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Just me talking about costume-y kind of stuff
When I was here before visiting the Tower is the first thing we did once we checked into the hotel. The only two things I remember seeing were the executioner's block and ax, and the Crown Jewels. I still have the Crown Jewels guide book. Those were the two things I was looking forward to re-visiting, and I did do that, but I was amazed at how much more there was to see that I just hadn't remembered anything about from my previous trip in 1984.
The Ravens
There is a superstition that persists about the presence of ravens at the Tower being a necessity for the Crown to survive. Traditionally at least six ravens are always housed here and have been since the time of King Charles II when the monarchy was restored. Because ravens in the wilds around London have been mostly killed off, and new ravens had to be imported from Somerset, the Tower ravens have successfully been bred in captivity since 1987.
The Menagerie
Exotic animals were given as gifts to the monarchy since the 12th century and were kept at the Tower for visitors to marvel at. In 1882 Queen Victoria gifted all the remaining animals to help start the London Zoo in Regent's Park. In 2010 sculptor Kendra Haste was commissioned to craft thirteen life-sized animals to recreate the Royal Menagerie: a polar bear, a lion and two lionesses, a troop of eight baboons, and an elephant. The sculptures are scattered around the grounds so coming upon one is a delightful surprise.
The Tower as Fortress
The view of the Tower as we approached it from the tube station is particularly striking. We were giddy with excitement!
Here's a scale model that was on display where you can get a much better idea of the size of the White Tower (the central building) and its surrounding defensive walls and moat. The moat was drained in 1840 by order of the Duke of Wellington to prevent more deaths from the water-born diseases living in what had essentially become a smelly swamp. The moat is now a dry ditch around the outer walls.
Defensive architecture
High, thick walls with arrow loops are the main ingredients for keeping the castle safe from invaders.
The Armoury
This surprising display of arms and armour was designed in the tradition of John Harris' Seven-Headed Hydra. Karen Whitting, the Royal Armouries Head of Creative Programmes, teamed up with Haley Sharpe Design to build this noble beast. His name is Keeper, and he stands nearly fifteen feet high and weighs 2,600 pounds.
The Tower as Palace
The palace section of the Tower is made up of St. Thomas' Tower, The Wakefield Tower, and the Lanthorn Tower. They were built by Henry III and his son Edward I. Henry's rooms were in Wakefield Tower and were restored in the 19th century with their version of medieval, which is not accurate. The vaulted ceilings are from this attempt at restoration. The fireplace and chapel were restored more recently in the correct style of the period, as was the throne room. Edward's rooms in St. Thomas' Tower have been restored in the style of the time and his bedroom has been recreated based on manuscripts of the period. The Lanthorn Tower was built for Henry III's Queen's accommodations, but was completely gutted by fire in 1774 and then rebuilt in the 19th century. The objects below are displayed in the Lanthorn Tower.
The Crown Jewels
No photography is allowed in the area where the Crown Jewels are stored, so here's a video that was made in 2012 for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. For that reason, the Crown Jewels display was revamped to give them a more modern setting with new backgrounds and lighting to make them more visible. The exhibition area was given more signage to better teach their history and explain their significance in the Coronations and other Royal functions. They did a great job with the new display. I remember in 1984 the whole area being so dark that you could hardly see anything.
This link will take you to the gallery of all the objects in the Crown Jewels collection at the Tower.
The Tower as Prison
The Tower was never meant to be a prison so there were no cells or dungeons in the construction. That meant that prisoners were stuffed anywhere there was room.
Traitor's Gate
​This infamous entrance was originally called Water Gate. It was built by Edward I so he could get to the Tower directly from the Thames. By King Henry VIII's reign it had acquired the name Traitor's Gate. Anyone who arrived here through Traitor's Gate was pretty much assured to never leave....or at least, leave with their head still attached. Prisoners were brought down the Thames by barge under the London Bridge where they could see heads of the recently executed displayed on pikes. Thomas Cranmer and Sir Thomas More entered through Traitor's Gate. Anne Boleyn is rumored to have entered through here as well. These days, Traitor's Gate is no longer used, having been bricked up on the Thames' side by 1895 due to the Thames Embankment project and its resulting rising water levels making it useless.
Here's the view from the Thames side of the gate. it makes it really obvious that you couldn't get a boat under that arch in low tide much less high tide.
Imprisonment
The poor souls confined in the Beauchamp Tower left graffiti all over the walls. Most of the graffiti dates from the War of the Roses, when almost anyone could end up on the losing side and find themselves no longer in possession of their freedom.
The Princes in the Tower
Everyone who's familiar with Richard III has heard the story about the Princes in the Tower. Let's start with the facts: Their father, Edward IV, died leaving the two princes-- Edward, 12 and Richard, 9--in their mother's care but politically in their Uncle Richard's hands. Richard was made Lord Protector of the twelve year old king to be, as was his duty, and brought him to the Tower in April of 1483, before the Coronation. The ceremony ended up being delayed. Edward's younger brother joined him there in June for newly rescheduled coronation. Richard was crowned King in July of the same year and then had the princes declared illegitimate by an act of Parliament in 1484. The boys disappeared sometime in 1483 from the Tower and were never seen again.
The part of the story that most people misunderstand is that Richard bringing the boys to the Tower did not in any way signify that he was going to imprison and/or execute them. The Tower was the official residence for monarchs that were about to be crowned because it was the closest palace to Westminster Abbey. The accommodations were quite luxurious for the time and the Princes would have been housed and fed befitting their rank, with servants to care for them. Nonetheless, the Princes disappeared and Richard was King, so he looked exceedingly guilty, since no official statement was ever made about them after that. According to Shakespeare's play, Richard had them murdered in order to secure the throne for himself, but there are other theories as well. One theory is that one or both of them escaped assassination and of course two men turned up years later claiming to be one of the two Princes: Lambert Simnel in 1487 and Perkin Warbeck in 1491. Simnel was ten years old when he was crowned King Edward VI and unwittingly became a figurehead for a rebellion. Henry VII captured and killed the leaders of the rebellion but took pity on the child and put him to work in the Royal Kitchens. Warbeck was seventeen and knew exactly what he was doing when he came back to England pretending to be the younger Prince Richard, Duke of York. He'd been in Antwerp where he'd been living with his mother and learning Dutch, so he concocted the whole story about escaping the Tower after his brother Edward was murdered and hiding in Antwerp to avoid being murdered by Richard III's men. His story convinced a lot of people who weren't fond of Henry VII and decided to back him in another rebellion against the crown, which lasted six years and cost Henry a lot of money. Upon his capture, Warbeck admitted to being an imposter and Henry initially was merciful, released him from the Tower, allowed him to be at banquets, but was placed under guard and not allowed to sleep with his wife. After 18 months of this treatment, Warbeck tried to escape but was captured, After a second escape attempt failed, Henry had him hanged. To make a long story short, after the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II was having some remodeling done to the Tower, when in 1674 the workman dug up a wooden box containing two small skeletons under this stairwell. Charles assumed they were the princes and had them reburied in Westminster Abbey. There was testing done on the bones in 1933 that concluded they were of the correct time period and the bones were of the correct ages to be the Princes, No further testing using more modern methods like DNA testing have been done since. ​ Sorry about the horrible glare on the sign below. Torture
The Wakefield Tower houses the exhibit on tortue. The guidebook says that only a tiny fraction of prisoners were tortured and only to elicit information or to sign a confession. The practice of torturing prisoners was abandoned in the 17th century.
Execution
This memorial was erected by Queen Victoria, This is what the execution site looked like when I was there in 1984. ​I was a bit disappointed to find they'd moved the block inside and put up a new memorial.
The new memorial was installed in 2006 and is specifically dedicated to the three Queens (and seven others) who were executed there. The artist who designed it was Brian Catling. The ten executions that are being memorialized were the ones actually done privately on Tower Green rather than publicly on Tower Hill. Those were William Hastings, Queen Anne Boleyn, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Queen Catherine Howard and her lady in waiting Jane Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. All of these seven people were beheaded for treason. Of the seven beheadings Henry VIII is responsible for the most at four; Richard III, Mary I, and Elizabeth I are tied with one each.
The last three victims memorialized were soldiers of the Black Watch, a unit of Scottish Highlanders. it was entirely the idea of the artist to include these three men. They were found guilty of desertion by George II and shot by firing squad up against the wall of the chapel. The rest of the 100+ deserters captured with them were pardoned and sent to serve in the West Indies. I wonder what those three did to piss him off. Maybe they told him they'd rather die than go to the West Indies. Who knows. It's not like they were officers who led the desertion; they were two corporals and a private. Here a photo of the totally innocuous memorial. The table is inscribed with the names of the victims and the black circle on which it stands has a poem inscribed which reads: ​ "Gentle visitor pause awhile * where you stand death cut away the light of many days * here jewelled names were broken from the vivid thread of life * may they rest in peace while we walk the generations around their strife and courage * under these restless skies".
As far as apologies go, I guess it's OK. I'm of the opinion that death sites need to be left alone and let them be a horrific reminder of what humans are capable of. I think they should have left the block where it was. Also, the new location of the block isn't listed on the map. The Tower admin certainly aren't advertising its whereabouts and it took us all day to find it, which was quite by accident. It's in the White Tower, in the armoury, in a corner, in a plexiglass box. It's displayed there with the axe. FYI: the original plaque that marked the site of the scaffold was moved into the Yeoman Warder's Club at some point after 1972 and hung over the bar with the Yeoman Gaoler's axe and was still there in 2017 when the New York Post did a story on the Yeomen of the Guard. ​
​This block is obviously not the same block as the one that was outside in 1984. The block and axe that are displayed here are from the last public beheading that took place on Tower Hill in 1747 when Simon Fraser was executed for his part in the Jacobite uprisings. All public executions were held on a scaffold so that the audience could see better. Plus, if the victim were being hanged, you needed the room underneath for the body to fall through. Simon was supposed to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, like all the previous Scottish traitors, but since he was 70, enormously fat, arthritic, and gouty, George II took pity on him and had him beheaded instead. Thereafter the scaffold was disassembled and no more public hangings occured after that.
​I did some research and in total there were 133 people executed by order of the reigning monarch. The rest of the 123 executions were carried out publicly on Tower Hill where they were mostly beheaded (93). Two were burned at the stake, twelve were just hanged. eleven were hanged, drawn, and quartered, one was hanged and disemboweled, and fourteen were shot by firing squad. Those were mostly WW I spies. The last person to be executed on Tower Hill was Josef Jacobs who was shot by firing squad in 1941 for espionage during WW II.
Tea and Cake or Death
We met my former student and awesome friend, Jason Price, his husband Thomas, and his cousin Ethan at Paul's Patisserie for some post-Tower tea and cake or death. Jason has a PhD and teaches theatre at the University of Sussex. It was great to see him again. The last time he was in Texas we met at Starbuck's and forgot to get a photo. This time we were able to have a much longer chat and Rob took the photo.
The Map
Here's our handy-dandy map of the Tower. It was free!
We rode the tube to get to the Tower from our hotel, but it was easy and only took about 30 minutes.
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Les Mis is one of the longest running plays on Broadway, so you'll be surprised to learn that I had never seen it before now. My sister had the original London cast album back in the day and it felt like she was in her room playing it 24/7 my entire senior year. I knew all the words to all the songs before I graduated high school. It came to Austin on tour while I was in college and my mom took my sister to see it. I couldn't go because I was doing my own show as usual. So, I missed my chance. I went to see the movie when it came out. I was so excited to finally see the show that I had only imagined seeing in my head for all those years. I thought the movie was terrible. It was not at all what I had imagined, there were entirely too many super close-up shots and the camera operator seemed drunk. But the unforgivable thing was the actors didn't have the voices for the roles, and I went away angry instead of satisfied. So I was really excited to finally see the show staged the way it was meant to be and played to a live audience with a huge barricade on stage built just for me.
It was everything I'd imagined all those years ago. The stage had a revolve, the barricade was in two pieces and came apart and rotated so you could see the other side. There was a trap door to the sewers for the Thenardiers to pop out of. There were costume changes galore! I really liked the costumes with the one exception that I thought adult Cosette could have been dressed in slightly brighter colors.
Costume DesignerAndreane Neofitou
I found an old LA Times interview with her where she talks about her approach to costume design:
"For me, it's never a matter of doing pretty costumes," said Neofitou. "I'm trying to bring a world--with period pieces, specifically, it's an alien world--to modern audiences, to make that world the present. I don't want to have a barrier between the audience and what's going on onstage. You have to make that costume so familiar, so real to that character, that the audience doesn't see the costumes, it sees the character." "I'm trying to augment what the director is saying or the actor is doing," Neofitou says. When the emphasis of a character changes during rehearsals, which are frequently attended by the costume designer, "you do bend the costumes. The costumes are always fluid." I have the full article linked below: Costume RenderingsCostume Gallery
From the program I learned that there are 50 performers in the show with 22 of them understudying the 9 leading roles. Between them they wear 444 costumes and 35 wigs in the show, and the poor dressers each have to climb 600 stairs every performance.
The Queen's Theatre
The theatre opened in 1907 and ran plays and other entertainments until WWII when it was the first theatre in the West End to be bombed by the Germans during the run of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. The bomb landed directly on the building and destroyed the lobby and the facade, forcing the theatre to close. It took nineteen years and $250,000 to restore it to its original Edwardian splendour on the inside and something a bit more modern on the outside. It reopened in 1959 with a John Gielgud solo show of Shakespearean sonnets and monologues. It has been home to Les Miserables since 2004.
The Parody
If you love Les Mis like most of us theatre folks do, you'll really enjoy this parody version that tells you everything you need to know about Les Mis in just three minutes. If you don't know anything about Les Mis, then watch this first!
CArpool Karaoke
James Corden sings Jean Valjean, Lin Manuel Miranda sings Javert, Jesse Tyler Ferguson sings Marius, Audra McDonald sings Cosette, and Jane Krakowski sings Eponine. This version is so much better than the film.
The MapThe building had been a lodging house from 1860-1934, so the building itself is of the correct period, since Sherlock and Dr. Watson occupied the premises from 1881-1904. There was a gift shop on the ground level disguised as Mrs. Hudson's tea shoppe with a separate entrance. Once you go through the door, you go up a narrow flight of stairs to the parlour in the front and Sherlock's bedroom in the rear of the second floor. Dr. Watson's and Mrs. Hudson's bedrooms are on the third floor, Dr. Watson's laboratory and W/C on the fourth floor. It was amazing. Everything there was authentic to the period. The rooms were tiny. All the artifacts were directly related to his cases. The employees were costumed in period attire as a bobby and two maids. On the website there's a Dr. Watson playing tour guide, but he wasn't there when we went, although the website did say they were hiring, so maybe they needed an new Dr. Watson. They never have an actor playing Sherlock, if people ask, they just say he's out on a case. Photo GalleryMy 34 Year Long Journey finally endsThis was as far as I got last time I was here. There were signs up at the station that implied that the museum was closed for renovation. What I didn't know was that it hadn't opened yet. In fact, the museum had been in a planning phase for years and didn't actually open until 1990. In Sherlock's time, Baker Street didn't go as far as 221. The author was kind enough not to bother residents of the street by giving a real address for his fictional detective. The street that extended on north of Baker Street was called Upper Baker Street to differentiate it from regular Baker Street. In the 1930's, the Westminster City Council decided to do away with the distinction, and all the addresses along Upper Baker Street were reallocated to continue seamlessly from the Baker Street addresses. The bank that occupied those famous premises quickly put up a historical plaque on the outside of the bank building. Or rather, it was the company that owned the building the bank was in, Abbey National. The bank then discovered that it would soon have to hire a secretary to answer all the fan mail (as well as genuine letters for help) that began arriving in droves. It probably pissed them off to have to pay a salary to answer mail that wasn't for them, but they sucked it up and also probably gloried in the fame of it all. Who knows, maybe the Abbey National people paid for the secretary, since they were the ones who paid for the plaque. Fast forward to 1990. The Sherlock Holmes museum opened at the slew of addresses between 237 and 241, just down the street from the bank. A controversy brewed up almost immediately. The problem was that the museum had put a blue sign out front duplicating the look of the actual historical society signs with the 221B address, just like Holmes and Watson were real people and had really lived there, regardless of the fact that that wasn't the actual address. To make matters worse, for the grand opening ceremony, the Westminster City Council officially gave the 221B address to the museum so the mail service began delivering letters there as well. The Abbey National people were angry because the museum was stealing their famed address, as well as their mail, so a fifteen year long legal battle ensued. The fight raged on, until Abbey National closed its doors in 2005, thus ending the legal battle and giving official ownership of the address to the museum. It only took 34 years for me to finally make it there!
The National Theatre company began in The Old Vic theatre under the direction of Laurence Olivier. The building was finally finished in 1976, under the direction of Peter Hall. The modern concrete design was the brainchild of Denys Lasdun and has been much complained about ever since. The idea behind the design was that it was supposed to be The People's Theatre: no private boxes, no gilt cherubs, no class distinctions. If the Queen comes to the theatre, she sits in a regular seat just like everyone else. The building has three spaces and always has six shows running in repertory. Each show runs one week and then changes for the second show. The three spaces are the Olivier, the Lyttleton, and the Dorfman stages. The Olivier is the largest space. It's built like a drum in that the stage is set on a corkscrew and rotates up and down the height of the building so that sets can be built in the scene shop and then lifted into place as if they were on an elevator. The Lyttleton is a medium sized space shaped like an L. The running show's set is on the bottom of the L, and the off show's set is stored on the side of the L. The Dorfman is the smallest space. Here's a video of the drum revolve in action. The BAckstage TourNo photos were allowed inside the backstage area with the exception of a special "hands-on" props area. So I've found a video so that you can see what we saw. We were taken backstage to Drum Road, where a very large hallway connects all of the shops to the performance spaces. We weren't allowed in the costume shop because they were in technical rehearsals for their upcoming production of Translation by Brian Friel, and they were doing fittings. They do a special tour of the costume shop on select Saturdays, when no one is in there, but we weren't going to be there for the next one. They do show the costume shop on the video, however. We did get to see a little bit of the technical rehearsals for Translations, but alas, no tickets (that we could afford) were available to see the show that week. The set looked amazing. They had covered the stage floor with moss. I've included the video trailer for Translations. It's being performed in their largest space, the Olivier Theatre and is in rep with Exit the King. One of the more famous productions at the National Theatre was Danny Boyle's Frankenstein, in which Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller played the Doctor and the Creature for one performance and then they switched roles for the next performance! The video of this production is being show in Waco on October 22 at Cinemark movie theatre. I'm taking Rob for his birthday. The Savoy Theatre
This is the only theatre I'd been in before this trip. Back in the 1984 I was in London for four days on a school trip and we saw one show: Noises Off, here at the Savoy. It had opened at the Hammersmith and after ecstatic reviews, had transferred to the Savoy in 1982, where it ran till 1987. I had seen the original production and I didn't even know it. So I was very excited to go back and see something else there. I was particularly interested in the history of the building, because I remembered the theatre being very unusual on the inside. I did some research and discovered that it was built by on the site of a palace in 1881 by Richard D'Oyly Carte for Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas. Since then it also premiered Oscar Wilde's Salome in 1931 and Blithe Spirit in 1941.
The palace was built by Henry III's wife's uncle--Peter, Count of Sabaudia. Peter built his palace in 1263. On Peter's death, it was given to the Queen's son, and eventually was inherited by John of Gaunt. It was burned down in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. In 1512 Henry VII built a hospital on the site which stood until 1702 when the hospital went out of business due to poor management and the building was turned into a military prison. In the 19th C, the buildings were torn down and new construction was done. In 1864 a fire burned everything except the stone walls and the chapel and it sat empty until D'Oyly bought it in 1880. Nine years later, D'Oyly added a hotel to the site and moved the entrance to the theatre so that it was on the same side as the entrance to the hotel. The Savoy was the first theatre to be lit by electricity rather than gas lamps. it was also, at the time, state of the art in terms of fire safety, using fire-proof materials in the construction and with four exits on each side. Here's a photo of what the interior looked like originally.
The theatre's interior was redone in 1929 in the Art Deco style. In 1990 while undergoing some refurbishment, a fire destroyed everything but the stage and backstage areas. It was rebuilt as faithfully as possible to the 1929 designs and reopened in 1993. As someone who saw it before and after the fire, they did a great job of restoration. it looks exactly like I remembered it. They now have plaques all over the outside of the building commemorating its history.
Here's two photos I took of stage right and left sides of the house.
Here's a view from the stage of the restored interior.
The show
The best thing about this show was the tech. The costumes were stunning, the changes miraculous, and they were certainly shown to their best by the lighting and stage design. The show was worth it just to see the dazzling designs. I loved all the wigs as well. There was one magical quick change that happened onstage with Effie while she was singing. The hit her with a spotlight while she was wearing one dress, then tightened it down to just her face and when they opened it up just a few seconds later, she was wearing a completely different costume. I loved the sleight of hand! The set was racks of Fresnels which moved to different positions on stage to create different spaces. There were beaded light up curtains that provided backdrops for The Dreams. The set was made of light and motion and seemed to be a character all on its own.
With that being said, I'd missed the original touring version back in the 1980's when it came to A&M and played in the big theatre while I was across the hall at the Forum doing our own show. I did take the poster home with me after strike and kept it for years, wishing I had been able to see the show. When the movie came out, I saw that instead. In comparing the stage revival to the movie, the West End production was weak. And I don't mean that the performers couldn't sing or dance, they were fabulous performers. The actress playing Effie has a blowtorch for a voice. I'd like to tell you who she was, but they had three names listed as playing Effie plus one understudy. I have no idea which one of them we saw. What I mean by weak is that they cut so much of the story out of the production, that if I hadn't seen the movie, I would have no idea of what was going on. There was very little dialogue between songs to tell the story of the personal relationships between characters, or the machinations involved in all the backstabbing that went on. I don't know if there were cuts made from the original Broadway version, or they just added more explanation to the film, but if that's what happened, the show certainly needs it. If I hadn't seen the movie I wouldn't have known that Curtis sold his car dealership to finance the records, or that Jimmy Early was doing drugs, that Curtis fired him, or that Jimmy died of a drug overdose. We weren't told that Dina provided all the evidence against Curtis or that Curtis was beating her. So I'm really glad I knew what was going on, but I felt sorry for the students who hadn't seen the movie (it was before their time) and were lost. Costume Designer Gregg Barnes
The Dreamgirls have 16 changes. On the lavender dresses there are 30,000 Swarovski crystals on each dress. You can see them being applied individually to the fabric before the dress is made on the video.
Costume Gallery
Gregg Barnes rendering technique is so lovely. He uses Swarovski crystals on the renderings!
The Map
It was a short walk from the hotel the theatre, but we'd been walking all day and were tired. We got there early and there was nowhere to sit and wait for the students but on the sidewalk, which I did. We'd picked up sandwiches from Tesco and sat on the sidewalk eating them like hobos right next to a Rolls Royce. We did see several of the performers show up and go in the back entrance which was guarded by a hotel employee. At least he didn't shoo us away.
We got up early Sunday morning and leisurely walked to the Victoria Embankment on the Thames River. The plan was to meet up with the students there and take a Thames River boat to Hampton Court for the day. We saw some very Egyptian landmarks on the way.
Our boat was the Connaught and was built in 1911. I'm standing on the deck and Rob is in the belly of the beast by the snack bar.
Sites along the Thames
Once on board the boat, the driver narrated all the things we were seeing along the river as we cruised past. You'll recognize the London Eye and Buckingham Palace, but you might not notice Big Ben underneath all the scaffolding. If you're a Pink Floyd fan you might recognize Battersea Power Station from their Animals album cover, or from the Doctor Who episode "Rise of the Cybermen".
Hampton Court
Hampton Court contains both the Tudor Palace of Henry VIII as its earliest buildings as well as the later Baroque palace of William, Mary, and Anne, which the Georgian kings also occupied and updated.
Above is the link to the website, below is a full tour video in less than 15 minutes.
Once we got there I was starving, so we went straight to the kitchens and found meat pies with gravy and mash and bottles of water to revive us. The food was amazing! I would eat this all the time.
Then we got busy sight-seeing. We started with the Tudor section of the palace.
Henry VIII's PalaceHenry VIII's Kitchens
The kitchens were an awesome sight to see, even with no one in there preparing any food. Here's a video where you can watch a reenactment of what it must have been like to feed the thousands of courtiers that lived there on a daily basis.
Here's my photos of the kitchen facilities, including the wine cellar and the chocolate room. The last three photos are the menus.
Henry VIII's apartmentsThe Chapel
Because it was Sunday, the Chapel Royal was having services and we were not allowed to see it. I found a documentary on it that was done in 1999 by the Archive of Recorded Church Music on the choristers.
THe Ceilings and Stained GlassThe Tapestries and Portraits
There's a lot of art hanging in the Palace. The tapestries are in the King's private apartments. The Wolsey Gallery contains paintings of Henry and some of his wives. Those are the paintings hanging on red wallpaper. The portraits of Henry VIII's parents and children hang in the Haunted Gallery. Those hang on green wallpaper.
​The Haunted Gallery is so named because Catherine Parr broke free from her escorts to run down that hallway to try and beg Henry for her life while he was at prayer in the Royal Chapel. Even though the Royal Chapel was closed to us that day, we were still allowed to be in the Haunted Gallery. I was hoping for a ghostly encounter, but alas, I didn't have one. Instead, here's a video about it.
The Stuart Palace
William and Mary began updating the ancient Tudor Palace by adding a new wing designed in the new architectural style, and adding more gardens. They didn't live long enough to complete the work, which was done by Anne after their deaths. Later the Hanoverians added their own touches to the new part of the palace.
The Hedge Maze
The Wilderness Gardens, including the Hedge Maze, was built by William and Mary. Unfortunately, due to our time constraints, that is the only part of the many gardens we were able to see.
​Luckily, for its 500th birthday celebration, they made a video of the gardens throughout all the seasons that you can watch.
The Hanoverian Maquettes
In the Baroque part of the palace, mannequins dressed in paper costumes of the period were scattered around each room like they were engaged in palace business. On some of them were pinned identifying labels of who the replica costumes belonged to and what their function was at court.
The Map
About that Thames River Boat ride: I do not recommend it, if you want to get there fast and un-sunburned. The trip took 4 hours one way but we misunderstood when we booked the tickets and thought it was only 2 hours one way, for a 4 hour trip total. Luckily there was a snack bar on the boat and bathrooms. I still ended up having a peeling red face for the rest of the trip. So, once we realized that we'd only purchased one way tickets and that the boat was going to last 4 hours, we immediately decided to take a train back to the hotel. The train ride only lasted one hour and if we'd taken the train in the first place, we'd have seen 3 more hours of the Palace. Here's us on the train back, exhausted and sun-burned, thoroughly pissed that we spent so long on the boat and barely had any time to do the hedge maze and no time to see any of the gardens or the tennis courts.
​The day of the Royal Wedding, we went to King's Cross station and took a train to Cambridge. One of our faculty sponsors, Lizzie Talbot, had a fight choreography workshop to present there, so we hired a tour guide to show us around the campus for the day. I don't remember her name, but she was great. Here's a photo of her standing outside of a pub called The Eagle. The Eagle is the oldest pub in Cambridge and dates back to the 14th Century. The King's Men used to go there and perform. Also, there was a fire and two girls died and they say that you can see their ghosts standing in the window.
Here's the window where you can sometimes see the ghosts of the two girls. They always leave it open because when it accidentally gets closed, you can hear the girls screaming.
So that's how our tour started out: with Shakespeare and ghosts!
As I said earlier, it was the day of the Royal Wedding and the whole town was celebrating. In the market square they had a giant screen set up so that everyone could watch. In every pub and shop there were carboard stand ups of the couple that you could take a photo with. When we went back to the Eagle for lunch, we met Rob's friend Rachel there and her husband Andy, and their two sons. We had our first fish and chips and Andy posed with the Royal couple. The neat thing about the Eagle is that in WW II it was a hangout for the RAF, so all the decor is from that period. The ceiling is covered in RAF graffiti that they burned into it with candles. I wish I'd gotten a photo of the ceiling.
Here's Rob and his friend Rachel. We are no longer at The Eagle, and the wedding is now over and they were packing up the giant screen TV and the crowds were dispersing, so we walked around a bit more. We stopped in at another pub to get a cold drink because it turned out to be quite a hot day. Rob is sporting his brand new Bat out of Hell t-shirt he just got the night before.
Other neat things we saw after the official tour of Cambridge was over: Harry Potter themed shops As it turned out these were EVERYWHERE, but this was the first one we saw and I might have squealed with delight.
This reminded me of Honeydukes.
I know it's supposed to say Bateman Street, but it clearly says BATMAN Street.
I wish I could have seen this production staged at the Cambridge Arts Theatre: Midsummer with superheroes!
Here's the information that our tour guide gave us as she took us around campus and showed us all the ancient buildings. It was graduation day for many of the colleges and therefore we weren't allowed to go inside most of the buildings. The one place we did get to see the inside of was the chapel at King's College.
​​Corpus Christi was founded in 1352 and is the 6th oldest college, but has the oldest chapel, built in 1577. Christopher Marlow and Fletcher are famous alumni.
​King's College was started by Henry VI in 1441. He started Eton for his sons so only boys from Eton were allowed to go to King's College. Only 70 students were admitted on scholarship. It took 100 years to complete the chapel, which was much larger than Corpus Christi chapel-- Altarpiece "Adoring Magi" was painted by Rubens. All students had to go to chapel every day and then write about it.
Clare College is the second oldest, founded in 1326 by Lady Elizabeth de Clare for 10 students. to be fed, housed, and educated till they turned 20. It was the first college founded by a woman and the play Blue Stockings is about this college.
Trinity was founded by King Henry VIII. There's a statue of Henry on campus and as a joke, some of the students replaced his scepter with a chair leg and the administration thought it was funny so they left it that way. Famous alumni are Isaac Newton, Lord Byron who kept a bear on campus, AA Milne, Prince Charles, and Eddie Redmayne. During Isaac Newton's tenure, the plague had broken out so everyone was going home to avoid getting sick and that's when Isaac saw the apple fall off the tree outside his window and thus invented the theory of gravity. That apple tree is no longer there, although in later years, the students would hang plastic apples off the not an apple tree that was planted there.
Founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII. Famous alumni are writers William Wordsworth and Douglas Adams, and actor Derek Jacobi.
Also founded by a woman, Lady Frances Sidney. Surrounding the college are high stone walls that are designed to keep the students from sneaking out and broken glass is embedded in the walls to discourage them from climbing over. Their curfew was 11pm. Famous alumni are Oliver Cromwell, who after his death was buried at Westminster. However, once the monarchy was restored, Charles II had his body disinterred and executed by hanging and then beheading. His head was placed on a spike above Westminster. After a storm broke the pole and the head was blown to the ground, it was in the hands of private collectors and museum owners for the next 300 years. His head was finally sent back to his alma mater and was buried close to the chapel in 1960. His ghost reportedly still roams the grounds.
Founded in 1505 also by Lady Margaret Beaufort. Famous alumni are John Milton and Charles Darwin, who started the botanical garden.
Founded in 1855, ithe Amatuer Dramatic Club is England's oldest University theatre. Famous alumnus are Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellan, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Tilda Swinton, and Eddie Redmayne. Prince Charles acted on this stage. It's run entirely by students.
PHoto Gallery
The photos are labeled to the best of my poor ability to remember what they are of. If you notice a mistake, please tell my so I can correct it.
The Map
We left from our hotel, walked to the Covent Garden Station, took the Piccadilly line to King's Cross station and then took a train to Cambridge. We couldn't help but notice that they entire town had been decorated for the Royal Wedding and we were a little bit sad that we had an activity planned already instead of being able to go down to Westminster and be among the throng of well-wishers. It seemed like we were the only people who were leaving London that day. However, our journey took about 2 hours and there were toilets on the train, but no trolley witch with Cornish pasties or chocolate frogs, unfortunately. My entire knowledge of traveling by English train is from The Young Ones "University Challenge" episode and the Harry Potter movies.
From the website:
"The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance." Compared to the British Museum, the V&A was a much better tourist experience for us. There were toilets on every floor, the map was more helpful, the air conditioning was colder, and it was less crowded. The cafe had more and better food, there was seating inside as well as outside, and the outside seating was much more pleasant with a lovely reflecting pool and gardens to look at while lunching. Plus, there was TEA and CAKE! For more about the tea, skip to the end. V&A architectureTheatrical Collection
This bit was hard to find. It was upstairs on the 3rd floor in the back corner behind the silver gallery. It's four rooms worth of theatrical costumes, theatre models, set models, masks, hats, shoes, and prints that includes not only theatre, but ballet, opera, and rock and roll. It's an amazing collection. Notable costumes are Elfelba from Wicked, which we got to see in Edinburgh, two costumes from Lion King, which I still haven't seen. Of personal interest to me (because I've done these shows) The Queen of the Night from Magic Flute, Jocelyn Herbert's masks from The Orestia, (my mask making project from many summers ago was based on her designs), and Maria from Daughter of the Regiment. Unfortunately for all of us, the V&A has yet to put out a book of the collection, so my poor photos will have to do.
Fashion collection
When you get done looking at my poor photos, you can go online and order the book of the collection. It'll cost you about $10.00 that's actually in dollars not pounds. I bought the book from the gift shop and it cost me $25 USD. I should have known better.
The REst of the Collection
We began our walk through the collection with Medieval and Renaissance Europe and it just kept going and going and going.
The Map
We took the Picadilly line from Covent Garden to South Kensington Station. That took about 20 minutes and then we walked a few blocks to the museum. It was easy. We had lunch in the V&A cafe which is the world's oldest museum cafe. At 4:00 we went back for tea and cake or death in the loveliest tea room ever. Dinner was at an "American" hamburger joint that had the best flavored meat we had the whole trip and they served it with rosemary chips (fries). Best meal of the trip so far. When it was time to leave, we took the tube back to Covent Garden and then walked down to the Dominion for Bat out of Hell!
The Tea Room
If you, like me, are of a certain age, then you spent all of your teenage years listening to Bat out of Hell by Jim Steinman and Meatloaf. What you probably didn't know is that they had a really hard time getting it made. Jim Steinman's lawyer David Sonenberg believed in their vision so he borrowed $35,000 from a relative to pay for the recording session. They recruited Todd Rundgren to produce it and two of the E Street band members to play on it. The recording process was finalized in 1976, but no one would distribute it in the age of disco and punk, it was just too weird. An agonizing eighteen months later, Steve Popovich accepted the album for Cleveland International Records who released the album in 1977. It wasn't an immediate success anywhere, but slowly, starting in the UK, it built up a cult following from being played on a BBC show called The Old Grey Whistle Stop Test, where they showed the band playing the title track. It was so popular with the show's fans, that they played the same clip the next week and then later invited the band to the studio to play "Paradise by the Dashboard Light". It was in regular rotation on a popular Canadian radio station and eventually the US caught up. By 1978, the album was selling half a million copies every week. Bat out of Hell is now one of the best selling albums of all time, having sold 50 million copies worldwide.
That being said, I listened to that album for decades without realizing that it started life as a Rock and Roll musical called Neverland. They took the three exceptional songs from that show and wrote four more to go with them and that eventually became Bat Out Of Hell the album. This show is the culmination of Jim Steinman's dream that started way back in 1974, when he performed his futuristic rock version of Peter Pan for the Kennedy Center Music Theatre Lab workshop with Meatloaf. Forty-four years later that dream has been made a reality! When Meatloaf, who was an executive producer for the show, saw the show he said, "All I can do is cry and that's what happens. This human (Jim) has had a dream and I am here and alive to see it." And next year, in 2019, the show will begin touring the US and you can see it too.
Above is the show's website where you can get way more info on the production as well as buy tickets. Below is the trailer promo for the show.
These signs were all over the lobby, which says way more about how seriously the show takes itself. Their use of the word "epic" is 100% fact and it would only be more true if they'd used all caps. I would have used all caps.
Here's a tiny bit of plot and character details so that the rest of this blog makes sense. It's based on Peter Pan, so Strat is Peter, the leader of The Lost, teens that due to a chemical spill are permanently young and immortal. They live on their own in the sewers because their parents are afraid of them and throw them out. Raven is Wendy, an uninfected teen girl who sees Strat from her window and instantly falls in love with him. Her father, Falco is both Jim Darling and Captain Hook, protective of his daughter and wanting to make sure that Strat and his filthy band of freaks never sully her. Falco is also the business tycoon responsible for the chemical spill that has infected the city's teens. Sloane is Mrs. Darling who was once in love with her husband but has woken up to his responsibility for the chemical spill (as well as all of the city's other problems) and realized that she hasn't felt loved by him in years. She drinks to drown her sorrow for her lost youth and vitality. Tink is a boy who got turned immortal much younger than the rest of The Lost and will therefore never experience puberty or sexual love and is extremely jealous of Strat's newfound girlfriend Raven. That's all you need to know.
​This was our view of the stage. We weren't nearly as high up as Kinky Boots and even though we were in the second section of the first balcony, we had great seats.
Here's a video from the show's website that is a time lapse of the set being built. Let's talk about the set design for a minute. It was designed by British scenographer, Jon Bausor, who also helped design the costumes. Notice how they built out into the private boxes. The live band was backstage behind the curtain and were only visible in a scene set in a bar. The orchestra was stage left in a small pit in the corner of the apron. The fire curtain is concealing on stage right a gigantic sewer tunnel with a cave above, and on stage left alternately, a two story apartment in the shape of a guitar neck, a bar with a live band, and a waterfall. The set was so over the top I couldn't believe they got all that crammed into the space. As you watch the video you can see all the different locations that I've mentioned. Working with the set was the live video feed and projections onto the walls of the apartment building. For some scenes the walls would be the outside of the Falco building, others the walls would become transparent so you could see inside their living room or Falco and Sloane's bedroom on the first floor or Raven's bedroom on the second floor. Sometimes the live video feed was used to show us a scene that was happening inside Raven's bedroom while the walls were opaque. Other times the walls would show us the newsfeed of a television broadcast or be used as ad space like billboards.
Rob just found this for me. It's Raven and Strat take you on a "backstage" tour of the set.
Now let's talk about the special effects. What you don't get to see and will never see unless you go see the show (which I highly recommend) is the really cool sleight of hand by the designer/techies/actors that the show keeps pulling out of its metaphorical hat. The first awesome moment is when Raven's parents Falco and Sloane, are having an argument over Raven's birthday dinner and Raven rips the tablecloth off of the overlarge dining room table to reveal that it's a Cadillac. The table cloth itself is ridiculously long, maybe 15 feet and as soon as Raven rips it off, sending all the gifts, food, and flowers flying, the sewer tunnel opening on stage right literally sucks the tablecloth into its gaping maw like it was the biggest vacuum cleaner in the world. But the magic isn't over yet. Falco and Sloane then sing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" in the Caddy and at the end of the song, Raven, sick of her parents' very public display of sexuality as well as their inability to not fight about it, picks up the back end of the car by the bumper and shoves it off into the orchestra pit on top of the musicians. After some screaming and breakage, two musicians and the conductor crawl out of the pit with their smashed cello, flattened saxophone, and broken in half but hanging on by a thread baton, cursing the actors and shaking their fists in rage. You'd think intermission would be next to deal with the Caddy in the pit situation. Nope, they just kept on going and eventually the Caddy sank out of sight without us really noticing.
The next bit of theatrical magic occured right before intermission when Raven is running away with Strat on his motorcycle. Now this motorcycle has been on and off the stage from the beginning. It rolls, it moves, it sounds like a real bike. It holds two people. They jump on it, dance on it, sit on it. They have a wreck in the middle of the title song, and the bike is instantly smashed into a thousand pieces that literally fly up above the stage floor forming a heart in mid-air and hovering there seemingly as if by magic. I was looking for wires and saw none. I have no idea how they did it. At the same time, the wreck has caused Strat to be punctured and his "heart, still beating, has broken out of my body and is flying away like a bat out of hell". His torso is covered in blood, and there appears to be a gaping hole in his chest. He finishes the last lines of the song and collapses in death in the center front spotlight with Raven crying over his dead body. As the music plays the last phrases of the song, the metal hovering in mid-air heart explodes into glitter which rains down all over the stage in a shower of awesomeness. Lights go up, stage goes dark, house lights come up, Strat is still lying there with Raven screaming for help. We hear an ambulance. Medical personnel come onstage with a stretcher, put Strat's body on it, and carry him off under a sheet. Cops show up to take eyewitness accounts. Someone wraps a blanket around Raven and gives her a cup of coffee and leads her off stage. Street sweepers come onstage and immediately start cleaning up the wreckage and only after the shop-vac has sucked up all the glitter, only then is it really intermission. After intermission, all the Lost Boys are now locked up in a cage awaiting torture and death. Some of them are being hung upside down from this giant cage and still manage, once rescued, to dance their way out of the cage. Falco finally gets caught after killing Tink, and must face drowning in his own pool of chemical spillage. The actor is pushed into the hole in the stage that is clearly filled with glowing, green liquid and appears to drown only to be dragged up again, wet and slimy. The floating in mid-air metal heart reappears for the finale and this time bursts into flame! This was easily the most over the top show I've ever seen including the stage version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Costume Design Team
The costume design was amazing. The Lost had the best costumes. There was a lot of black leather and denim, tribal makeup and very big hair going on. It was extremely colorful, a cross between glam and punk meets Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I never got tired of looking at the costumes.
Jon was a music major at Oxford and then trained in the Motley Theatre Design Course. Jon is also the scenic designer. Meentje Nielsen studied design at Berlin University of Fine Arts and then went on to work with the Berliner Ensemble.
Production Gallery
Photos from the Bat out of Hell website, all photography by Specular.
Seating
We paid $35 for our seats here. They were worth every penny.
Here's them performing a concert version in Trafalgar Square.
The Map
We spent all day at the British Museum, mostly looking at mummies and other antiquities that were stolen from other countries. This idea had never bothered me before, but it does now, especially after the Hobby Lobby scandal. The museum had renovations done since I was last here (in the 1980's). The inner courtyard was enclosed with what is basically a glass dome. See photo below. There's a new building in the middle which houses the massive gift shop which sits on top of the bathrooms which are down a long spiral stairway in the basement. These are the only toilets in the museum, so plan accordingly. The British Museum is the oldest public museum in the world, but the Victoria and Albert Museum has the world's oldest cafe in a museum. More about that later.
The highlights for me were the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo artifacts, and of course, the mummies. There are no paintings in the British Museum, those are in the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery (two different museums which I only realized after reading an essay by Neil Gaiman in which he said he didn't realize it either and he's from there). We did the Egyptian galleries first, then the Asian galleries, We bought lunch for $7 from a cart inside the museum, then took it outside to eat in the fresh air. It was a baguette with meat and cheese, a bag of crisps, and a bottle of water. The museum lacks proper Texas air-conditioning and there were entirely too many people all crowded in there, so we needed to de-stress outside for awhile. After lunch, ​ we went to the European galleries for Sutton Hoo, and then the Asian Galleries and finally the Classical Galleries.
Egyptian GallerySutton Hoo GalleryClassical GalleryMesopotamian galleryAsian GalleryThe Map
It was a half a mile walk to the British Museum from our hotel. On the way we discovered our favorite tea shop, Drury, which was right across the street from our hotel. On the way home from the museum, we stopped in for tea for the first time and then went back every chance we could.
We spent all day at the British Museum (that will be an entirely separate blog, don't worry, I'll get to it) and then ate dinner at Punjab, which was Indian food and only about four blocks away. The food was delicious--I had lamb korma and pistachio kulfi for dessert. It was a half a mile walk to the theatre from the restaurant. Our seats were in the very last row of the second balcony. We were basically looking straight down at the set. Luckily, the set included an upper level for Charlie's office that got used quite a bit as well as Lola's stage, and the Milan catwalk being slightly elevated. The production was wonderful. I had seen the movie several years ago so we were very excited to get tickets to the show, esp. for the $40 we paid for the tickets. We were stunned to find out at intermission that we were watching the understudy perform the role of Charlie. His name was Jordan Fox and he was great. Of course, Simon-Anthony Rhoden as Lola, was phenomenal. I loved everything about it: the costumes, the scenery, the makeup and hair, and especially the choreography. One of the Angels did a backflip in her 6 inch heels and then went into the splits. And all of these actors were probably over 6 feet tall. Amazing athleticism and amazing boots that can take it. I've included the official trailer from the show so you can see a bit of it.
This was our view from the last row of the opening look for the scenery--the outside of the factory. Kinky Boots was the first of only two shows that we saw on our trip that was contemporary.
Here's the factory set with Charlie's elevated office and the wonderful, colorful windows. Scenic Design was by David Rockwell, Lighting Design by Kenneth Posner. Notice how dull the colors of the factory employees costumes are at the beginning of the show. Their costumes evolve as Lola comes into their world and changes it for the better.
Here's a photo of the factory employees' costumes after Lola and her Angels have left their mark--much brighter and more playful.
Here are the costumes from the finale in Milan. The costumes on the Angels are amazing, but notice also how much more fashionable the factory employees costumes have become!
Costume Designer GRegg Barnes
Gregg has 14 costume design credits on Broadway. He was nominated for seven Tonys and has won two. I've found three different interviews with Gregg on his designs for Kinky Boots. My takeaway from reading them is how much research he had to do on drag shows, because he'd never seen one before, even though he'd been in New York for 20 years. I love his renderings style. Here's six of his designs for the Angels' finale costumes. He uses guache and vellum and then transfers his designs to dyed paper. If you watch the video closely, you can see how he also uses glitter and sequins on the renderings.
T.O. Dey Shoes is the real life New York shoe company that made all the boots for the show. They will custom make a pair for you too, if you've got the money. The price range on the FAQ is $600-$3,000. A bit steep for my purse, and that doesn't include making the custom last (the mold of your feet that all of your custom shoes would be made on). That's a seperate charge.
The Adelphi TheatreThe Map
This was my third time to see a production of Chess. I saw it once at ACTF back in the 80's and again in El Paso at the UTEP Dinner Theatre where many of my fellow students were cast in the show. I bought the cast album after "One Night In Bangkok" aired on MTV with Murray Head. Lest we forget what that was like, here it is.
Needless to say, the earlier productions I saw were college shows with mere students for singers and a Texas fine arts budget line. I never saw a professional production of Chess back when it was new, but this re-boot version was amazing. I was surprised to see how timely and relevant it still is to our world situation today. And I had completely forgotten that the American's name is Trumper. Ha!
The other thing I didn't know until after I started doing some research for this blog is that this show has undergone many script changes since the concept album, which is probably why I felt that this version was so timely and relevant, because it had just been updated for this revival. I had no idea that the two productions I had seen in America in the late 80's/early 90's were different from the concept album, different from the original production in the West End and would also be different from the revised version I am now telling you about. It's amazing how much the authors have changed the show and are continuing to change it. Another newly revised version opened at the Kennedy Center earlier this year. In the 30+ years since the concept album, the authors have moved songs around, cut them, wrote new ones, and gave old songs to different characters, and that's just what they did to the music. They also completely changed plot elements like where the chess match is played, how many chess matches are played, who wins the chess match, what country of origin characters were from, gave Svetlana a dad that's either alive or dead, captured or free, and added or deleted a CIA agent who's either undercover or not. I don't know how anyone keeps up with this. If you're really interested in the difference between all the versions, here's this Wikipedia article that explains it all for you. Our View
We were on the third balcony, but there were so many things staged on ladders, plus with the tons of projections, we had a great view. As you can see the orchestra was on a platform near the top of the set, which was at our eye level. If you scroll down there's a photo that shows the view of the theatre from the stage and you can see how high up we were, because it doesn't really look like it from this photo.
I was totally blown away by this production, both directorially and technically. Let's discuss the performance aspects first. Freddy Trumper, the American, was played by Canadian lead singer of Mike + the Mechanics, Tim Howar. He was perfect. The Russian was played by Michael Ball, who you may remember as Marius in Les Miserables or as one incarnation of The Phantom, after Michael Crawford. They were both great. Amazing voices. Benny and Bjorn (and Tim Rice) did such a great job of typifying a country's culture, especially ours in America. During the opening ceremony, this staging included a gigantic Uncle Sam on stilts, cheerleaders tumbling and making pyramids, male twirlers with batons, the whole news circus with ads, and Freddy's name on everything. That's definitely the US now. Perhaps it was always that way and I was too young to get it or the previous productions didn't put such a fine point on it.
​The choreography by Stephen Mear, was amazing as well. As already mentioned, there was tumbling, twirling, and stilts in Act One. Act Two just raised the stakes. In "One Night in Bangkok" the ensemble did martial arts, aerial work on silks, and twirled fire! Finally the meaning of the lyrics "the queens we use would not excite you" was staged correctly with both boys and girls being the "pearls" referred to in the "golden cloisters". The scenery/lighting/projections literally stole the show. The UTEP dinner theatre production had done the light up chess board floor back in the 80's and at the time I thought that was amazing. This production took it to a whole 'nother level by literally scattering the chess board squares all over the stage and then using them to project onto. The whole show was being filmed and fed live to the screens above the stage which made it seem like you were watching it on ESPN or Fox News, depending on the scene. Christina Cunningham was the costume designer. I found her website, which I've linked to below, but can't find a photo of her anywhere. The costumes for the ensemble were my favorite part of her design. Everytime they came out in a different costume I was amazed. I wish there had been more about the costumes in the program or online. I wish I had more photos to show you of all the great costumes, especially from the opening ceremony, but alas, I don't. If they put out a DVD of this production, I will definitely buy it. Production PhotosPressThe original recording
If you haven't seen this show, here's the entire album, assuming I did this correctly, in a series of 18 videos. The music is really good.
London Coliseum
I found out from the website, linked to below, that you can get a backstage tour of the theatre. It's more than 100 years old! And it's been newly restored to its original Edwardian aesthetic.
English National Opera
The London Coliseum is the home of the English National Opera. In fact, this production of Chess was the fourth collaboration of ENO with the GradeLinnit theatre company to produce a musical. The company of opera singers made up half of the Chess ensemble. I didn't figure any of that out until after we got back to the hotel and I had a chance to read the $5 program. Again, that's in pounds. But these signs were hanging in the toilets (no one says bathrooms over there) because clearly ENO has a sense that "regular" people are afraid of opera and are trying to change their misconceptions about it.
The Map
It was only a half a mile walk to get to the theatre from our hotel. That day I totalled 23,244 steps. Things we did before we saw the show: Went to Trafalgar Square, looked at awesome paintings in the National Gallery, took the tube to Hyde Park Station so we could walk through Hyde Park and see the Peter Pan statue. We also took a side trip to Harod's in which I met a real life Doorman and took his photo for Sylvan. Sylvan wants to be a doorman when he grows up. It was his Halloween costume two years ago. Sylvan was disappointed that the Harod's Doorman's uniform didn't have gold epaulettes. And before the show we ate at Nando's.
​We went to dinner at Nando's first, which I highly recommend, not only because their PERi-PERi chicken is to die for, but because you get ice in your drink, free refills, and it's right by the theatre. We are still so very tired, but not too tired to take silly photos with the Cheeky Nando's rooster, who's name is Barci, short for Barcelos.
Harrod's DoormanPeter Pan Statue in Hyde Park
I was so excited to finally see The Globe after watching David Tennant trod its boards as Doctor Who in "The Shakespeare Code". In case you haven't seen that episode, here's the last bit when the Carrionites are attacking during The King's Men's production of Love's Labour's Won.
​Unfortunately, this was the first thing we did after getting to Killeen airport at 7am, a seven hour layover in Dallas, a nine hour flight, being death marched all around London during the day, plus a 1.6 mile walk from our hotel to the Globe, and being awake for 36 hours total by the time the show was over. We had to "hire" seat cushions for $5 as well as buy programs also for $5. I'm using the $ symbol but you should just read that as pounds. My head was murky and I was falling asleep even with the cushions which didn't really mitigate the truly uncomfortable, ridiculously hard benches, it wasn't enough to keep me awake. Another problem was the partially obstructed view we had from sitting behind a small pillar, as well as looking at the stage from behind the giant stage right column, which cost $22. The groundlings were only paying $5, but they had to stand up for the entire 2:45 running time, which was something our sleep-deprived, jet lagged, death-marched legs couldn't have done. As a side note, we were getting on average between 10-14,000 steps a day prior to this trip. That day I got 24,290 steps. So, maybe it was a good show, but in the state I was in I certainly couldn't appreciate it. To make the whole thing worse, the space is open at the top, which is lovely as long as there aren't a cadre of helicopters flying overhead during the show. Sometimes the actors would pause, but most of the time they just kept going, trying to be even louder than the racket outside.
Production Photos
First of all, these photos are from the reviews that I've linked to below. No photography during the shows, of course, but the show was so odd, you need some photos for clarification. The first odd thing about this production was that the newly appointed Artistic Director, Michelle Terry, was also the title character. The show was cast gender blind, ethnicity blind, and disability blind. Hamlet, Horatio, Laertes, and Marcellus were female; Ophelia was male. Ophelia, Marcellus, and Guildenstern were non-white. Guildenstern was also deaf and performed her role using BSL (British Sign Language). So, on the surface that seems like an interesting choice. I am all for diversity in theatre (as in everything), but I just couldn't seem to find the underlying reason for the gender swap. If all the male roles had been played by women and all the female roles had been played by men, that would have sent a message. Then I would have felt like they were making a statement about the nature of masculinity/femininity, and the resulting power struggle in relationships. I am thinking of the French PSA for sexual harassment from several years back ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A which you can watch here. But only some of the male roles were played by females and only one female role was played by a man, so I'm not sure what that says.
I was confused by Ophelia wearing an Elizabethan dress (no padding for breasts), with his own short hair and no stereotypical "female" makeup. This wouldn't have been as confusing if Gertrude (who was played by a woman but I had to look it up in the program to be sure) hadn't also had a short "boy" haircut, flat chest, and a mannish face.
Another confusing thing was the mix of Elizabethan and modern costuming. Ophelia and Gertrude were in appropriate Elizabethan dress some of the time, while Hamlet was all over the place, even wearing a sad clown costume a la Pagliacci, when "he" was mad. In case you are not familiar with Italian opera, it looks like this. The fencing match at the end was costumed much the same as the Kenneth Branagh production, traditional 19th C white padded tunic and foils.
Ellan Parry, costume Designer
From the program notes:
"I've always felt that designing costumes for actors I don't know is a bit like trying to buy birthday presents for strangers, so I generally try to keep the design process as collaborative and as dialogic as I can, even in a more standardised process, and I love it when actors are interested in engaging with the design world. My heart sinks a little when an actor says "I don't care what you put me in". What we choose-or don't choose-to wear and own and carry with us can say so much about who we are, where we've come from, and who we want to be--some of the most fundamental questions that theatre asks of us. To be invited into a process where all these decisions are made during rehearsals has been truly inspirational. The main challenge from my point of view has been to tie it all together so that everyone's brilliant ideas and contributions can somehow work as a whole, whilst embracing the frictions and contradictions. It's an intricate tapestry we're creating, and if you tug a thread in one place, it starts to unravel somewhere else. Whilst the two plays aren't strictly set in the Elizabethan period, we've definitely drawn on the practices of Early Modern theatre in our design choices. Elizabethan theatre companies embraced a kind of playful and expedient anachronistic eclecticism in their visual worlds. Within a single play, audiences would have seen a cheerful mash-up of objects and clothing recycled from earlier productions, made or acquired specifically for a character or scene, the second-hand finery of aristocrats alongside the actors' own clothes--contemporary, historical and fantastical costumes and props meeting and mingling on the same stage. One striking feature of Elizabethan theatre would have been the sight of people onstage--alongside the kids and queens and gods and heroes--who looked and dressed just like the people in the audiences. This was something that seemed especially important for us to embrace here in this space where the relationship between actor and spectator is so intimate and immediate. Raiding the Globe's extensive store, a number of posh and not so posh charity shops, and even our actors' own wardrobes, hal allowed us to create a visual world which I hope feels perhaps more owned and inhabited than designed, a world haunted by memories of past productions (Jack dressed in the doublet worn by his Rosalind when he played Orland in 2009) and of loved ones (Shubham's mother's dress re-made in white). And of course, a few specially made treats, to join the costumes handing in the store, and haunt the next ensemble." Links to reviews of Hamlet
The Globe website with a synopsis of the play, videos of rehearsal, an interview with Nadia Nadarajah, the deaf actor who played Guildenstern, and info about the production.
Time Out London article on the production.
The Guardian article discussing both Hamlet and As You Like It, with respect to Michelle Terry's directorial and artistic director debut.
An article by the English Dept. of King's College in London on the use of gender blind casting in both Hamlet and As You Like It, which were being done in rep the week we were there.
The Globe itself
​We saw the show on Tuesday, and came back for a backstage tour the following Monday. That was a much better experience because I'd slept since then. The tour cost $17 but you get $2 off if you bring your ticket from the show. The Exhibition is included free with your tour ticket and you can spend as much time as you like going through it.
The Exhibition
The Exhibition is a display of artifacts that shows what it was like in Shakespeare's Day, as well as the First Folio, a model of the Globe Theatre, and various costumes and props from former productions. From the program description:
"You can imagine what was once London's most notorious entertainment district. Find out about 17th Century Bankside, the tricks of the Elizabethan stage--from blood to flying--and watch costume dressing, sword-fighting and printing press demonstrations." ​The BACKSTAGE TOUR
​The tour itself included more info on the history of the Globe, the building of the new globe and how that happened, the authentic building materials as well as the modern health and safety accomodations like the sprinkler system, indoor plumbing, and maximum seating capacity (much less than the original crammed in). We also got to sit in on a bit of rehearsal for As You Like It, which was also cast with actors of color, gender swaps, and actors with disabilities.
Map
In case you're interested in how we got there, this is our route. It took us over the Blackfriar's Bridge on the way there, but on the way home we took the Millenium Bridge, which is the one that the Death Eaters destroyed at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.
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Here are our intrepid travelers about to begin their international journey to the UK: 11 days in London with a side trip to Cambridge, and 5 days in Edinburgh, with two days for traveling. Three faculty members (one fearless leader, one British citizen, one mom-that's me) one adult husband to help chaperone, and 7 theatre students. We took planes, trains, and automobiles, plus a boat on our journey as well as thousands of photos along the way. We visited castles, palaces, museums, art galleries, and more. We saw a play, an opera, and 7 musicals, toured two theatres and the Royal Albert Hall. We crammed in as much history as we possibly could as well as popular culture. It just so happened that the Royal Wedding happened while we were in town. We also did walking tours of Rock and Roll history in London, the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel, and Harry Potter sites in Edinburgh. We even climbed an extinct volcano known as Arthur's Seat, yes, that Arthur. It was an amazing trip and I am so thankful that my husband and I got to be a part of it. I know you all are anxious to hear all about it and see the multitude of photos, but I am still in a time crunch to churn out the rest of our Flash cosplay for the Greater Austin Comic con next weekend, so this is a promise, that I will get there, slowly but surely as the summer goes along. You'll just have to be patient. I just had to make squirrel tails for Wind in the Willows and it put me in mind of Squirrel Girl, who happens to be one of my husband's favorite Marvel Women. He'd just finished reading the Deadpool graphic novel that starred SG in which they went through a transporter and ended up with recombinant DNA daughter, Squirrelpool. It was hilarious! I love it that she defeats all her enemies with a chipper, can-do attitude and that there's nothing at all grey in her moral code. She's perky and positive and so happy to help, just like me! ResearchOther CosplaysBuildAll I need is OD tights, brown leo, brown bomber jacket which I already have thanks to the 80's, my Batgirl utility belt, brown Uggs, and to make yet another squirrel tail. There's an Etsy shop that sells real acorn earrings that I have already found. And then a brown headband with squirrel ears. And a ginger, short-haired wig. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I just have to finish our Batman alterations first, then do Flash, then finish out Catwoman and Batgirl, then I can get started on this. Oops! When I was making my Batgirl belt buckle, I went ahead and made my SG belt buckle too. Update June 21: I ordered the brown leo from We Love Colors. My Robin tights accidentally got washed with the Batman stuff, so now they're grey, I ordered a new pair and will use the old pair for SG. Now I just need boots. Aug 2: I started on my costume by altering my 1980's leather jacket. I cut off all the fringe, then cut it much shorter at the hem, and cut 6 inches off the sleeves. I'm going to add fur to the collar and cuffs and around the hem. Then I used two coathangers and some crinoline hooping to make the armature for the tail. I need a good set a plier to bend the support ends over and a roll of gaff tape to wrap the whole thing up in. It took 3 hours today. I spent another three hours last night cutting and lining all the fur trim for the collar, cuffs, and hem of the jacket. Tues Aug. 14: I spent two hours that morning finishing the collar and cuffs fur trim on the jacket. I went back in the afternoon and spent another three hours on the tail. I also had to give my boots a quick acrylic paint touch up because they were falling apart. I used brown enamel spray paint to paint the white headband I found at Joanne's. It had some stiff net glued to it underneath a layer of stretch lace, which I ripped off. That dried really quickly. Then I cut ears out of the tail fur leftovers and stitched them together and handsewed them onto the headband. I was really happy with the tail until I got home and put it on and it ended up being so top-heavy that it fell over. I'm considering taking the whole thing apart and completely redoing it to be smaller and less top heavy. But today (Wed) I've pulled something in my back and can't really move anymore. This may be a doomed effort for Geekfest this weekend. Dr. DoomBecause Squirrel Girl needs someone to fight (and defeat) Rob said that he would condescend to be a Marvel villian and I let him pick his favorite among all of SG's vanquished. The costume is really simple: green tunic and hooded cape with a brown belt. The armour bits are more complicated, which is why Rob chose this one. He's still upset that I haven't built him a full suit of Dracula armour yet. Other CosplaysThe BuildJust bought these fabrics from Joanne's. The green poly was on the clearance table for $7 a yard. It's a bit like ultra suede but thinner. There were only 5 yards left so I took them all. It's going to be the tunic and the cloak. The black cotton with silver sparkle was on sale for $6 a yard so I got almost 6 yards which was what they had left. It's going to line the cloak. I also got two spools of green thread which was also on sale. Plus with my 15% teacher discount I only spent $66.15. I wish there had been more of the green, but it's very wide so I'll just have to make do. My plan is to pattern the tunic and cloak first and get all the sewing out of the way. Then I'll need to pattern the armour. I plan on making that out of L200 foam and paint it silver. It will be worn over his grey Batman unitard and brown Capt. Mal boots. I've already acquired a brown leather belt that's fairly wide. All I need to find is the gold broaches and chain to keep the cloak on him. To complete the costume, he will need a mask that resembles his armour and covers his entire face. I will not make that out of L200 foam, but instead use thermoplastic and paint it to match. Stay tuned for my progress this week. July 23: I patterned the tunic as well as the greaves (calf), poleyn (knee), and cuisse (thigh) portions of the armour. July 24: I patterned the vambrace (forearm), couter (elbow) and bicep (rerebrace) portions of the armour. Then I ordered the foam padding that is supposed to go under the actual football shoulder pads. I was trying to buy the whole thing but the adult sized ones were way too expensive so I just bought the padding for $25. I'm going to use it to attach the rest of the upper body armour to. I will need to pattern the pauldrons after the padding arrives on Thursday. I also still need to pattern the sabaton (foot). July 25: I patterned the sabaton as two pieces, a front that covers the toes and a back that goes around the heel. My plan is to attach them at the ankle with velcro. I also cut out the tunic and cloak pieces. I worked for 3 hours. I did a fitting on the tunic so it's ready to hem. July 26: I serged the cloak pieces and sewed them together individually. I bag-lined the cloak as one big piece so that there's no seam up the CB. I will still have to hem the circular edge, but the CF and hood are done. July 30: for the broach, I found metal disks and a piece of chain that I'm going to use to create the cloak closure. All I need is two dog clips and backings for the disks. I can probably get them at Joanne's. The ArmourThis is the e-book I downloaded for the low, low price of $10. The author is Bill Doran. He is with Punished Props. It's a great manual. I found this for sale. It's a life size Dr. Doom armour set, for larger cosplayers only (6ft and taller). It's made from fiberglass and the helmet alone is $400. If you want the whole suit it's going to set you back $2000, but since it was custom-made they only did the one and it was sold, so there aren't any more of them. But I can totally use the photos for reference. Aug. 2: I cut out all the armour pieces. It took an hour. There are 32 individual pieces. Aug 6: I went to Home Depot and bought $100 worth of paint: 4 cans of black plastidip, 4 cans of grey primer, 3 cans of silver, 2 cans of Plastidip clear gloss, plus gaff tape, glue sticks, and a mask. I also began sculpting the face for his mask. I'm going to make it out of thermoplastic, but use all the same paint as the armour. Aug. 7. I got out my dremel and heat gun and went to town shaping and smoothing all the pieces. Then I realized that I didn't have the right attachment, I'd been using one for sanding wood, and had to order the right grinder one from Amazon and it will be here sometime today. I got 9 different grinder tips for $6. plus free shipping. I decided that if the edges really bothered me I could go back and re-smooth them after I did the painting, because I couldn't lose two whole days of not working. My grinder bits didn't show up. Aug. 8: I did three coats of the black Plastidip after I watched this video. It was in the evening and shady when I did this. The plastidip dried really quickly, Aug. 9: My grinder bits finally showed up. I smoothed some edges and then quit. I did three coats of grey primer. Unfortunately, it was over 100 degrees outside and I was doing it in direct sunlight, like an idiot. The foam melted back into it's pre-heat shaped flatness on several pieces, because it was just too hot. The pre-made and sealed shoulder pads never dried/hardened and remained sticky. The humidity was really high and it started raining later that night. I noticed that the grey primer made the plastidip grow fur and now all my pieces look like they're supposed to be made of granite, not metal.
Aug. 10: It started raining and then rained on and off the whole weekend. I was able to get two coats of the galvanized silver color on so far. At this point the silver is not doing the galvanized thing it's supposed to be doing on any of the pieces. It may be the humidity or the fact that they grey primer made it furry. I don't know. It's not working. I'm forging ahead and damn the consequences. Aug. 11: I got two coats of clear coat on before the rain started. The consequences of this weather are that when I bend the pieces now, the paint immediately cracks. This sucks. All the paint cans say to only use it when the temps are between 50 and 90 degrees and it was over 100 every day this week. Also, the humidity is supposed to be below 65% and it was way above that starting on Thursday. Also, the wind was not cooperating either. It kept blowing all my pieces off the table. I feel like my Dr. Doom armor is just doomed. Aug. 13: I got out my thermoplastic and started forming it over the sculpt. Normally I am very good at this, but I think that the stress of the paint cracking and wanting to get this all finished by Friday was too much for me and the thermoplastic ended up folding over on itself in the hot water and getting pretty much ruined. I persevered and tried to fix it as best as I could, but the mask looks like Clay Face instead of like metal armor. I will use the same paint techniques on the mask and see if the cooler temps this week (because of the rain) will help. Thermoplastic literally melts in the heat. I don't know how the absurd humidity will affect it. At this point, I don't even care, I'm so done with this project. We decided to do this cosplay because Sam Jones and Melody Anderson are going to be at the Greater Austin Comic Con in June. It was actually Seth's idea. I mulled it over for about 24 hours trying to figure out if I could pull this off in the very little time I had after Wind in the Willows was over minus the three weeks we were going to be in London. I decided that Yes, I had the time and since it would be AWESOME, we're doing it. I love this movie! Rob is going to be Ming the Merciless, I"m going to be Aura, Seth is Flash, Sarah is Dale Arden, and Sylvan is Dr. Zarkov. This time around the kids are the good guys and we're the villians. ResearchPurchasesAmazon Smile and Prime membership is an amazing tool that I highly recommend! The first thing I did was order the Flash shirt. That was the easiest thing to find. Dale's dress and jacket combo was much more difficult since people don't really design business blazers sexy, red shirt-waist dresses for children. I came across the red gloves while shopping for driving gloves for Toad for WITW. They were only $22 and they're real leather in a size 2X. The taira wasn't a perfect match, but it's something I can add to. Both the boys are in khaki pants, not a problem, but Sylvan needed a plaid shirt for Zarkov and a khaki jacket/shirt combo with lots of pockets. Goodwill here we come. So I made this, this morning, using Photoshop and sent it to Walgreen's for printing on nice, glossy photo paper. I had to significantly lighten Topol's face as well as the grey ground behind the NASA title, so that it would print out at the same value as it looks on the screen. The build ProcessMing and Aura I'll have to build. Ming's stand up collar is going to be a little tricky, but it's something I've done before for Queen Anne in Three Musketeers. My version will not have 100 pounds of bugle beads hand-sewn on it however. Stay posted for more photos and updates as I go. AuraThis week I started on my bra. To prep, I had to go buy a new bra from Target, it was beige. That was a chore. I hate bra shopping and I hate wearing them and especially underwire ones, but that's what this character required. ANd to make matters worse, they didn't have the band size I needed, so I had to buy a bigger one and then take it in at the side seams. The bra is getting covered in two different fabrics. First a white/gold paisley print, and then a gold sequined mesh fabric. I hand stitched the gold all the way around the bra. I didn't bother to cover the hooks and eyes tab because the cape will completely cover the back. I still need to finish all the hand stitching and then have a little fitting. So I did that and even though I was very careful to only top stitch and to leave room for stretching, I clearly didn't allow enough stretch room and now it's too tight around the band. I'm going to need a band extender. Now that I'm back from the UK, I've finished all the hand stitching, cut and stitched the skirt, added the elastic, rigged up the necklace as a belt. I still need to stitch the wings to the front and back of the bra, then use snaps to attach the cape to itself around the back of the bra straps and underneath the wings. I'm going to use the rest of this week to finish up Aura and then start on Ming next week. It was rough this week with still being jet-lagged and having so much catching up to do with the kids and the general state of the house and work that I'm only getting two or three days in. We'll see how hot it gets in there on Friday with no A/C. I still need sandals (i.e. shoes that I can actually stand in on a concrete floor all day long) and to rig up the tiara I bought to actually stay on my head. I'm thinking elastic. I have some great earrings, but they're broken so I'd need to get new backs to glue onto them. Thursday I ran those errands. Joanne's had the earring backs and a bra extender that I needed. I also bought some gold glitter corrugated cardboard paper and a cheesy Fourth of July kid's headband to use as a base for the spray of gold that shoots up from the crown. And I went to Payless and bought black wedge sandals that I can hopefully stand up in all day and painted them gold. Two coats of base acrylic yellow and two coats of metallic flake gold acrylic and to finish, two coats of clear coat. As for the earrings, a little E6000 and those posts are back are on for life. Friday it was 78 when I got there at 9 and it just kept getting hotter. I used the rest of the gold lycra to make the cape. I sewed channeling in the top and ran a piece of elastic through, then sewed snaps onto both sides so that It snaps around my bra straps. Then I sewed snaps from my shoulder wings to the top of the cape. So now those three pieces all connect nicely and hold each other up. I still need to hem the cape once I figure out how much of it is going to drag on the floor in my heels. I ended up cutting off the selvage from the cape hem, and then hemming it 3 inches and people still stepped on it at the con. The shoes were fine for the first three hours of standing and then I was done! We sat to have lunch, then we continued to sit at the Flash Gordon panel, then we stood in Doug Jone's line and then we left. I wouldn't say I was in excruciating pain, but it wasn't pleasant, and even the two hours of sitting didn't reset my feet enough to do anything more than meet Doug Jones. With all that being said, I'd still like to add a bunch of crystals to the shoes. MIngSo here's the stand up collar I made for Three Musketeers and here's the necklace that Shanna made for it. I'm using it as a belt for Aura. Rob came in for a fitting today and while he was there I patterned the collar. I still need to true the seams. I have to hem his gown and fix the sleeve hem on one side. I need to make a sleeved cape for him as well as a V-shaped belt. I have a belt that I can use, it just needs to be added to. He's already shaved his head and bought Just for Men gel to dye his facial hair. I started making his cape Tuesday. I found a pattern, Simplicity 9887 which is a group of patterns for tunics and capes that are supposed to look like LOTR. I went with view A cape (no hood). The yoke is supposed to be a seperate piece, but I just pinned the pieces together before I cut them out of my fabric. I folded under the CF edge about 6 inches before I cut those pieces out. The sleeve pattern was missing, so I had to draft that first. I got all the pieces cut and serged and got the two backs and two fronts pinned and stitched together. I left the sleeves out so that I could add the layers of gold fabric to them before I set them into the armholes. And I'm going to have to make shoulder wings too that will either get set in to the armholes before the sleeves or be added on top. Not sure how that's going to work. Anyway you look at it, I've got a long two days of work ahead of me. Tomorrow I promise, there'll be photos. So here's what I got done today. I added the gold trim to the CF opening of the cape (in a previous life it had been a shower curtain) and hemmed that. I added a different gold fabric to the sleeves for trim (cut on the bias just like the sleeve pattern), and then attached the sleeves. I started making the giant shoulder wings out of men's suit shoulder pads, and have them covered in felt, but still need to cover them with the fashion fabric (gold taffeta and gold mesh) and attach them. The cape still needs to be hemmed, have it's gold trim added to the hem, have trim added to the belt, including this awesome tassell I found. Then there's the small matter of the giant V collar and halo assembly, as well as the red star in a gold circle applique that will go on the back. I've decided there's really no room for another one on the front. When I got home I discovered that Rob had shaved his head and dyed his facial hair.
The star applique was a many-staged yet simple process. I found an eight pointed star clip art on google image search and printed it out and the right size. I used geometry to cut a larger than the star circle out of the gold taffeta backing fabric and the gold mesh I used to make the shoulder wings. I backed the whole thing with muslin and zig-zagged on the smallest setting all around the circumference. I cut the star out of the glitter lycra and fusible interfacing and ironed it to the gold circle, then zig-zagged around it on the smallest setting. Lastly I cut another smaller circle for the inside out of the same gold taffeta and mesh and fusible interfacing and ironed it onto the star, then zig-zagged on the smallest setting around that. To attach it to the cape I ironed it on with fusible interfacing and then used a straight stitch to make it permanent. Making the stand up collar was neither simple nor straightforward and the whole process wasn't begun until 9pm the night before we were leaving for the con. It took exactly 3 hours to get it patterned, cut, shaped, and covered in glitter lycra. Here's how I did that: I made a pattern out of muslin with a CF opening and a hole big enough for his neck with no seam allowance. I cut it out of L200 foam and then cut in where the lapel breaks from the collar about 2 inches. I used a heat gun to make it lay on the mannequin in the right way and make the collar stand up. I used hot glue to turn the collar edges that I'd cut in at a 90 degree angle to the lapel and then glue them down onto the lapels. I didn't get any photos of that process because it was already late and I'd lost the precious air-conditioning that I need to function. Then I had Rob help me and I sprayed the front of the foam with adhesive and attached the red lycra. That part was pretty nerve wracking, but the adhesive and lycra were fairly forgiving and let me pull up sections and stretch them out again so there weren't any wrinkles. Once we got the front covered, I cut out a backing piece from the gold taffeta and spray glued that on. then we went home at midnight, considering it a job well done. The worst part was the next morning when I had to then hand-sew the edges of the gold onto the red so that it wouldn't come off when the glue crapped out. Even though I used a curved needle which I highly recommend, it still took another 3 hours because of the adhesive making my needle sticky and also having to go through the foam. My hands were really arthritic feeling by the time I was done. So we got to the con and it was fine, except that the collar didn't have anything to keep it closed or on straight. Also, it clearly needed more trim. So once we got back, I found 12 yards of gold sequin trim that was on sale for 75% off because it was damaged. it had clearly been stored in a hot place for too long and the sequins had melted in a wrapped around the card position so that when you unwrapped it, they ribbon had regular humps all down it. The "damage" was easily fixed with a hot iron running over the back of the fabric while stretching it out flat. What a bargain! I added the sequins around both shoulder wings and all around the stand up collar. All of that trim had to be hand-sewn on which I did at home on July 4th during the day. It took seven hours with a curved needle and sucked worse than sewing the backing fabric on, because I had to sew on both sides of the sequins! After all that the collar still wasn't standing up as much as I wanted, so I added another row of sequins to the top and sides of the collar on the edge. I started sewing in the middle of the top edge and went down the sides to where it met the lapels. Once there, I pulled the sequins very taut and turned the end under like an L bracket and stitched it down to the lapel and that pulled the whole thing further forward. Things that I did that aren't visible to make the whole thing work better: I added hooks and eyes from the cape to the tunic so that it wouldn't slip down off his back, one at the CB and two on each of the side seams. I also added two snaps on either side of the CF opening of the cape to the tunic for the same reason, but lower down on the chest. After the con, I went back and added snaps from the collar to the shoulder wings to keep it from spinning around his neck every time he turned his head. The belt velcroed to itself but because Rob has a tummy it wouldn't stay up in the right place, so i added snaps from the belt to the tunic to keep it around his middle without falling down. I have been wanting to do a Hoth Leia ever since my sister did it for Halloween a few years back. Once Orphan Black aired and Allison was wearing Leia's Hoth vest, I knew that I must have one! Coincidentally, my "seestra" also does Helena from Orphan Black. So, I have been on a quest to find a white ski vest for a few years now. Goodwill never has them in my size, unfortunately. So this year I put it on my Chirstmas list and my wonderful husband hunted one down at the Mall. It was brand new, never been worn before and it was MINE! Naturally I didn't have anything else to go with it, but I wore it all winter, almost every day anyway. Then in February, I was show shopping For South Pacific, and came across white pants and a white long-sleeved shirt that actually fit. Those went into my cart immediately. And so I had the basic outfit but no shoes or greeblies. A few weeks later, still show shopping at Goodwill, I found a pair of grey, wedge heeled suede calf length boots that had a fur cuff. They were beautiful and perfect and a size 10. Waayy to big for my foot. I was super sad about that. So I went home and tried to console myself by making Greeblies out of my kids' legos, but they didn't have any pieces that were the right color or shape. Flash forward to show shopping for the last production this season, Wind in the Willows. I bought probably a hundred things from Amazon Smile with our Prime Membership. I thought to myself, I wonder if I can find Leia boots? And the answer was, Yes, Yes I can! For the low, low price of $29.99. So here they are: grey, wedge-heeled, leather, zip up, but no straps. Then I mused, surely someone makes Greeblies that I can just buy. And I asked Amazon Prime and they answered me with Empire Greeblies, $13.99, which I can totally make work. The boots arrived the same day as my Greeblies, which was last night and I immediately got to work. GreebliesThe Greeblies are molded silicone and are very flexible. Some of the reviewers on Amazon had a huge mad about the Greeblies, "When it arrived I couldn't even wear it, there was no way to attach it to my costume!" they ranted. That's why the Empire lost, you fools! I can either do sticky velcro to the Greeblie and stitch on velcro to my vest or I can glue on a magnet strip to the Greeblie like my work name badge or I can duct tape on a safety pin. There are so many ways you can attach it. But, the first order of business (did you get my pun?) was to reshape the bottom row of squares into circles. I used an Exacto knife and didn't cut myself once. It took about half an hour. Then I repainted the whole thing in primer grey. I used acrylic paints to do a base coat of light blue, orange, red, and black. It was so hard to wait and let it dry overnight, but I did. Then I did a second coat and used a smaller brush to clean up the edges. I still need to do a top coat of clear to protect it and then decide how I'll attach it, but it's ready for me to wear to my first ever Cosplay Presentation for West High School theatre students on Monday. Me!There should be snow. I ordered better hair braids tonight because my hair isn't long enough to make visible braids. Also, I need orange lipstick.
I was so excited by the reception of our Bat Fam 66 cosplay that I decided to add two more characters, but just for me. We don't always have all of the kids and I may be doing Geekfest alone this year, so in addition to my Robin, I will also have Batgirl and Catwoman for the other two days of convention going and costume contest judging. BatgirlThe Unitard and gloves are coming from We Love Colors, the utility belt and phone case are coming from Amazon. I also ordered 3 yds of violet fabric to make the cape, cowl, mask, boot covers, and glove fins out of. The shoes are going to be more of a problem. For Robin I just wore my Docs with bootcovers and they were just fine for the first 8 hours. The last hour was pure misery. Geekfest is a much longer day. I'm going to have to find better shoes and I certainly can't wear kitten heels. This will take some thinking. But whatever I find, I'll get in black and then I can wear them for Catwoman too and just make boot covers for Batgirl. I also bought curly red hair to sew into the back of my cowl. I also bought a black half mask to glue into the cowl The BuildBack in April, I made another utility belt for Batman because we couldn't make his any smaller due to there being too much paint on the belt not allowing it to slide through the buckle any further. But it fit me perfectly. So I took his and then made another one for him. Then I made a new buckle for mine out of L200 foam. I cut out my cowl and boot covers last night June 21, using the patterns I made for Batman in December. The boot covers are from the matching dark purple fabric but the cowl is from the lighter lavender fabric. Tuesday I worked another 3 hours and got the cowl sewn together and the ears,I stayed home and did a lot of hand-sewing on the 4th (of July) which got the ears sewn to the cowl as well as the correct mask placement marked on the cowl. I still have to attach the mask and hair and hem it. I patterned the cape, using geometry also on June 21. It's going to have a 5 inch radius for the neck hole and each side of the CF will be 34". I went in tonight while there was still air conditioning and cut both cape fabrics out: lavender for the outside and yellow for the lining. Next week, I'll cut the collar stand out of the lavender. June 27: This week I cut the collar for the cape and sewed it together. I also sewed the CF edges of the cape together, then flipped it right side out. Then I marked the "spines" of the batwings aspect of the cape, pinned both sides together, hand basted them together for good measure, then sewed down each spine with the machine. I then used my blue Sharpie marker to make the Batcape seams more prominent. Now all I have to do is attach the cape to the collar and it will be done! July 11: This Wednesday I finally got the collar sewn to the cape. I used my tailor's hem to hold it out in a stretched position while I pinned it and that was super helpful. I decided that I'm unhappy with the gloves matching the unitard and wanted them to be out of the lavender fabric instead, so I found this instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Gloves/ I always tell people not to make their own gloves, they will just get amazingly frustrated, yet here I am doing it. If I used the purple ready made gloves, I would still have to seam rip them open down one side and cut out the fins, sew them together, then sew them into the seam, then sew the gloves back up and that's pretty tedious as well. so we'll see how much more tedious it is to make them with fins from scratch. Today (Wed. July 11th) I started patterning the gloves with the help of the instructables page I mentioned earlier. On the first attempt, I discovered that the hole in the trank was too large for the thumb as you can see in the photo below, so I had to go back and fill in the hole in my paper pattern quite a bit and recut the tranks (the hand part of the glove). I had to hand baste the thumbs in to the trank first, and then go back and machine zig-zag around the seam from the inside. It was really tedious and I ran out of bobbin thread half way through the first one without realizing it. That's when I knew I'd been at it too long and it was time to quit, after 3 1/2 hours. I'm going back in tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have finished gloves by the end of the day. Thur July 12: Seven hours later, I came home with a finished pair of gloves. I spent the first three hours today hand basting the fourchette into the left glove and then machine zig-zagging it on one side. Then I had to lay in the fingers of the other side into the pocket created by the fourchette and the front side of the fingers. That was even more irritating. I had to do the pinning hand basting one finger at a time because the pins on the one side would get in the way of being able to pin the other side of the finger. So it went, put in three pins, baste, take out those pins and put in three more pins down the other side, baste. Wash, rinse, repeat. Super tedious and boring. But I finally got all the basting done and was able to machine stitch the other side. Then I had to stop and make the fins patterns, cut them out, cut out the interfacing, sew all six of them together and then put half of them into the first glove. Then I tried it on, took a photo, then did the hem. Then I took a real long lunch break and came back at 2. It only took 2 hours to complete the second glove. So that's a total of 8.5 hours to pattern and make one pair of gloves. It's way more cost and time efficient to just pay the $18.00 and order them from We Love Colors. I can now say that with the authority of experience behind me. Finished up today, took four hours. I hemmed the boot covers and added elastic under the heels. I trimmed the hood down in the back (for my hair to be exposed more) and around the ears. I spray glued the mask onto the hood and then zig-zagged around the top edge. I made the chest applique and added it to the unitard. Then I took a photo! CatwomanThe Unitard and gloves are coming from We Love Colors, the ears and mask are coming from Amazon. I already have the gold belt and necklace. The only difficult part of this is going to be adding the gold nails to the gloves, but I've already done that once, so not a problem. I just need more E-6000 and fake nails. It's a bit fiddly, but nothing I can't handle. I've already ordered everything and it should arrive by next week. Stay tuned for my progress. Here's what it looks like with belt, jewelry and the proper foundation garments. I still have to attach the nails to the gloves tomorrow.
BAt Fam 66Our cosplay was a big hit at the con! We got stopped numerous times for photos. the best part was when Monique with Greater Austin comic Con stopped us to ask if we'd be cosplay guests in June and then gave us free two day passes! Felicia DayFelicia Day was awesome! It only cost $30 for a photo with her and then she gave us for free DVDs of The Guild! She is so sweet and she's from Texas and her dad was a doctor at Ft. Hood. Cosplay photosThere were a lot of other great cosplays at the Con. Here are just a few of them. SwagRob and I got T-shirts. Seth won a poster that he donated to me to hang up in the costume shop, er...Batcave, where all the magic happens. The artists at Dapper Dragon Trinkets make scale mail earrings. I met them at Geekfest and bought aweome Wonder Woman earring from them, They were there so I had to buy Robin and Batman earrings too. Their business card is on scale mail, so how awesome is that. They are on FB and Etsy so look them up and get your own superhero pair! Portrait by Beetle BomberBeetle Bomber was having a contest to win a free cosplay portrait and I won! His work is awesome. Find him on FB Beetle Bomber or Twitter @BeetleBomber52 and get a commission.
Before Adam West died, he made his final appearance with Burt Ward at the Dallas Comic Con last year. There were a ton of celebrities going to be there that we wanted to see. Unfortunately, it was the same weekend as the opera and as we had a brand new director, and tons of prosthetic makeup in the show, I couldn't just take off. The whole family was dissapointed we didn't get to go. I had really wanted to do the 1966 Batman movie cosplay for that con, but it was a super busy year at work and nothing went according to plan, so it didn't happen. Then Adam West died and so did a bunch of other celebrities that were near and dear to my heart. So this year for Christmas I decided it was time. ResearchSarah as CatwomanI got the leotard and gloves from We Love Colors. The mask and cat ears were from sellers on Amazon Prime. We use Smile so Kitchen Dog theatre gets the donations. The gold jewelry and belt came from stuff I already had (two grandmas worth of their old 1960's costume jewelry). I still plan on looking for gold fake fingernails to glue onto the gloves. And I finally found them at HEB. They were pre-painted with silver glitter and that would not do. Fortunately I had gold glitter glue leftover from Spamalot that I repainted them with. To do that I used Sarah's Play-Doh to make tiny fingertips to hold the nails in place while I painted them. Then I used E-6000 to glue them to the gloves. I shoved Sharpie markers into each finger so that the gloves were stretched out before I glued the nails on. It worked really well. EXPENSES: Unitard 50.00 Gloves 8.00 Mask 4.72 Ears 8.68 Nails 8.63 E6000 2.97 TOTAL $83.00 Sylvan as The RiddlerI got the unitard, gloves, and one yard of white fabric from We Love Colors. I made the belt first. The plastic mask came in a three pack from Hobby Lobby. The noses were all dented when I opened the package. I used a heat gun to reform the nose, then covered it in the white fabric using Elmer's Glue. I added gray felt to back the inside and attached that with spray adhesive. I put the unitard on a mannequin so I could position the belt before I drew the question mark on with black sharpie marker. I still want to get him green socks to wear under the unitard. After I went back and watched the movie again, I realized that there were many more ? on his costume: another giant one on the back of the chest, small ones all around his wrists, a larger one on the inside of his ankle, and a line of them up the leg on the outseam. So I went back and added all those back in. EXPENSES Unitard 56.00 Fabric 18.00 Gloves 12.00 Mask 2.47 Spray Glue 18.49 Sharpies 3.10 TOTAL $110.06 Seth as The JokerThis costume was the most difficult, because I couldn't just order a unitard from We Love Colors. I searched Amazon for a hot pink suit for a man, but guess what, nobody makes one, duh. So I found three seperate pieces. The pants are rayon/poly blend that were originally designed as Indian pajama pants for a woman. The vest was sold by a uniform site I used for the dance show, and they had them in every color including hot pink. The jacket is also designed for a woman, size 20. Seth isn't a big guy but he's tall so I needed the extra size for the sleeve length. I'd already bought the green shirt for Sylvan the year before to wear to his cousin's wedding. After the Doctor Who cosplay last year I realized to not ever put him in a suit again because of his sensory issues, so Seth got the long sleeved shirt/suit character, which Seth actually requested last year. He has a thing about wearing a suit and really wants a tux. The pants are supposed to be pin-striped, so I got the Sharpie marker and a yardstick and went to town. I guessed that the marker would bleed through the thin fabric so I put an empty bolt inside before I started, and I was right. Bled right through to the bolt. The green hairspray came from Wally's, the gloves were from Pillowman. They had accidentally gotten washed with Karturian's red shirt and were stained pink and ruined, so it all turned out OK in the end. I bought hot pink dye and made them the right shade of pink. After the first fitting, the pants and vest were perfect. The jacket needed the most attention. It's supposed to be a tailcoat, but that wasn't to be found so I remembered a friend once telling me how easy it was to convert a regular men's blazer into longer period menswear years ago. I had a general idea of how to go about it but thought I'd google some specific instructions and the internet didn't fail me. Evelyn Kriete wrote instructions on Tor.com which I followed. Here's the website: www.tor.com/2009/10/29/how-to-convert-an-ordinary-suit-coat-into-a-tail-coat/ I knew it was too big and needed to be taken in so once I marked the cutting line in chalk on the front right above the patch pockets, I then ripped off the patch pockets and cut the side seams apart. The jacket was super cheap and unlined with no CB seam to begin with and the side seams were only serged together with the patch pockets serged into the seam on that side. So, the easiest/fastest way to proceed was to just cut off the serging to separate the side seams. Then I folded the back in half and cut up the CB to create a seam to take it in. Next I cut along the chalk line to create the shorter hem in front and the tails in back. Once I serged everything I cut, I put it back on Seth to fit the CB seam and side seams back together. I ended up taking it in a total of five inches overall. I cut tail extensions from the sections I cut off from the front and added them to the back. I used leftover green cotton to flat line the newly created tails and used a slip stitch to attach the lining to the tails. Once that was done, I hemmed the sleeves 2 inches. I started the jacket alterations at 5pm and worked till about 10pm and then got up the next morning to finish hemming the sleeves which probably took another 45 minutes. All it needs now is four sets of black buttons and it will be done. Buttons found and attached for the back and sleeves. I just need another set for the front. In the meantime, I've decided that the vest is bothering me. The Joker's vest has a shawl collar in the matching pink fabric, not black. The neckline of the vest I purchased is very high and doesn't show any of the green shirt. So I've seam ripped the black collar off and I've marked in chalk the new neckline. I'm going to cut it down and then put the whole thing back together.This means cutting off two button holes and having to redo them to match in between the two remaining ones, but I can do that. This change will get the whole silhouette more in line with the original. Once I opened the whole thing up I realized that the manufacturer didn't serge anything, so I did that as soon as I cut the new neckline. Then I sewed the shoulder seams back together. I hemmed the front neckline in hot pink thread and just barely had enough left. Then I replaced the lining by hand using a slip stitch. The buttonholes were not standard, so I had to do those myself, rather than using the attachment that came with the machine. They were rounded off at one end and zig zagged over a thicker thread. Anyway, I faked that as best as I could, then sewed the other two buttons on. It's done! EXPENSES Pants 34.99 Vest 26.00 Dye 2.49 Hair spray 6.94 Makeup 6.99 Sharpie 3.10 TOTAL $80.51 KC as RobinI think it's hilarious to be Robin. I was so in love with Robin when I was a kid watching the show for the first time. I wanted to marry Dick Grayson and now I get to be him! So again, the leotard and tights, and gloves, came from We Love Colors, the mask came from an Etsy seller called Goblin Worx Leather Company. I've included a photo of his card in case you want to buy his stuff, it's VERY well made. I had found a brown utility belt at Goodwill years ago that I was planning on using for something, and this turned out to be it. I painted it black with acrylic paint and then used mop and glow on it for the shine. I am using the yellow donated jail lycra fabric for my cape and leftover Three Musketeers fabric for my vest. The boot cover fabric is leftover from Pride and Prejudice. So I still have to pattern all of that. Patterning and making the boot covers took two hours. Patterning the vest took 90 minutes. The first thing I had to do was make the size 16 mannequin 2" bigger in the boobs and 5" bigger in the waist. I draped a vest pattern, trued the seams, cut it out of the red twill, put in both sets of bust darts, hemmed it, and now I have to add grommets. Those I had to go to Joanne's and buy. I should have picked up some more Fray Check, but didn't think about it. Luckily if you run out you can always use Elmer's Glue or nail polish. It took me 2 hours to sew the vest together and hem it. Another hour to add the grommets. Grommets are annoying at the best of times, but as I get older my hands just don't work as well and they become exponentially harder to do. I had to make the R applique. I went to Michaels and bought a white R, dyed it yellow with a fabric marker, cut out a circle of black corduroy and heat bonded the whole thing together with some sturdy interfacing. Then I used black thread to zig zag the circumference and trimmed away the excess interfacing. I heat bonded that to the vest and then also zig-zagged it onto the vest as well. It's not going to fall off now! That was the first time I'd ever made my own applique. When I cut the cape out, I did the entire width of the lycra by one yard long. That's long enough for it to cover my butt in the back with room for hem. I folded the edges in to the middle so I could cut a neck opening in the front and slope the shoulder seams. I hemmed the front and bottom edges before I attached the collar. I patterned the collar in two pieces, with a collar stand and the actual collar. Not sure how I'm going to fasten it yet. In the mean time, I made gauntlets for the gloves out of the same fabric I used for the boot covers. EXPENSES Leotard 21.00 Tights 8.00 Mask 26.56 Applique R 1.50 Grommets 6.98 TOTAL $64.04 Rob as BatmanThe unitard, gloves, and 3 yards of fabric came from We Love Colors. The bat cowl came from Amazon Prime, it was not cheap, but way better than me trying to make one a week before Christmas. The applique came from Hobby Lobby. The police utility belt also came from Amazon and the spray paint from Home Depot. I could have bought a replica bat belt for not that much money, but it didn't actually hold anything and functionality at a con is vital. Rob has to have pockets for his phone, keys, money, credit cards, etc...so the police belt was the most logical choice, after looking at all the tool belts at Home Depot. I ended up having to order a belt case for Rob's phone separately, but made from the same black nylon, because his ginormous Sony phone wouldn't fit into any of the attachments that came with the police belt. At this point, I realize I could have gone with a darker blue for the pieces I made, because clearly from the research, all of his accessories are navy blue, but the We Love Color color samples on my monitor looked too dark. I can always dye the cape, gloves, panties, and boot covers navy later on. I was really both surprised and disappointed to discover that We Love Colors does not sell dance briefs at all, which meant I had to make the Bat Panties. I used a pair of his underwear to pattern them. Today I get to pattern and make the boot covers; that took an hour. I patterned the collar and then realized it really needed a collar stand to bridge the distance between his neck and the cowl, since it didn't come all the way down. And then I realized I need to cut another two out so that the cape would have something to attach to. Once all the utility belt parts arrived in the mail, I should have primed the nylon with Elmer's Glue but I didn't. I just went to town with the spray paint and the first coat got completely soaked up. Just did a second coat. I'll probably have to do three more coats to get it actually yellow. So I used up the whole can of spray paint and it's still not yellow, so I got a tube of acrylic and repainted the entire thing. I should have done that to begin with because there are too many cracks and crevices in the pouches and I can't spray paint around the velcro bits well. I should have just painted the whole thing with acrylic and a brush and then used the spray paint for the final coat. But I didn't do that, so now I have to go buy another can of spray paint and do it all over again once it stops raining and gets a bit warmer. I think in total there are probably three coats of spray paint, three more coats of acrylic and then two more coats of spray paint on the utility belt pieces. For the buckle, I used stick on velcro to the actual buckle, and then used sew on velcro on the foam buckle. I changed my design idea half way through when I realized that the bat logo on the buckle is not the same as on his chest. I cut another piece of foam, this time rectangular, and then also cut a separate bat logo as well. I glued them together and then primed it with Elmer's Glue on the front. Once that was dry, I used my Dremel tool on the back to scrape out the shape of the buckle where the other side of the Velcro would go, then I primed it with Elmer's glue. Then I did two coats of acrylic on the whole thing, and then two coats of spray paint. I was so excited when it was finally dry enough this morning to attach to the rest of the utility belt. It was the very last thing to be finished. Then I tried it on and felt it's power! Then I quickly stuck it in the gift bag before I got caught. EXPENSES Unitard 56.00 Gloves 16.00 Fabric 36.00 Mask 38.24 Belt 24.99 Phone Case 7.98 Applique 3.99 Spray Paint 7.96 TOTAL $191.16 Wrapping UpThen I went a bit nuts. After all that work, I had to make the wrapping special too. Everyone got their own color-coordinated gift bag and tissue with a hand written label addressed to all our secret identities with a note inside that was appropriately punny. Bruce's card reads, "For your darkest nights." Dick's card reads, "For all your boyish wonder." Edward's card reads, "For your most enigmatic riddles." Selina's card reads, "For the most purr-fect heist." and Jack's card reads, "For your most jocular jokes." It's boxing day after 5pm, but I finally finished! Can't wait for the kids to get here so we can finally do this, but that won't happen till Saturday. Waiting is hard guys, but keeping a secret is even harder. Wrapping cost $31.73 for 5 big bags and 7 different colors of tissue paper. First FittingsElastic needs to be sewn on and in some cases tightened. Batman's boot covers came out a bit wide, so taking up the CB seam about an inch will keep them from sagging. The Joker's jacket sleeves needed to be hemmed and The Riddler's belt also needs to be taken in on the side seams. The biggest problem is that the Bat mask needs to have the eyeholes enlarged, but I brought home my tailor points, so I'll just have to be careful doing it. That's it. Catwoman's gloves are a bit snug, but other than that, for not being able to try anything on during the construction process, everything came out really well fitting! And now that I'm looking at the photos, I don't think I'll dye any of Batman's accessories navy. I thought it would bother my OCD that they're not the same color as his mask, but it doesn't. I like the brighter blue and it fits in well with everyone else's brighter colors. More Bat GiftsRob went a little nuts with the Batman mini figures and Lego people and other forms of Batman characters in our stockings this year and he didn't even know how funny it was to me when he bought all of it. I told him we were having a very Batty Christmas and he thought it was because of him. Rob says that he's going to make a Batarang and Bat Shark Repellant for his utility belt and he wants a key chain that says Keys to the Batmobile, so I've got some reference photos for him below. Now we just need a con to go to. I am pretty sure that we'll be wearing these costumes to Dallas Fan Expo the first weekend in April. Hopefully there'll be professional photographers there so we can get really good pictures. We'll also wear them to Free Comic Book Day at Bankston's on May 5th this year, which happens to be my 50th birthday, as well as Geekfest in August. I hope to see you there! Stay tuned for our next adventure. Same Bat time, same Bat channel! AlterationsI knew that everyone wearing a unitard would need alterations to make going to the bathroom easier during a long day of con activities. For myself, I added a backing panel in Robin's vest so that it could be laced up once and never touched again, with the addition of a side zipper. I can still remove the lace to wash it separately so the red doesn't bleed onto it. AFter a full day of Fan Expo, even that wasn't enough. For next time, I'll cut my leotard in half and use hooks and eyes to reattach it. My vest will hide all. or Batman's unitard I just cut a slit into the appropriate section and serged around the opening to create a fly. For the Riddler, that solution wasn't going to work because there's no "underwear" to cover the fly like Batman, so I cut the unitard apart at the waist, gave each half it's own waistband out of the white lycra, then added hooks and eyes to reattach it afterwards. The separation gets covered up by his white belt. There's nothing I could do for Catwoman though because she doesn't even get a belt to hide the cut. Fan Expo, Dallas April, 2018PenguinBecause we were invited to the Greater Austin Comic Con and given a bunch of kids tickets to hand out, Sarah invited her friend Katryna. Well Katryna wanted to dress up with us, so Sarah had the idea of letting Katryna wear her Catwoman costume if I would make Sarah a Penguin costume. She said, "Penguin is my spirit animal" and it's true. She is the silliest girl and I love her for that. When I was her age and had to do a dance recital as a baseball player, I felt humiliated because I had to be a boy. Sarah embraces the weird. So, I got her tiny little tux pants, white vest, white gloves, purple bow tie and cummerbund. She already had a white button down shirt, I used the pregnancy pad that Rob had made for Medea for her fat belly. The shirt it was on was way too long for Sarah so I basically cut out the middle and sewed the top and bottom back together. I had to hem the pants 5 1/2 inches. The only thing we had to buy was a purple top hat and the tuxedo jacket, which I got from Amazon Prime. The hat was $4.87 and you'd think it would be crappy at that price, but the reviews were really good and when we got it, it was an actual hat and not just a cardboard party prop. The jacket cost $33 but I had to buy the entire suit, nowhere could I find just a jacket with tails. She is going to be hilarious. She's already been doing the voice and the walk. I guess I should have realized earlier, that she was way more Penguin than Catwoman. Katryna, however, is totally Catwoman. She even owns more than one set of cat ears already.
The Pillowman is a show that required several special effects from the costume and makeup designer; the biggest of which is Tupolski shooting Katurian in the back of the head at the climax of the show. The rest of the challenges aren't quite as problematic: the little green deaf girl and the little Jesus girl story all had FX elements in them. When we began this journey with director Lizzie Talbot and scenic designer Chris Cole, I was the only person on the production team who hadn't done this show before. The HeadshotThe first priority was the headshot. From the beginning the director, Lizzie Talbot, wanted a low-tech approach to the effects in the show. The audience had to see the gun, hear it fire, and then see the splatter on the back wall. Lizzie was not concerned with any makeup FX to Katurian's face after he pulls the hood off, which was great since we were in the black box theatre and the small space left us no distance to pull any major trickery with his face. The solution I came up with, after rejecting a blood capsule as not giving nearly enough splatter, was to use a baby snot sucker for the blood delivery device. We made a generic black hood. It was bucket shaped with an oval for the top and rectangle all around with a seam up the back. We then grommetted a hole in the front where the actor's mouth would be. We pre-filled the snot sucker with stage blood and shoved the tip through the grommet from the inside of the hood. When Tupolski graps it out of the filing cabinet, the actor was careful to handle it in such a way that the snot sucker was upright while it lay on his desk. Then when Katurian puts it on, he takes the snot sucker in his mouth. At the appropriate time, the actor bites down on the snot sucker ejecting the blood spatter on the back wall. We painted both the grommet and the tip of the snot sucker black so as to be camouflaged by the hood. When Katurian takes the hood off to do the rest of his speech, he just palms the snot sucker inside the hood to conceal it. UDATE: The hood and snot sucker have been found! Here are photos! The Little Jesus Girl StoryAgain, the director didn't want any real blood for this story, reserving the real blood for the headshot at the end. In the script, the Little Jesus Girl is supposed to wear a beard that gets yanked off of her, wear a crown of thorns made from barbed wire that gets shoved on her, is supposed to bleed from those wounds, gets flogged with a cat o' nine tails, and then gets stabbed with a spear and bleeds from that wound. Our solution was very low-tech. The beard was the cheap kind made for Halloween that was on elastic to begin with. We just cut the elastic and sewed Velcro to both ends so that it could be more easily ripped off her face. We made the crown of barbed wire from wreath raffia and spray painted it silver. Then we used red ribbon for the "bleeding" effect. When the Mom puts the crown on her she is palming the curled up ribbon and when she lets go, it uncoils and falls down like magic. The cat o' nine tails had 9 red ribbon lashes and after the spear thrust, two other actors who were palming more of a thicker red ribbon, hurled it outwards from behind the actress. The Green GirlFor the little deaf girl bit, she needed to look like Michal had drenched her in green paint and track it across Tupolski's floor. I started out by buying a very pink dress from Goodwill. Then I put a fair few dry cleaning bags over a mannequin, took the whole thing outside and spray painted the dress on the mannequin. I started from the top and made the paint concentration sparser toward the hem. For her body I used several different items to get the complete drenched in paint look. I bought liquid green body paint from Wally's for her arms and legs, green cream base makeup for her face, green temporary hair spray from Spirit for her hair, and green tempera paint from Hobby Lobby for the bottoms of her feet to track green paint into Tupolski's office as it mentions in the script.
Getting the actress green enough proved to be a bit of a problem. We ended up using almost all of the green paint/makeup/hairspray that we bought and as you can see I bought multiples of each. For the footprints, we poured the tempera into a plastic dish and then the actress stepped into the dish right before she walked through the door. The stage crew cleaned it up each night with a wet rag and didn't seem to have any problems getting the tempera paint off the black floor. The actress however, had a bigger problem showering off all the various greens every night. Her flip flops were ruined. Fortunately, her costume for the rest of her roles, ensemble, and Little Jesus girl, had long plants and sleeves so you couldn't tell that she was still fairly green underneath. I kept waiting to publish this in the hopes that the costume designer, Brandon McWilliams, would email me back with answers to my interview questions, but alas, he never did. So I guess I'll just have to go with what I have. I first saw Singing in the Rain as a child with my mom. My mom was 3 when it was released originally and saw it with her mom. It was a favorite of ours and we loved Debbie Reynolds in it. We were big musical theatre fans anyway so we watched everything that Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor were ever in. We even watched all of the Tammy movies, even though Debbie Reynolds was only in the first one. When I was in high school, the touring company came through Austin and mom got us tickets. By that time I had been in ballet, tap, and jazz for years as well as gymnastics. I really wanted to be able to do everything that Donald O'Connor could do in that film. So I was super excited to be able to see these performers do those dances live in person. The thing I remember being the most impressed with was that I got to see it rain onstage! It was amazing. I remember being disappointed that the lead actors were not the original actors, but once I thought about it I realized that they'd be way too old and I forgave them for not recreating their roles onstage for me personally thirty years later. I am sure that I pointed out every single difference between that show and the movie to my mom on the car ride back home. And here I am thirty odd years later, not tapping my way across the stage like Donald O'Connor, but making the clothes other Donald wannabees get to wear. My husband is also a huge fan of this movie and Gene Kelly in particular. He owns the movie on DVD and watches it whenever he gets depressed. he knows all the songs and he secretly wishes that he could dance like Gene Kelly even though he's a street-smart drummer in a rock and roll band. He'd lose tons of punk-rock points if any of his fans knew this. So when we found out that Zach Scott was doing this show on his birthday no less, I knew I had to get us tickets. The big surprise was that my former student, Brandon McWilliams, had designed the costumes. (Insert answers to interview questions here) My take on the show is that it's tough to produce a show that's as well known as this one. Everyone has seen it and expects to see what they were shown in the movie. The first big difference was that Zach Scott's cast was very diverse. An actress of color played Kathy Selden, Sasha Hutchings. She had been in Hamilton earlier and was phenomenal in this show. And she wasn't the only actor of color in the show. In fact there were eight non-white cast members out of a total of 22. The cast was diverse in more than just ethnicity. It's a show about Hollywood in its glamour days and the last production I saw of it, not only was the cast all white, they were also all young and beautiful. This cast had actors of all shapes, sizes, and ages, who looked just like real people rather than Hollywood stereotypes. That choice was really refreshing to see. Yes, it rained on stage and Don Lockwood, played by Luke Hawkins, got very soaking wet while dancing. My husband was sad that Cosmo Brown, played by Blake Spellacy, didn't run up a wall and turn a flip during "Make 'em Laugh!" He did hang off a board, though as well as do the bit with the dummy on the couch. Recreating the dreadful version of the film, "The Dueling Cavalier" was ridiculously funny and looked like it was just as fun to shoot. As to the costumes specifically, I really liked the color palette and the use of patterns and textures with the men's sweaters and vests. I thought that the "All I Do is Dream of You" costumes were a little risque for that scene. If it had been me, I would have switched them for the later costumes worn during the "Beautiful Girls" number. But those are only minor criticisms and only reflect my personal taste. I loved the plaid suits the boys wear in the first flashback scene to their vaudeville career as well as the Erte inspired fashions from the middle section of "Beautiful Girls". My husband felt "all the feels" and got a little teary eyed with joy during the performance. It really was an inspiring romp of tap dancing and really fast costume changes. I hope you got a chance to see it since it closed the very next weekend. costume galleryPhotos by Kirk Tuck
From the Waco Tribune-Herald: Actor with Waco roots offers theater scholarship, holds auditionby Carl Hoover choover@wacotrib.com Sep 7, 2017 Actor-hair stylist Mark Capalbo, part of the company in the Tony Award-winning 2015 revival of "The Color Purple," will return to Waco this month to talk with theater students at McLennan Community College as well as audition local high school seniors for a theater scholarship he's giving. The scholarship audition will take place between 4 and 7 p.m. Sept. 19 at the Lee Lockwood Library and Museum, 2801 W. Waco Drive. Those who wish to sing or dance as part of their audition should bring music for an accompanist. For information, call Linda Haskett at 776-0707. Capalbo was often seen on local stages when growing up in Waco, performing with the Waco Children's Theatre and McLennan Theatre. He had just graduated from Sam Houston State University in 2008 when he joined the national tour of the Broadway musical "The Drowsy Chaperone," which performed at the Waco Hippodrome in 2009. He also was a dancer in the national tour of "9 to 5," then switched to hair styling with "Elf The Musical" then the national tour of "Warhorse." His Broadway credits include "Phantom of the Opera," "On The Town," "Motown The Musical," "Hearts and Lights with the Radio City Rockettes," "Bandstand: A New American Musical" and "The Color Purple." He also has a healthy list of television credits, working as key hairstylist for Season 5 of FX's "The Americans" and Amazon's upcoming "The Dangerous Book For Boys" with Bryan Cranston. He's also styled for HBO's "Vinyl," CBS's "Billions" and "Bull," and Netflix's "Wormwood." While I'm here: It's not for a scholarship, but younger actors, from kindergarten to 12th grade, who would like to register and audition for the Waco Children's Theatre fall and holiday productions can do so Sunday, Sept. 10, between 2 and 5 p.m. at Lee Lockwood Library and Museum. The first WCT production will run the week of Nov. 12; the second, the week of Dec. 3. PS: Another credit that Carl's article failed to mention but that impresses the hell out of me, is that Mark did hair for one episode of The Get Down on Netflix. Schedule of Events at MCCSept 20th Wednesday 11:10-12:20 Black Box Theatre in the MTA building Mark will talk about his career as a musical theatre actor. This session will be attended by the Acting III class as well as the Theatre Appreciation classes. It is also open to the public. 2:30-3:30 Cosmetology Center Mark will talk to the Cosmetology students about doing wigs and hair for theatre and television. This session is closed to the public. Sept 21st Thursday 9:35-10:55 Black Box Theatre in the MTA building Mark will talk about his career as a hair and wig designer. This session will be attended by the Costuming, Stagecraft, and Theatre History classes. It is also open to the public. 5-6 Black Box Theatre in the MTA building Mark will talk to the vocal performance majors (music and theatre) for 30 minutes then will spend time critiquing their performances. Sept. 22nd Friday 12:15-1:15 Baylor Theatre Mark will be speaking to Baylor theatre majors about his career in theatre. Contact Lauren Weber Weber@baylor.edu for more information. This was my sixth year to attend Geekfest, my fifth to have a recruiting table, my fourth to do a panel, and my third to judge the contests and it was the best year yet! Costume ContestThe costume contest has grown tremendously since it's inception. This year we had over 70 entries. We simplified the categories this year by eliminating the novice and advanced divisions in handmade and props and armor. We then added groups as a new category. We had over half the entries compete in the costume casual category, 10 in groups, 16 in handmade, and another dozen or so in props and armor. Panel of JudgesUnfortunately we were down three committee members when it finally came time to make the trek to Killeen. Meagan had a work conflict, Lindsey had childcare issues, and our newest committee member, Shanna, was in the ER! The first day was rough only have me, Jason, and William to man the registration table, but we survived it. Pre-judging went smoothly. We were fortunate enough to find last minute replacement judges. I brought Bailey Cole, MCC's newest theatre dept. adjunct, and Jason brought his friend Jennifer who judged with him on his first contest. Our third judge was recommended to us by the Geekfest staff. Line Up went much more smoothly down in the dome with the seats and extra cold air conditioning. The house was SRO and a good time was had by all. We gave out 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place trophies in all four categories plus one Best in Show and one Judge's Choice award. From left to right: Danielle ?, Jennifer Piper, Bailey Cole, Kathleen Laundy (me), Jason Sanchez, and William Priest. Winners circleWinners GalleryContestants GalleryGeekfest's Got TalentNo one seemed to get what we were trying to do with this event in the two years past that I've been involved. It started off as the Cosplay Skit contest, was rebranded the Cosplay Lip Sync Battle. This is now the second re-branding of this event that I've been involved in and we were told that if this didn't work out, the Sunday event would be cancelled. Honestly we were tired of the poor turnout of contestants and low audience attendance. This year it was called Geekfest's Got Talent and that seemed to finally do the trick. Everyone knows what a talent show is, all our contestants had to do was make it geeky. We had 14 people sign up to compete in costume. We had four dancers, one Opera singer, other singers, a belly dancer, a stand up comedian who did impressions, a dramatic reading of Harry's Flying Lesson, a spoken word poet, and a martial arts demonstration. It was great. Everyone was super talented. Hopefully this will just grow and be even bigger and better next year. Judges and WinnersThere's still two weeks left of the plays, plenty of time to click the button and get yourself some tickets to see some professional theatre. If you buy tickets to three shows you get the fourth show for free, just type in Season in the promotional code box. The Texas Shakespeare Fest: "Where Do They Get Those Costumes?" Great article with video of the costume shop. Costume Department
Designer, Brandon R. McWilliams holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Theatre Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts in Costume Design from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. He has designed regionally for the past fifteen years and is the recipient of the Zelma H. Weisfeld USITT Costume Design Award and two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Shrader Kimberly Award in Costume Design. His work has been on display at the Prague Quadrennial ’07, as well as at the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Qatar. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Salisbury University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Louisiana State University and currently heads the costume design program at Texas State University. www.brmcwilliams.com. UPDATE: I sent Brandon a list of questions and he was nice enough to answer them. Here's the transcript of our conversation below: Me: I've been going to TSF for the last three years now, so I have a basic understanding of the rehearsal schedule, build schedule and how much time each show is allotted in the shop. The schedule is insane so kudos to everyone involved for getting so much done in so little time. Brandon: “Thank you, yea it’s a pretty tight schedule” Me: There is one thing I am confused about. I was told three years ago by Nick Jones, who was the shop manager at the time, that the designs were submitted in February with final renderings to the shop in March. What I am confused about is, who is there to begin patterning in March and shopping for fabrics if all the staff seem to be employed at other colleges or in grad school? Who is doing all the preliminary work until everyone else finishes with their own finals? If the shop only has 5 days per show to get the whole thing built with fittings starting on Wednesday, who is doing the pulling and shopping? I'd also love to know how much time you spent in residence during the build compared to how much was accomplished through email or phone calls. Brandon: “I haven’t really noticed any pre-production work done by the shop before the company arrives, but yea, you are right that final designs along with supporting paperwork gets delivered in March. I do all pulling and shopping for the shows with the exception of foundation garments that the shop staff can typically pull. I was in residence for 6 weeks, May 18th through July 3.” Me: Clearly a lot of things were built for both of your shows. Can you point out which pieces were built for the show compared to how much was adapted from pre-existing stock? Brandon: “For Much Ado, it was pretty much fabricated in house and purchased, we did pull the townspeople from their stock, but the rest was built. Cyrano was probably a solid 50/50 at the end of the day.” Me: What I'm especially curious about, having read the costume book they published awhile back and being able to talk to Nick Jones (I got to see the shop and storage three years ago while everyone was on a break for lunch) is this: The original philosophy was to build sturdy period pieces in a neutral color palette that could be used in a lot of different shows and then to keep adding to that collection to amass a really good stock and they've clearly done that over the last 30 years. Brandon: “I’m always surprised at how usable their stock is, I’m not entirely sure that it came from a directive to design in neutrals per say, but it's happened many a times that I’ll need something and you just walk back into the stock and there it is.” Me: But after three years of seeing period pieces in neutral colors I'm wondering when/if more color in the designs is going to happen? Surely they have enough brown and creme things by now. So what were you told, if anything, about color? I have started assuming that anything I see that's an actual color was built for the show and anything that's beige, creme, tan, brown, or navy is pre-existing stock. Brandon: “I’ve never been told that I have to operate in a certain palette when I’ve worked at TSF. Color has always evolved in collaboration with the Director and other Designers.” Me: I see that you did Camelot back in 2013. What was it like coming back? What did you do differently because of your experience earlier? Brandon: “I did, I also did Winter’s Tale that year, it was great coming back, for my 3rd year now. TSF is kind of special and I have always enjoyed my time with them. Coming back in my 2nd and 3rd year was somewhat easier having known how they operate and what actually exists in their stock, its like you are just better prepared having danced the danced before.” Me: I'd love to know what your budget was for both shows. Brandon: “They seem to budget with a lump sum amount rather than in response to the sketch.” Me: Much Ado they've done three times before, Cyrano twice. Was there any conversation like, "Well, we've done it this way before, you need to be different" or the opposite "we have all this stuff from last time in stock, you should use some of it". Brandon: “There is always a bit of comfort in knowing that they have some 30 years of stock to be utilized in various ways, but there really wasn’t any directive given to be like, or different from past productions.” Me: I feel like Raymond Caldwell and John Dodd have had such a long range vision for so long, I am interested to know how much control they exert over the designs. Brandon: “A producer always has that stewardship over the visual language in a way, but I’ve never had Mr. Caldwell or Mr. Dodd exert themselves in a way that was in opposition to the direction of the design of the shows I’ve done at TSF.”
I emailed Ms. Herin (Richard III and The Marvelous Wonderettes) and was fortunate in that she agreed to answer some questions about her involvement in the festival. I found out that she also designed two of the shows we saw last year, Henry V and Carousel. Here's the link to last year's blog on the Festival so you can see more of her work. Texas Shakespeare Festival 2016 Christopher Roton, the scenic designer, also designed all the shows last year. When you click on the link you'll notice that it's not up to my usual descriptive standards and I apologize for that. My mom died last July after a long illness and it's a miracle I got anything published at all. That's why I was surprised to find out that both Angelina and Christopher had designed the shows last year--my brain just wasn't taking in any information at the time. Back to the interview with Ms. Herrin: "The design process for the shows follows what I'd consider an industry standard for professional summer theaters. The designs begin in late fall, around mid-November, when conversations with the directors begin. At this point, I've been officially engaged as a designer, received copies of the scripts, read the scripts, and done some basic analysis on the texts and characters. I have a general sense of the plays, the playwrights intentions, and can discuss the characters with a certain level of depth and understanding. I like to have all this completed before my initial conversation with the director. Conversations with the director help to give my research focus, sometimes there's a concept that needs to be reconciled with the script, and the designers need to discuss and collaborate on the overall production. The production needs to be unified so we (the director and designers) need to communicate regularly, especially at the initial stages. Between these initial conversations and the mid-February initial design deadline, I do A LOT of research and sketches. Thanks to the Internet, it's pretty easy to share my ideas and receive feedback in an expedient manner. Sketches are often modified, especially as the overall costume design takes shape and a clearer vision is realized. Final designs, which means color renderings of each character and any costume changes they undergo, are due in mid-March. Renderings include hair or wigs and makeup details, which can include tattoos, piercings, or scars in addition to basic makeup choices. This deadline may seem rather early but these designs need to be reviewed by the director of the show, the Artistic Director, and the Costume Shop Manager. While the directors of my individual shows and I may only be interested in the unification of our particular production, the Artistic Director needs to evaluate whether the season is balanced in terms of harmony and contrast; the Costume Shop Manager needs to consider the technical and logistical requirements of the season. Furthermore, costume renderings are often used in publicity materials that are created in advance of the company arriving in Kilgore. Construction of the costumes does not begin until late May when the entire company is in residence. A final design packet is due in early May. This packet includes all the accompanying paperwork in addition to the costume renderings. Paperwork can include dressing lists, build lists, character/scene breakdowns, quick change plots, technical drawings depicting how garments should be patterned, fabric swatch cards, and comprehensive garment lists. The build period is brief and designers need to be completely prepared when they arrive." Scenic Department
I don't know any of the scene shop people, but clearly they have a sense of humor. And their TD/Shop Foreman is FEMALE! Look at all those men so happy to work for a woman! I hope the matching Hawaiian shirts are their actual shop uniforms. Even if there is only one of these shirts running around, the fact that they all wore it for the publicity photos makes me smile. There's a group of people who know how to have fun. CyranoWe saw Cyrano Friday matinee. The set design was lovely and very versatile, having to be 5 different locations: the Hotel Burgundy, Rageneau's patisserie, Roxanne's abode, the battle, and the convent. Costume GalleryPhotography by TSF staff. I designed Cyrano in graduate school so I'm pretty familiar with the play. It's a huge costume build with many layers of foundation garments for the ladies in order to achieve the correct Cavalier silhouette. The men all need lace collars and cuffs, capes, hats with feathers, swords and belts, and boots. There's the entire Gascon regiment that needs uniforms, several Musketeers, and three nuns. Plus all the other characters. That's a lot of changes. Here's what Brandon McWilliams had to say about Cyrano: “Ben Reigel (the director) came to the table with such experience with the play that we quickly decided it was a period piece that would be lived in in such a way that it wasn’t about costumes, but more about clothes that are lived in in a way. There were many discoveries along the way as the process seemed to be a bit more organic on this show and a lot was created based around an existing stock of clothing as opposed to building a great deal of items.” Here's Cyrano. He keeps this look through most of the show. His nose is clearly a prosthetic. It's a bit large, but not outrageously so. Here's Cyrano's duel with Valvert. You can see the background characters in their lace collars and cuffs. Here's Christian and the rest of the Gascons at Rageneau's patisserie. They clearly identify as a unit even though their "uniforms" are not identical. Two or perhaps three different fabrics were used to create doublets with separating sleeves that laced in. Both Christian and Cyrano have unique costumes that are similar to the Gascon uniform but not identical. Here's the gown Roxanne wears in both Act II and III. It's a yellow bodice with overskirt worn over a blue underskirt. it has white sleeves and trim. Here's her dress from Act I, seen here in Act IV at the battle with the Gascons. Here's the black dress she wears in the convent, still in mourning for Christian. Richard IIIIn case you are not up on your English Civil War history, here's a wonderful video that the Festival linked to on You Tube that explains one hundred years of bloody treason, betrayal, murder, and mayhem for you in less than 12 minutes. Richard III was directed by Stephen Wyman who played Shylock last year in Merchant of Venice as well as directed Henry V. Mr. Wyman said that directing Henry V last year made it easier for him to approach directing Richard III this year as he was already familiar with the space and with what kind of audience he could expect. Richard III is the second longest of all of Shakespeare's plays and Mr. Wyman didn't feel that the audience would thank him for presenting a four hour or longer version of the complete text. Discussing his version of the show he said, "You have to know where you're going" which meant that he had to cut out everything in the script that didn't take him there. To that end, he began cutting the script early on and eventually went through six revisions before he was happy with the final version. Mr. Wyman didn't just cut lines out, he also added in portions of an adapted version by Colley Cibber that was popular a hundred years after Shakespeare's version premiered. He said that he incorporated those bits of text into his production because he felt that Lady Anne's character arc needed to be completed and Colley Cibber's version did just that. The added scenes showed Lady Anne lamenting her marriage to Richard, their fierce argument about it, and later her suicide. One of the major elements he wanted to highlight with his version was the "portrait of the kind of people that would allow a person like Richard to come to power", which meant that it was vitally important for the play to not just be about watching a great actor chew the scenery but about all of the other characters and their backstory; that they need to exist in a world in which superstition and curses are real. His design concept was "expressionistic, grotesque, and eccentric" to expose the inner torment of each character to the audience and to wear it on the outside of their bodies like clothing. He stressed that he couldn't make subtle choices because as we are an American audience we don't have strong associations with all these characters the way an English audience would, being much more intimately familiar with the history of the War of the Roses. The director worried that (unlike Henry V last year) the audience would be unwilling to go on this journey with him since it was a descent into a hellish nightmare rather than a glorious journey toward victory. He needn't have worried. The direction, acting, and design of the show were compelling enough to keep our attention riveted on his goal for the entire two and a half hours. The set was designed by Christopher Roton. The concept he was given was Wyman wanted the world of the play to be a "living, breathing nightmare". You probably can't tell from the photos, but the wooden supports have runes carved into them and the platforms seem to be mortared together with human skulls. There were rusty hooks on chains hanging from the ceiling along with metal chandeliers. The whole atmosphere was one of catacombs turned torture chamber. I felt like I was in The Cask of Amontillado--as each successive victim was murdered, I felt walled up in this tomb of a set. Here's a good one of the skulls in the mortar. The lights and projections were designed by Jeff Greenberg. As you can see from the "curtain warmer" photos, projections were used throughout the show to enhance the "living, breathing, nightmare" concept that Mr. Wyman wanted. The Kilgore College theatre department had just purchased a new projection system so Adobe After Effects was used to project the faces of Richard's ghosts onto the back drop during Richard's nightmare before the battle of Bosworth Field. Pre-show projections were the title of the show superimposed on three femur bones, while the intermission projection was Richard's skeleton from the car-park superimposed over the skeleton of a boar, Richard's sigil. The com system went down right after the curtain speech on the night we saw it. After what seemed like way too long but was probably only a few minutes, the announcement went out that the show had been delayed due to technical difficulties and it would be just a few more minutes. We found out in the panel the next morning that they never did get the system up and running and had to call all the cues on their cell phones! I have no idea how that even worked, but it did, and I couldn't even tell anything was wrong. The problem turned out to be a short in a wire that they replaced the next day. Michael Redondo must be the best stage manager in the history of ever because we also found out the next day that this version of Richard had the most cues he's ever had to call in a show. I can't imagine doing that on cell phones. Way to go, Michael! Costume GalleryPhotography by TSF staff. I designed Richard III back in 1999, so I know from experience that it's a huge show! When we did it at MCC, we incorporated the end of Henry VI part 3-- the Battle of Tewkesbury--in which Margaret is captured, and Prince Edward and Henry VI are killed, to give our audience some context for what they were about to see. In Wyman's version we get the scene where Richard stabs Henry VI in the Tower (from Henry VI part 3) before we get the scene where he woos Anne over Henry's corpse. In this version Henry's corpse bled spontaneously just like in the text: "O gentlemen, see, see dead Henry's wounds Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!" It was a great bit of theatrical magic that took the audience by surprise. In the panel discussion, we were told how they did it. The corpse was rigged with blood bags and tubing with holes. The actors who were bearing the corpse had the trigger for the release mechanism in the handles of the bier. The costumes were designed by Angelina Herrin. Here's what she had to say about Mr. Wyman's concept: "The concept for Richard III was "1480 meets 'Mad Max' and 'Halloween.'" Mr. Wyman wanted the costumes to reflect the inner corruption of the characters. There is something rotten and not quite right in this world and costumes are the outer manifestation on this festering. The costumes needed to walk the line between contemporary and Late Gothic silhouettes. This was achieved through mixing contemporary materials with older silhouettes and or manipulating a contemporary garment. Since the play is about the War of the Roses, there are a lot of roses and insignia to assist the audience in identifying who is aligned together and who is in power. (We go through four kings during the play.) Lesser characters, like the soldiers and messenger, switch out the insignia on their costumes to indicate this change of power. I incorporated a lot of spikes into the clothing - my version of rose thorns. Everyone has some sort of thorn or armour. A secondary goal was to play with proportion and to support the sense of unease created in the scenic design. One example is the women's veils are a bit too long and may concern some viewers - will they catch on the stage or get pulled off? why are they such odd colors? Again, the spikes create a sense of danger: when Richard is assaulting Queen Elizabeth the audience may actually feel concern for Richard as Elizabeth swings her bejeweled pauldrons, complete with 5" spikes, toward his face and neck. In terms of what was built vs. what was pulled from stock, it's a 45-55 ratio. All of the primary women, Richard's costumes, and several of the jerkins and capes were built. Headdresses for the women was also built. I painted all the insignia found on Richard, the messenger, and the soldiers. Heavy modifications were done to the motorcycle jackets and vests. The armour was modified or constructed then painted and distressed for this show, including the spiked knee pads. The items pulled from stock or purchased were generally pants, undershirts, capes, puffy vests, and accessories (gloves, shoes, studded belts). We also employed the skills of some wonderful artisans to build the Duchess of York's scaled pauldrons, Lady Anne's crown, Richard's crown, Queen Margaret's headdress, and some of the leather jerkins and leather armour worn by Catesby. I designed Henry V last year and chose to incorporate several pieces from that show into Richard III, although the concepts were different, I found the pieces I chose from Henry V added some depth and personal meaning to the design." As Ms. Herrin said, most of the characters had some pieces of armor on their costumes and there was a lot of black leather in the show. Here is what Richard wore in most of the play. I liked the choice of putting Richard's weak arm in armor to protect it and it seemed that the paldron was helping to keep his "withered" forearm from dangling with the straps and chains holding it up. I felt sorry for his left boot. I imagine that the pair will be trashed after the show closes. The chorus had skull balaclavas that covered just the lower halves of their faces. The actor playing Brakenbury the Jailer, Domonique Champion, said that he felt they symbolized the "power of death" that was always following you as well as always ahead of you, impossible to escape. In the background you can see the ever-present chorus members in their skull balaclavas. As the director said, the women were the important part of this show and Richard's relationships to them had to be developed. We see Richard's evil deeds better by the cruelty he inflicts on the women in his life. Elizabeth is the wife of Richard's older brother Edward IV, who's just won the crown by defeating Henry VI at the Battle of Tewksbury. Here's how Queen Elizabeth starts the show. Notice the crystal pauldrons with the 5" spikes. They are difficult to see in the photo, but from the second row, they looked deadly. Also, notice the use of white crown and lining accents on the dark gown. The white rose is the symbol of the York House. Here's her change into a black mourning gown after Edward dies from grief over having to order his brother George's execution. George was rumored to be rebelling against Edward. Richard started the rumor of course. In a fit of sentimentality, Edward declared a stay of execution and told Richard to deliver the message. Richard lied and said he was too late. Later Richard has both her brother, Rivers, and her son from her previous marriage, Grey, arrested and executed for plotting against him. They actually were plotting against him. Elizabeth takes her daughters to seek sanctuary with Lord Hastings, but Richard also has him executed for being a traitor. Then Richard declares her two surviving sons from her marriage to Edward, illegitimate, has them locked up in the tower, never to be seen again. Notice she keeps the crystal pauldrons on, but loses the crown. Also, she loses all the white accents. Richard's mother is the Duchess of York, Cecilly Neville. Shakespeare portrays her as having deep affection for her sons Edward and George, but none for Richard. She sees his physical deformity as a "false glass that grieves me when I see my shame in him" and blames herself for it. Naturally she is horrified when Richard manipulates Edward into having George executed. Once her grandsons, the Princes, disappear in the Tower, she blames Richard for their deaths and curses him: "Bloody thou art, Bloody will be thy end!" She wears this deep burgundy velvet gown with scale mail pauldrons and a white underskirt. Margaret of Anjou was the wife to Henry VI and the mother of Prince Edward. No mere decorative Queen she, Margaret actually led the Lancastrian army with her husband at the Battle of Tewksbury, in which her son was killed by Richard before her very eyes. Richard captures Henry VI and later kills him in a fit of rage in the Tower. After the Battle of Tewksbury, Richard has her taken prisoner and keeps her at court so he can keep an eye on her. Margaret has lost her husband, her son, her sanity, her crown, and her freedom all in one day, and all because of Richard. Shakespeare also has her practicing witchcraft, a plot device that Mr. Wyman made much use of. She curses Richard and all the other Yorkist nobles who had a hand in the downfall of the House of Lancaster, and Cassandra-like, all of her curses come to pass, each man betrayed and murdered by Richard. Richard also dies at the hand of the future King of England, Henry Tudor, at the Battle of Bosworth. In her first entrance, she is wearing what I would describe as an Evil Queen ensemble, a black horned headdress and veil with a red cape with silver/crystal pauldron only on one shoulder. In the second photo, she loses the cape and we see that she's wearing a red corset over a black gown. It's a very striking costume. I wish someone had gotten a better photo of it under normal lighting The third photo is her influencing Richard's dreams the night before the battle, giving him the nightmare of seeing all the victims of his murderous bid for power. She was in shadow so I'm not sure what she was wearing but it looks like she's just thrown a darker colored cape over her other costume. Anne Woodville was the wife of Prince Edward and Margaret's daughter in law. Anne has lost both her husband and father-in law because of Richard. She first meets Richard while accompanying Henry VI's corpse to chapel. It is in this scene that Richard, a master of manipulation, tells her that he's killed her father in law and husband out of a desperation to marry her, because he's so in love with her. He offers his sword to her so that she can take her revenge and kill him, but she can't do it, being a Christian and not capable of murder. He then skillfully talks her into marrying him. It's not like she really had any other options. So she says yes and joins House York. Anne is wearing a heavy grey velvet cape with black accents. Her veil is red. You can't really tell in this photo, but the rose appliqués on her cape have red beadwork on the black backgrounds. The House of Lancaster's symbol was the red rose. Here's what's under the heavy velvet cape. The third photo is the gown she wears in the emotional scene by Colley Cibber where she confronts Richard about their failure of a marriage, and then later commits suicide. The men wore costumes too, I didn't want you to think I was ignoring them. Richard III Panel DiscussionThe panel was held Saturday morning after the Friday evening show. Many interesting questions were brought up and we were so fortunate to have the director on hand to answer them. I was particularly curious about the concept for the show especially as it related to the unusual costume and scenic design. This play was rehearsed six days in total. All the actors began rehearsals with their lines memorized. Micah Goodding, who played Richard, had been cast before last year's season closed and was able to start working on his character in September. Micah's take on playing Richard was that he (Richard) does genuinely care about (some) people right up until he's through with them. The scene with Lady Anne is especially troubling for a lot of people who work on this play. Why does she end up married to the man who murdered both her husband and father-in-law? It seems beyond belief that she could be manipulated like that. Micah wanted to show a version of Richard in which Anne's seemingly improbable choice would make sense. He felt he had to make Richard vulnerable enough in that moment so that Anne would accept him. This choice was further supported by the director's concept that their world had become such a nightmare, that being married to Richard was the safest option for her, the widow of his enemies, than remaining unmarried and vulnerable. It was wonderful to hear Mr. Wyman talk about the importance of the female characters in the play. I'm so glad we got to hear from Lisa Crosby Wipperling, who played Margaret, on her perspective of her importance in the play, her curse on Richard, and her conjuring the dead to influence the outcome of the battle. She said that her character realized that the other women weren't ready to go to her side yet because they were still grieving for the Princes, so that's why she needed to conjure the ghosts in order to bring Richard down. We weren't given any child actors to play the Princes in this version. I was told it's notoriously difficult to find child actors who can adhere to the crazy rehearsal schedule that the festival must keep. I felt their absence most keenly in the scene where Cecilly, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Anne were asking to see them in the Tower only to be denied by Brakenbury the Jailer. The women were grieving for faces that I had never seen. It was an emotional cue that was missed. Matthew Simpson, festival director, was hosting the panel and also revealed that each season is built around one show and that Richard was the anchor play. He also said that usually the musical is the last piece of the puzzle, but this year when they chose Marvelous Wonderettes (which only has a cast of 4), they replaced the other non-Shakespeare with Cyrano which had a much larger cast. The Marvelous WonderettesI had never even heard of this musical when we saw it on Saturday at the matinee. According to the lighting designer, Jeff Greenberg, this show had the most lighting cues. Costume GalleryPhotography by TSF staff. Costumes designed by Angelina Herrin again. Here's what she had to say about this show. "The Marvelous Wonderettes is small, sweet musical. I think it's one of those shows that you have to experience rather than read or listen to at home. The audience is the fifth performer in this show. The key, in terms of the costume design, is to not reduce the characters to stereotypes. The costume designer needs to do character analysis and approach the design with a subtle hand or the costumes will cease to look like actual clothing and will indeed become costumes. For this production, the director and I decided to approach the first set of costumes - 1958 prom - with a muted/pastel palette and some sense of modesty. The dresses needed to look period appropriate, reflect the adolescent tastes of the characters, and look like they could have been sewn by one of the characters (as the dialogue dictates). Since the characters are trying to portray themselves as a signing group, I sought to create some unity in the costumes by giving the characters matching footwear and corsages. They all wear white gloves as well." "Moving into Act Two - 1968, a 10-year reunion - the characters are a bit more mature and have more clearly defined personalities and tastes. White is still used as a unifying factor - this time it's the go-go boots - but the costumes are less unified, a reflection of the women growing apart. The color palette for this act is more saturated has more diverse textures. Most of the hair and makeup is reflective of internal character growth; Suzy is the only character with similar hair and makeup in both acts, reflective of her minor character growth." Much Ado About NothingI've done Much Ado at MCC in 2003. I'm a big fan of the Branaugh film. We saw it Saturday evening. The scenic design was amazing. it really felt like an Italian villa--colorful and lush. I was shocked to find out that there was really water in the fountain. Couldn't believe Beatrice got wet when she fell in! And I was curious about how the balconies were built to support the weight of the actors crawling up them and then standing out there when the one on stage right only seemed to be supported on three sides and the one on stage left barely seemed supported at all. Likewise the curved staircase that didn't seem supported at all, but just magically hung in mid-air. What a clever display of safe building techniques. Costume GalleryWhen I designed Much Ado for MCC back in 2003, the Branagh film was 10 years old. We weren't supposed to doing it as our season finale that year; the last show was supposed to have been Tony and Tina's Wedding. But there was a big kerfuffle about the rights, which got pulled, and at the same time, that was the year that another big kerfuffle happened to the state budget and MCC (and I assume all the other Texas colleges) had to give back $1 million to the state. So we were left at the end of the season with no show and no money to do it with. It was decided rather than do no show, we'd do a show that didn't require us to pay for rights and one that we could do with stock costumes and scenery. Several Shakespeares and Greek tragedies were suggested and Much Ado was the winning title. It's a charming play that I never get tired of. Photography by TSF staff.
Here's what Brandon McWilliams had to say about Much Ado: “George Judy (the director) and I had worked together quite a bit over the years so coming into Much Ado was almost like having lunch with an old friend in a way. He is incredibly articulate and super organized in how he stewards his vision. I also think there was an established sense of trust having worked together before. We wanted to create a romantic silhouette, with elements from a variety of period really, so no one is going home with marks for authenticity here really, we pulled from Renaissance all the way to Regency in a way. But at the core was this desire to really depict these three various groups of people in this seaside Italian village." |
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