exploration of my work on Conan called Barbarian Life. It reads like a director's commentary on the first 100 comics of Conan. “I don’t think I’ve done REH justice. I’m always aware that this is the comic book version.” Jay: After Dark Horse ran its course, Marvel got the rights back in 2018, started publishing in 2019. Two years ago I got a call from an older lady who said she had tons of our stuff. It turned out to be Richard Ashford's wife. She said that after Cross Plains Comics had gone out of business, Richard sent tons of pallets of print material to a warehouse in New Jersey. I called Marvel and they were very glad to be able to reclaim all that material, which included Kull, Red Sonja, Worms of the Earth, some of it was damaged but most was salvaged. The pandemic forced comic book creators to cut lines. Many books were cancelled. Dark Agnes and Solomon Kane were both cut. Marvel is doing a Howardverse with Soloman Kane, Dark Agnes, and it is set in REH’s house. Roy Thomas AutographThe Howard HomeIt was such a special experience to be able to tour the home with one or more docents in every room who could tell you all about each piece and answer any questions you might have. The first room on the right of the entrance is the parlour. There was a glassed in book case that contained all of Dr. Howard's books. Not one medical book, they were mostly religious texts. Another bookcase contained the remaining 68 volumes of the original 300+ of REH's books which had been donated to the Howard Payne College Library upon his death. They were returned to the Museum in 2012. The parlour connected with the dining room which had an Art Noveau sculpture of Cleopatra that REH had purchased on a trip to New Orleans with his parents when he was 13. On the table were copies of school papers with his teacher's corrections and comments in the margins. The next room was the kitchen, then Robert's room, which was originally a sleeping porch that they had enclosed. It was roped off so that you couldn't go in there, but it was very narrow and full of furniture, a dresser, a twin bed, a chest, his writing desk and stool. As big a man as he was it's amazing that he fit in there. There was a window between Robert's room and his parents. The last room was his parents' bedroom which had windows in every wall. His mother had tuberculosis and the windows were left open all the time to give her more air circulation. Dr. Howard lived there eight more years after his wife and son's deaths until he died too. Later owners added onto the house by adding an inside bathroom on the right side of the hallway after the kitchen and another bedroom on the left side after Robert's room. That room is where the gift shop is located. The gift shop only takes cash, but there's an ATM a block away in the 7-11. We bought matching T-shirts for $15 each. The gift shop also has an amazing array of free items, like photocopies of his birth certificate, funeral invoice, directions to his grave, bookmarks, etc... The video was made by the REH Foundation and highlights many of the small objects in the house. It is narrated by Rusty Burke. Silent AuctionThe silent auction began an hour before the banquet. I did not expect there to be hundreds of items there. I bid on three items and won two. Issue #1 and #2 of Valeria and Issue #3 of Conan. They were all reprints, but I'm Ok with that. Rob bid on a lot of things and won most of them, including a copy of "Red Nails". He also won a 2007 Vanguard calendar "Masters of Fantastic Art" for me. We ended up paying $17 for 9 items. All the money goes to the REH Foundation to fund maintenance on the house. The BanquetThe banquet was the only thing that we had to pay for tickets for. It was $15 a seat and they served a pretty mean chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. For dessert there was peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream. We sat with a daddy/daughter duo from Utah. He had taken his son to Howard Days in 2019, and was supposed to take his 12 year old daughter, Emma, last year but it didn't happen due to the pandemic. So this year was her first time. The other two gentlemen at our table were friends from Houston that had been coming for several years. The make up of the gathering was the same as at a Rush concert, it was a real sausage fest. There were 165 attendees and I counted 24 women, not including the docents: four daughters, and the rest were wives like me. I don't think there were any unaccompanied females all weekend. I made the joke that at least I shouldn't have to queue for the bathroom all weekend, but I was wrong. Our Guest of Honor, Roy Thomas, spoke about his career in making Conan Comics for Marvel. It was basically a rehash of what he said in the panel that afternoon, but longer and more focused on his work. He mentioned how his then girlfriend, Danette, now his wife, created the DC Conan knockoff, Arak, Son of Thunder, a title she created but didn't get story writing credit for until issue #12. Dann was also the model for the character Danette in the What if? story where Conan time travels to present day New York. The button below will take you to the recording of his keynote speech. Table favors and program. PANEL #2 Roy ThomasGuest of Honor: Roy Thomas, I didn't get the moderator's name. Roy is originally from Jackson, Missouri. He said it was a very small town. His first comic experience was as a fan boy. Roy grew up reading All Star Comics, he loved JSA, the forerunner of Justice League. His mom used to read them to him until he learned to read before first grade. There was no Kindergarten back then, there was also no 12th grade, and you only went to 11th grade if you were going to college. "The father of comic book fandom" Jerry Bails (who also loved JSA and would soon become Roy's BFF) had recently started up a correspondence with Gardner Cooper Fox and had bought some of his original JSA books from him in 1959. Roy had also written to Gardner also asking about JSA books and Gardner gave him Jerry's name and address. They struck up an immediate and prolific correspondence about their love for Golden Age comics. On a later trip to New York, Jerry stopped by the DC office and saw a syfy fanzine called "Xero", which was published by Dick Lupoff from 1960-63. (Dick's book about this time period is called All in Color for a Dime and was published in 1970. ) Jerry immediately had the idea to make a fanzine about Golden Age comic books and enlisted Roy as co-editor. It was called "Alter-Ego", and it was the first superhero fanzine running for 10 issues from 1961-69. Roy graduated with his BA in Education in 1961 and taught high school English in St. Louis for a time afterward. He got a fellowship from Scottish Rite to attend George Washington University in D.C. and had accepted an Assistant Editor job on Superman for DC in 1965, requiring him to quit his teaching job and move to New York. He worked for DC and attended GWU for approximately two weeks when he saw an advertisement in the NY Times that Marvel was hiring writers. Roy was given a writer’s test which was four pages of Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four art that he had to fill in all the speech bubbles and narration blocks. Roy got a call and was asked to have a lunch meeting with Stan the next day. Stan offered him the job 15 minutes after they met but never told him what he thought about his writers' test. Roy didn't hesitate to quit his fellowship and his DC job and make the move.*see footnote for the whole story. When Roy first met John Romita Sr. in 1965, John was drawing DC romance comics, but he'd gotten his start drawing Captain America in 1954. Roy knew that he’d done Capt. America, which surprised John because no one else remembered him from that. Roy was hired in the first wave of college-educated comics creators like Denny O'Neil, who was hired just a few weeks after Roy. Stan liked to hire college people, because he wasn’t able to go to college himself. Stan was 18 years older than Roy and at the time was both editing and writing. Characters that Roy co-created while at Marvel were X-Men--Wolverine, Havok, Banshee, Sunfire with Len Wein; Avengers--Vision, Ultron, Carol Danvers, Valkyrie; REH--Conan, Red Sonja, Kull; as well as Luke Cage, and Ghostrider. Stan had been working under the publisher Martin Goodman who he liked very much. However, in 1972, Martin quit publishing the comics and gave the job to his son Chip, who Stan did not like working under. Stan managed to become publisher of the comics division and at that point divided the company into a triumvirate. Roy became the Story Editor, John Verpoorten was the Production Manager, and Frank Giacoia was the Assistant Art Director, because even though Stan couldn't draw, he wanted the title of Art Director for himself. Roy said about Frank, that he had seen Gunga Din when he was 15 and it was his favorite movie. Frank would watch Gunga Din while he was inking, usually Jack Kirby's Captain America. Roy said that Frank probably watched that movie 50 times while they were working together.. Roy wasn't happy with this new arrangement and was thinking of quitting and going back to DC, just a few weeks after his promotion. A friend advised him to stay, saying that everything would change and it did. Right after that, Stan made Roy Editor in Chief and kicked Frank back down to Artist. After 2+ years as Editor in Chief, Roy was sort of fired in 1974 or sorta quit, depending on who is telling the story. Stan had decided that Roy wasn’t a team player, and Roy said he was a great team player if he was the captain of the team. Roy had written a memo to Stan about some things he felt should change and Stan said that the memo should be Roy's resignation as Editor in Chief. Stan promoted Len Wein and Marv Wolfman to Co-Editors. Roy didn’t want to work under them even though he had hired them. Roy didn’t like being in charge of everyone, but he also didn't want to be just a writer. So Roy drew up his own unique contract allowing him to write and also be his own editor, which Stan agreed to, so basically Roy was free-lancing for Marvel from 1974-1980. Towards the end of the 1970's Stan and Roy had moved from New York to California. Roy is credited with the idea to adapt Star Wars into a comic book series which editor Jim Shooter (Editor in Chief from 1978-1987) said kept Marvel from going bankrupt in the 1980's. Roy said that at the time, Shooter was doing a great job, getting the creatives treated with more respect, getting the books out on time, but that after he fixed all of Marvel's administrative problems, he started trying to "fix" things he saw as creative problems, and that heavy-handed, my way or he highway attitude, ran off a lot of talent, including Roy. In 1981 Roy signed an exclusive three year deal with DC after a contract dispute with Shooter. While at DC, Roy created Star Girl with his wife, Dann. Dann also created Arak ,Son of Thunder but didn't get story writing credit till issue #12. Roy ended up hating working for DC and after his contract was up, he (and Dann) went back to Marvel. Stan invited him back to be Editor in Chief once more after having gone through six other editors since Roy quit the first time. James Warren was the first publisher to get into black and white magazine of comics in 1958 with Famous Monsters of Filmland. Roy said in another interview, "I became a buyer of the Warren mags with Famous Monsters of Filmland #1 in 1958, which I bought uptown over my lunch hour and took to my senior English class... to the dismay of my teacher. I was her top student, and she let it be known that she was disappointed in me dragging around this magazine with a picture of a man in a Frankenstein mask and a--well, I don't know how she described the woman on the cover. I made sure I kept it under my desk through the whole class, so it wouldn't get confiscated." FMOF did really well and gave rise to more black and white horror titles like Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, which ran from 1959-1983. At some point prior to the mid 1970's James Warren offered Stan a membership at the Friar’s Club if he wouldn’t do any B&W comics that would compete with his own titles. Stan agreed, joined the Friar's Club and then pushed Goodman at Marvel to get into the B&W comics business. Goodman developed an imprint of Marvel, called Curtis Magazines. Because this new format was a magazine and not a comic, it didn't have to adhere to the CCA so more creators wanted to work on it. It featured more adult content like profanity, nudity, and violence and therefore drew a more adult audience. Curtis Magazines only ran from 1971-75 but in those four years it published 31 new titles, among them horror comics such as Dracula Lives, The Haunt of Horror, Master of Terror, Monster Madness, Tales of the Zombie, and Vampire Tales which were competing with Warren's Eerie, Creepy, and Vampirella titles for a share of the market. Although the Curtis horror titles were short lived, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Planet of the Apes, and Doc Savage ran a long time and did very well. Savage Sword of Conan was by far the most successful of all of these titles. Roy was the editor and chief writer for the first 60 issues. The SSOC series was the longest running Conan title and ran from 1974-1995. Questions: What's the deal with Morbius? The CCA had previously forbidden the use of vampires and werewolves, but by 1971, it was time to update the code. They knew readership wasn’t 8-9 years old anymore. The updated code said it was all right to use vampires, werewolves etc in “high caliber works of art:” like Dracula, Frankenstein, etc… At that time Stan needed Roy to take over writing Fantastic Four or Spiderman. Roy wanted to do FF, but Stan made him do Spiderman. Stan made him put in a vampire. Roy thought that was stupid but complied. Roy wanted to make the vampire character a super villain, but not Dracula. Roy decided he had a blood disease that made him drink blood. Roy created Morbius the Living Vampire with Bill Kane. Roy wrote two stories about Morbius and then other people took it over. Jared Leto called him and is doing a movie adaptation of it, which is coming out in 2022. Talk about your work on Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. Roy was an uncredited consultant on the first movie. Ed Pressman, the producer, paid Roy $10,000 for 2 days of work and then Roy never heard from him again. Later Ed called him up out of the blue, after Roy had written the screenplay for Fire and Ice with Gerry Conway. The Conan movie was fixing to come out finally, after about six years of being held up in Hollywood red-tape. Ed said, "BTW, you remember that 10 grand I paid you ? Dino de Laurentiis is going to repay me all the money I paid for the first movie. I have a check here for 10 grand but it’s made out to you." Roy said he'd endorse it and 5 minutes later his doorbell rang and a messenger was there with the check waiting for Roy's signature. Roy co-wrote the screenplay for the second movie with Gerry Conway. Roy said that Conan the Destroyer was a train wreck. Everything was getting cheaper, and not in a good way. There was less budget money. The first movie was made in Spain, the second in Mexico. Roy and Gerry wrote five drafts. At the time Roy was building a home in San Pedro, and since he got paid for every draft, he kept adding to the house. Dino hired Roger Donaldson to direct Destroyer. Roy and Gerry gave Roger the draft, told him to show it to Dino, and couple days later, the movie is going forward, but without Donaldson as director. Dino pulled Roger off the Conan movie to do Mutiny on the Bounty instead. Dino got a new director, Richard Fliescher, but Roy and Gerry felt he was just going through the motions. Roy gave Richard a Conan comic book, to give him a better idea of what they were going for. Gerry and Roy wanted to bring Valeria back to life. Dino like that idea and kept it but got rid of Roy and Gerry and replaced them with Stanley Mann. The only thing that got filmed as Roy and Gerry wrote it was the introduction of Zula. Roy and Gerry were responsible for getting Grace Jones her role as Zula. In the Conan comic books there was a Black male character named Zula with Mokawk hair. He became a female warrior for the movie because although they didn't have a finished script yet they had to hire the main cast. The casting director wanted to get an Asian actress for the role. Gerry said he and Roy were thinking of Grace Jones. So that’s how she got cast. Director Dino de Laurentiis had told Roy and Gerry that he didn't want any rats, priests, or leeches, in his movie. The translator had called them blood suckers, so Roy and Gerry thought he meant vampires. Roy said it was depressing working with Dino and then he fired them. The Writers Guild of America looked at all the drafts and compared them to decide who would get the writing credit. The decision was that the credits should read, "Story by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, Screenplay by Stanley Mann". The film was already in the can so Roy and Gerry were offered $5,000 to forego the screen credit so they wouldn’t have to redo them, but they said no to the money to give the finger to Dino, and made him redo the credits to include them. *Here's the excerpt on the Marvel Writer's Test from a conversation between Roy and Stan in May, 1998 that was published in Comic Book Artist #2. I also included the first four of the Jack Kirby pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2 as an example of the Writer's Test. Roy: Now—about the famous "Marvel Writer's Test": Sol Brodksy and Flo Steinberg told me that you put an ad for writers in the New York Times, and had hundreds of people applying. Stan: It's news to me, but it sounds like something we might have done. Roy: Did you have to read a lot of the tests? Stan: I probably gave them to somebody else to read. I really don't remember. Roy: The reason I'm curious is that supposedly I was hired on the basis of taking this writer's test while I was working at DC. Stan: Then I must have been reading them. Roy: We met the next day after I turned it in. You offered me a job a few minutes later, but you never referred to the test then or at any other time, so I never knew if you actually read it or if I was hired because I was already working for Mort Weisinger over at DC. [laughs] Stan: I think I liked your personality. Roy: It was always strange to me: I went in there expecting to discuss this writing test and figured that I must have passed—but you never mentioned it! And I'm still waiting! Stan: [laughs] Maybe that's the case, Roy. I just don't remember. Roy: We're actually going to print one page of that test in Comic Book Artist. The test was four Jack Kirby pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2. Stan: Oh! When I wanted people to put dialogue over the pictures? That was a good idea! Roy: You had Sol or someone take out the dialogue. It was just black-and-white. Other people like Denny O'Neil and Gary Friedrich took it. But soon afterwards we stopped using it. Stan: That was a clever idea! I'm proud of me! [laughs] You know, I probably did read yours and most of the others, because I know I hate to read scripts, but if it was just pictures with dialogue balloons, I could have read that very quickly, and chances are that I did read them all. And chances are that I'm a lousy judge, so I probably liked yours! [laughs] PANEL #3 What's Up with REH in 2021?Panelists are all from Cabinet Entertainment, which now owns all of the Conan intellectual property. Fred Malmberg is the Founder of Swedish toy company, Target Games (table top and RPG games) and CEO of Paradox Entertainment, which was started by Fred to adapt all of the Target games into video games. Paradox Entertainment bought the intellectual rights to Conan before Paradox was split into different companies but Fred retained control over the video game segment as well as the rights to Conan intellectual property, Fred moved his company to LA to be closer to Hollywood and to pursue film and tv licensing opportunities. Paradox was later bought out by Cabinet Entertainment in 2015, Fred said that Conan is more popular in Europe than the US. 95% of fans live there and they have more people) Very popular in Norway and they think like Conan. Turkish people believe Conan is Sumerian. Charles "Steve" Booth is the American CEO of Cabinet Entertainment which owns the intellectual property of Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane, among others, and licenses it for film and television production. They were responsible for the 2009 Kull the Conqueror with Kevin Sorbo, as well as the 2011 Conan reboot with Jason Momoa. It also creates table top games, video games, toys, collectibles, apparel, and other related merchandise of their intellectual property. Cabinet Entertainment donates both money and products to the continuing support of the REH Museum. the REH Foundation, and Howard Days. Jay Zetterberg is also Swedish. Jay started out at Cabinet being in charge of the licensing for the comics division. Jay is currently in charge of all creative licensing approvals for everything that Cabinet owns, Jay was a member of Friday's panel as well, as his particular area of expertise is Conan comics. Background on the REH Intellectual Property and what's being done with it Books: Here's a short publication history of REH works : Gnome Press gathered all the known REH material at the time and published it in seven volumes in hardback between 1950-1957. Lancer/Ace published twelve volumes of Conan stories in paperback between 1967 and 1977 but they were heavily edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter and not all of it was original Howard material. However, with fantastical cover art by Frank Frazetta they caught the popular imaginations and sold very well. Donald M Grant published eleven illustrated volumes of REH's original Conan stories from 1974-89. Berkley published three volumes also of REH Conan stories in 1977. Bantam continued in the Lancer/Ace tradition of publishing seven more non-REH Conan stories from 1978-82. Tor published 43 volumes of new, not REH Conan stories from 1982-2003, as well as re-issuing all the Bantam volumes, plus three omnibuses. Del Rey published three illustrated volumes called Conan of Cimmeria between 2003 and 2005 that included notes, rough drafts, and manuscripts, The REH Foundation Press is currently continuing the work that Del Rey started by bringing Conan stories back to their original form. The REH Foundation acquired all REH publishing rights in 2007 for first edition print runs of REH's letters, poems, fiction, and biography. They have since published all of REH's work in its original, unedited, unexpurgated form. Fred Copyright has a time limit everywhere but it is different between countries and copyright laws vary. All Howard stories are copyrighted for 70 years in most countries, so all of them are now in public domain. Cabinet currently has ten federal lawsuits in litigation for copyright infringement. Here's an example of copyright infringement. Anyone can publish "The Tower of the Elephant" by REH, however, if they were to publish a story as "Conan and the Tower of the Elephant, that would be a copyright infringement because Cabinet owns the intellectual property of the Conan character. Steve: Perilous Worlds is a new imprint of Cabinet Entertainment that publishes new Science Fiction and Fantasy titles set in the IP worlds of REH and others. Comic Books Jay: Comic Book rights were held by Marvel from 1970-2000 and then Dark Horse from 2000-2018, and now the rights are back at Marvel. Whatever new Conan stuff that Marvel invents, Cabinet owns it. Including arms and armor, by Museum Replicas. We love to work with new creators and we very seldom take a license back from a licensee.
Games: Fred was into war games as a kid. He brought role playing games to Sweden. His favorite game was Call of Cthulhu the tabletop game released in 1981. Cabinet games must be kid friendly, appealing to existing fans, and not offensive to a 15 yr old girl, because gamers skew younger than the average Conan fan plus they skew female these days.
Upcoming Films/TV Series When directors want to direct a Conan movie but have only seen the movie and never read the books, but Cabinet wants any films to remain true to Howard's character, whereas producers want a huge audience so it gets tricky to appeal to all fan factions. For example the 2009 Solomon Kane movie spends half the time telling his origin story. Cabinet is looking for a streaming service to do Legend of Conan, set in the years after Conan stops being King. Universal was looking at it but the studio head left for another job. Had to wait three years for the option to expire. Cabinet asked Evan Daugherty, a native Texan, screenwriter, and huge Howard fan to write a new Conan film. He almost cried and accepted the job immediately. He wrote a fantastic pilot which sat at Sony for three years. The film never got made, the option expired, and Cabinet bought it back from Sony one month ago. Cabinet is now looking for another network to buy it. Fred described it as Indian Jones meets Laurence of Arabia. In 2018, Amazon commissioned a script from Ryan Condal and got Miguel Sapochnik to direct the pilot, he did GOT episode "Battle of the Bastards". Amazon bought LOTR series instead. Cabinet can’t use that material because it was developed for Amazon, so no one will ever see the best Conan script ever written. In 2019 Netflix offered a deal to produce a live action Conan series, but Cabinet had to spend a year educating them on what Conan was and didn't close the deal until November 2020, It's in development now. The Netflix executives want it to be a franchise. Red Sonja rights have been tied up at Millennium for a long time due to Bryan Singer's sexual assault allegations. However, Millennium has finally announced that a new director, Joey Soloway, has been attached to the picture with Hannah John-Kamen starring as Red Sonja. The film has Gail Simone on board as a story consultant. Simone re-launched the character when she authored 18 issues of Red Sonja for Dynamite Entertainment in 2013. Dann ThomasDann Thomas, wife of Roy Thomas, is the first woman who was credited for writing on Wonder Woman, Issue #300 in 1983. Before they were married, Roy wrote her into a Conan story as the woman Danette who Conan meets in "What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today?" published in What If? #13 (Feb. 1979). She also co-wrote with Roy for All Star Squadron in 1981 and Firebrand was named Danette Reilly for her. Roy credits her with creating the character Arak son of Thunder for DC, but she didn't get a writing credit till issue #12 in 1982. You can read all about her career here. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dann_Thomas Book SigningPoetry ReadingEvery year after the BBQ, REH's poem, "The Cimmerian" is read in multiple languages. I didn't get everyone's name, from right to left: Bill Cavalier (author and MC), Mark Finn (author) read in English, Patrice Louinet (author) read in French, Barbara Baum (author) is from Venezuela and read in Spanish, Mrs. Cavalier read in German, the next man read in Italian, and the young man who is from New York read in Swedish. Each person read one stanza. After the poem concluded, then it was open mic for anyone else who wanted to read something. We listened to a couple of other pieces but there was no shade in the front of the house and it was 102 degrees, so we went on back to the hotel. Check out the guy in front in his Conan helmet. That was the lone bit of cosplaying the entire weekend. Props to him because his brain must have been roasting in there. The Gravesite: Greenleaf CemetaryAlthough his home is in Cross Plains, the family was actually buried in Brownwood. The cemetery is easy to find plus REH's grave is pinpointed on Google maps in case you didn't pick up the directions at the gift shop. The headstone is in almost the exact middle of cemetery and with the addition of the historical marker and the permanent shade structure, you really can't miss it. We were not surprised to see that people had left offerings on the grave: Shiner beer, candles, and a novel. On the front of the stone, someone left a tiny cross made of tinfoil. The Whole Wide World, 1996Novalyne Price met REH while she was teaching at Cross Plains High School. She was introduced to him by a mutual friend. Novalyne pursued a friendship with Bob because he was getting his stories published and although she wanted to be a writer, she hadn't had much success in that area yet. They were close friends/romantically involved the last three years of his life. She wrote the two memoirs that the film is based on. She is buried in Clear Creek Cemetery in Bangs, TX, not far from Brownwood, alongside her husband William Ellis. If you read the trivia on the IMDB and Wikipedia pages, you'll find out that the movie was made in my hometown of Bastrop, and surrounding areas of Rockne, Bartlett, and Austin. The Howard home in the film is in Bastrop at 1310 Hill Street, as is the 1832 Tavern, at 809 Main Street, where Novalyne and Bob go to get a drink.
We have wanted to do a Harry Potter cosplay for a long time now. I even went so far as to order three sets of Gryffindor robes for the kids two years ago. Rob and I were going to be Snape and McGonagall or Hagrid and Professor Trelawny, but it just never manifested. Halloween 2019 was difficult with the death of Rob's dad. I didn't make anything for anyone. We pulled out the Gryffindor robes at the last minute for Sarah so she could go trick or treating and found out that the Small we ordered was entirely too small and wouldn't fit her anymore. She wore one of the Larges that we bought the boys and we gave the Small one away. When we chose Puffs for our second slot, I donated the Gryffindor robes to the cause of the show. While watching the show, which was super cute and fun, it occurred to me that we could do a HP photoshoot and send it out for Christmas cards. The first idea was a Slytherin family photo with Rob as Voldemort, me as Bellatrix, Sarah as Malfoy, Sylvan as Crabbe, and Seth as Goyle. The school uniforms fit the kids perfectly, which was a lucky coincidence with the casting. Voldemort's robes were one size fits all. The only thing I had to do was come up with a new Bellatrix costume since I'm twice as big as the actress who played that character in Puffs. I chose a black corset, a long sleeved net shirt, and a ruffled black skirt with a cape. Production ProcessThen I had another idea: do all the Hogwarts ghosts. Nearly Headless Nick. Fat Friar, and Moaning Myrtle were all parodied in Puffs, so I already had those costumes, built by the fabulous Matt Smith for the show, and again the sizing was a lucky coincidence. I had to make a Bloody Baron and a Grey Lady costume. I ordered the fabric from Fabric.com and it arrived in a week. I made a Restoration Justacorp for The Baron with slops, that he wore with a pre-existing doublet that I made for Three Musketeers. For The Grey Lady, I used a pre-existing skirt from Beaux Stratagem and matching bodice that I made for Christmas Carol. I had to remove the sleeves and create new ones to bring it into the correct period. I added an overskirt and some more trim. At some point, I bought an awesome tiara at a Skellington Market. I really wanted to make something to go with it. That's when I had the idea to do all the Founders' Objects in our Ghost photo. Rob already had a sword, I used the silver cup from the show, my tiara was Rowena's diadem, my grandmother's locket became Salazar's, and for Moaning Myrtle, an old patterning book stood in for Tom Riddle's diary. All I needed now was a photographer. Of couse I asked my friend Krista Kasper to do the honors. She did Seth's senior pictures and really did an amazing job on them. I asked her before Thanksgiving when I was still putting together all the costumes, wigs, and props. We set up a date, I did the location scouting, and like a very busy bee, started patterning and sewing. In fact I was still sewing the morning of the photo shoot. Getting ReadyThe family showed up at 1:00 and it was a tight schedule to get everyone dressed with wigs and makeup in the Ghosts costumes. We had to do those first because Rob had to shave afterwards to be Voldemort. I really needed another hour to do a better job with the wigs and makeup, but as it was literally the shortest day of the year, hurrying had to happen or we would lose the light. Photoshoot Krista took a ton of photos, which are really great. The only problems were the girls' wigs weren't on very well and you can see our hairline in the close ups. Also, there's a reason I'm not an actress. I don't take great photos, especially when I'm supposed to be cruel like Bellatrix or haughty like the Grey Lady. However, all things considered, the photoshoot was a rousing success. We celebrated with pizza and Christmas tv shows back at our house. The CArdsDid I mention that Krista is also great wit Photoshop? Check out the awesome Dark Mark and Hogwarts castle she gave us. She also managed to make Rob's arms white after I did his Voldemort makeup on his face and neglected to do his arms as well. He also forgot to take off his Fitbit, so she got rid of that too.
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July 2023
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