Tristan and Isolde
Cast List
Costume Design Ideas
Production Meeting Notes
At the end of the weirdest spring semester ever, we began planning our 20-21 season. Joe was interested in doing another devised production like Christmas Carol, but with original music instead. He was interested in a few different shows, but the faculty agreed that the story of Tristan and Isolde sounded the most interesting. Joe spent the summer writing a new adaptation of the story and later on Nick Webb, our playwright in residence, helped him polish it up. Joe kept us in the loop on the script as it evolved and I bought the "original" manuscript of the story to do some research. I also contacted my Facebook Historical Costuming Group to ask for suggestions on the differences between Medieval Irish clothing and Medieval Cornish clothing. By the time the script was complete, it was already late in the summer. We had our first production meeting over Zoom. Once we got back together, we realized just how big of a job keeping the actors safe would be especially in relation to the use of hand props. Both Tristan and Isolde have to drink a love potion out of the same bottle, kiss, and sleep together. Isolde and King Mark also have to kiss during their wedding and then Mark and Bree have to sleep together as well. How would we stage this without risking the health and safety of those actors? At that point we were mostly discussing ways in which to costume our actors to keep them safe on stage with each other. Various concepts were thrown around like Steampunk, in order to include masks, gloves, goggles, and other kinds of PPE so that they wouldn't look out of place in the world of the show. If it had been any other story, this might have been fine with me, but Tristan and Isolde is a romance and you can't have any romance between actors who are encased in PPE. This was not at all what I had envisioned when I voted for Tristan, but that's where we left it for a week, to give everyone time to think about it and figure out what to do.
Between our first and second production meetings, I had attended a virtual USITT conference on what other theatres around the world were doing to reopen and the answer was everyone was doing filmed performances. No one was doing anything live. Based on my information, it was decided that we could not in good conscience have an actual production with a live audience and that we should attempt to do a film instead. At this point we were all happy to scrap the Steampunk concept and put the story back where it belonged, in the world of Medieval Europe. I enthusiastically put together my research into a slide show of costume design ideas for Joe and Chris to look at, which I have included above. Specifically, the color palette of the Irish characters will be green and gold and the Cornish characters will be blue and silver. Tristan and Isolde will go back and forth depending on the scene and where their loyalties lie. The period will be medieval 12th Century. We moved it forward from the correct time period of 900 because Joe added a scene in which Ada's parents were killed during the anarchy of 1135-1153. We'll be pulling everything we can so we can start shooting as soon as humanly possible and hopefully, depending on who is cast, we won't have to build very many pieces.
This will be MCC's first ever attempt at a film. Chris will be in charge of buying the camera and software that we need to do this project. As we began talking about what a filmed production would look like, the possibility of CGI was brought up for the scene where Tristan kills the dragon. At first Joe and I had envisioned using a Chinese-style Dragon puppet where one person is in the head and the rest of the dancers are under a long piece of fabric to create the body of the dragon as it snakes down a street in a Chinese New Year's parade. But then Chris came up with the idea of using a green screen to film in front of, to really make the most of the medium and create a CGI fire-breathing dragon that can fly on screen. Once we started talking about green screen technology, and what all it could do, the idea to do all of the scenery in the computer came about. At that point my green screen responsibilities went from just buying four Morph suits to making sure every costume piece is not that particular shade of green (or it would just disappear) but that it all interacts well with the green screen. This has proven tricky to pull off since all the Irish characters are dressed in green.
Joe is holding auditions over zoom as a kind of "screen test" for the actors the Thursday before school starts. Joe will email out an announcement and I'll put it up on our FB page. The actors will all read the same narration lines and all the faculty will watch the auditions. Joe is also generating the shooting schedule so I can start providing costumes one at at time. The narrator character will now be a voice over. Lee Brown was cast as the narrator but he has also volunteered to be our sound engineer, so that works out well. Chris decided to do all the voice over work at the end of the filming schedule during the editing process. We are going to start filming ASAP so that we will have two whole weeks of editing time. I suggested that we push the "opening date" back two weeks so we would have more time to figure out what we were doing and that was approved by our administration.
8-26 This is the first week of school, and we now have a cast list, a Stage Manager, and we started pulling costumes from storage. We'll have to check everyone's measurements, I would do it anyway, but particularly since the quarantine, we've all gained weight. There were in fact two actors who had actually lost weight during the quarantine because Garland kept his job at HEB and actually ended up working way more hours than he had been, and Nick who re-roofed his parents house.
8-31 We've now rechecked all returning students measurements, and measured all the new students. We pulled a lot more costumes from storage this week and I ordered the four morph suits for our dragon dancers. I've pulled thermals, the Richard III leather doublets, and all the Henry V chain mail. We're taking some of the short mail sleeves and putting them together to make long sleeves. We need four sets for the guards, and one set for Tristan and another for Rivalin, Morell, and Rual. Although we had made three sets of chainmail sleeves in 2004 for Macbeth originally, those students were long gone. I got out my chainmail handbook and had to re-read it to figure out how the links go together so that we could knit two sleeves together and still follow the original pattern. I did one at home and then taught the students how to do it and they did the rest over the course of the week.
9-4 Production meeting Friday at 1pm. Rivalin is not going to be seen dying in battle and the actor playing Morell is also playing one of the guards, so we ended up only needing 6 sets of chain mail sleeves instead of 8. We did fittings for all the girls, I'm still looking for some pieces from Lion in Winter and Henry V for them. Even with all of those things we still need to make more dresses. Anna needs a dancing dress for the English court, and Isolde needs a dress for the Trial by Iron dance that she can do fan kicks in, but that doesn't have the giant medieval sleeves like her other dresses. I also need to make two matching nightgowns for Bree and Isolde for the switcharoo they play on King Mark.
9-8 Tuesday: We began fittings this week. I did 10 fittings today for Tristan, Isolde, Bree, and Ada's costumes. Because I am only on campus in the afternoons and Joe is only on campus in the mornings, I am taking photos of the fittings and texting them to him so he can see what I'm doing and gives him the opportunity to give me his input while I'm still in process. The fitting photos are all below.
9-9 Wednesday: I did three more fittings on King Mark. I ordered the morph suits today. There were a million different kinds and colors. I had to coordinate with Chris to make sure that I was buying ones that were as close to the same color as the green screen that Chris had already purchased but hadn't received yet. It was kind of a crap shoot, because we were both looking at the items on different monitors over zoom and trying to guess which would actually be the same color. We made our best guess and I ordered the suits on Amazon. They'll be there in two days.
9-10 Thursday: I did five fittings on King Gormund, Morell, and the Baron.
9-11 Friday: I did three fittings for Queen Aofe, as well as Victoria, and Kyndal.
9-14 Production Meeting Monday 1 pm. The Morph suits arrived today, and Nick came in for his fitting. The product reviews warned that they weren't easy to see out of and Nick agreed.
9-15 Tuesday Now that we had one actually green screen product, Chris borrowed Nick's morph suit to take with him to Home Depot so they could mix the green screen paint he was buying to the exact shade of the morph suits. The actually green screen back drop had not arrived yet.
9-16: Wednesday The black leather bracers I ordered for Morell arrived.
9-17: Thursday The four shirts and six pairs of gloves that I ordered arrived. I announced that we'd have a work call on Saturday from 12-5 and I sent in my request for air conditioning.
9-18 Friday The chain mail coif and hood for Morell arrived.
9-19 Saturday. There was no air conditioning at the work call. I thought I'd be alone, but seven students came to work which was great as it was very short notice. We did get a lot of work done but for some reason the hot water was turned off so everything that I dyed didn't actually dye which was a huge waste of time, energy, and money.
9-20 Sunday: I had planned on coming in to do a lot of patterning and cutting out the dresses we have to make but since there was no air conditioning on Saturday, there was no way there'd be air conditioning on Sunday and as I am old, fat, and have hot flashes now (which are brought on by re-breathing my own hot breath in a mask), I stayed home.
9-21 Production meeting Monday 2 pm. Filming was supposed to start tonight but Chris needs more time with lights and sound so instead, we're moving what we were supposed to film tonight and tomorrow to the end of the week on Saturday. That really helped me out because we're not finished with the Irish guards or Isolde's court dancing dress. I'm staying till 9 anyway to work on the costumes. The Baroness' blouse came in the mail today. Joe sent over everyone he wasn't using so I got a lot of unexpected help. I spent my time cutting out Anna's dress for the English court dance.
9-22 Tuesday. No filming tonight, but I stayed anyway to get more work done, this time Taylor came over and helped me but he was called back almost immediately. I spent most of my time sewing Anna's court dress together.
Between our first and second production meetings, I had attended a virtual USITT conference on what other theatres around the world were doing to reopen and the answer was everyone was doing filmed performances. No one was doing anything live. Based on my information, it was decided that we could not in good conscience have an actual production with a live audience and that we should attempt to do a film instead. At this point we were all happy to scrap the Steampunk concept and put the story back where it belonged, in the world of Medieval Europe. I enthusiastically put together my research into a slide show of costume design ideas for Joe and Chris to look at, which I have included above. Specifically, the color palette of the Irish characters will be green and gold and the Cornish characters will be blue and silver. Tristan and Isolde will go back and forth depending on the scene and where their loyalties lie. The period will be medieval 12th Century. We moved it forward from the correct time period of 900 because Joe added a scene in which Ada's parents were killed during the anarchy of 1135-1153. We'll be pulling everything we can so we can start shooting as soon as humanly possible and hopefully, depending on who is cast, we won't have to build very many pieces.
This will be MCC's first ever attempt at a film. Chris will be in charge of buying the camera and software that we need to do this project. As we began talking about what a filmed production would look like, the possibility of CGI was brought up for the scene where Tristan kills the dragon. At first Joe and I had envisioned using a Chinese-style Dragon puppet where one person is in the head and the rest of the dancers are under a long piece of fabric to create the body of the dragon as it snakes down a street in a Chinese New Year's parade. But then Chris came up with the idea of using a green screen to film in front of, to really make the most of the medium and create a CGI fire-breathing dragon that can fly on screen. Once we started talking about green screen technology, and what all it could do, the idea to do all of the scenery in the computer came about. At that point my green screen responsibilities went from just buying four Morph suits to making sure every costume piece is not that particular shade of green (or it would just disappear) but that it all interacts well with the green screen. This has proven tricky to pull off since all the Irish characters are dressed in green.
Joe is holding auditions over zoom as a kind of "screen test" for the actors the Thursday before school starts. Joe will email out an announcement and I'll put it up on our FB page. The actors will all read the same narration lines and all the faculty will watch the auditions. Joe is also generating the shooting schedule so I can start providing costumes one at at time. The narrator character will now be a voice over. Lee Brown was cast as the narrator but he has also volunteered to be our sound engineer, so that works out well. Chris decided to do all the voice over work at the end of the filming schedule during the editing process. We are going to start filming ASAP so that we will have two whole weeks of editing time. I suggested that we push the "opening date" back two weeks so we would have more time to figure out what we were doing and that was approved by our administration.
8-26 This is the first week of school, and we now have a cast list, a Stage Manager, and we started pulling costumes from storage. We'll have to check everyone's measurements, I would do it anyway, but particularly since the quarantine, we've all gained weight. There were in fact two actors who had actually lost weight during the quarantine because Garland kept his job at HEB and actually ended up working way more hours than he had been, and Nick who re-roofed his parents house.
8-31 We've now rechecked all returning students measurements, and measured all the new students. We pulled a lot more costumes from storage this week and I ordered the four morph suits for our dragon dancers. I've pulled thermals, the Richard III leather doublets, and all the Henry V chain mail. We're taking some of the short mail sleeves and putting them together to make long sleeves. We need four sets for the guards, and one set for Tristan and another for Rivalin, Morell, and Rual. Although we had made three sets of chainmail sleeves in 2004 for Macbeth originally, those students were long gone. I got out my chainmail handbook and had to re-read it to figure out how the links go together so that we could knit two sleeves together and still follow the original pattern. I did one at home and then taught the students how to do it and they did the rest over the course of the week.
9-4 Production meeting Friday at 1pm. Rivalin is not going to be seen dying in battle and the actor playing Morell is also playing one of the guards, so we ended up only needing 6 sets of chain mail sleeves instead of 8. We did fittings for all the girls, I'm still looking for some pieces from Lion in Winter and Henry V for them. Even with all of those things we still need to make more dresses. Anna needs a dancing dress for the English court, and Isolde needs a dress for the Trial by Iron dance that she can do fan kicks in, but that doesn't have the giant medieval sleeves like her other dresses. I also need to make two matching nightgowns for Bree and Isolde for the switcharoo they play on King Mark.
9-8 Tuesday: We began fittings this week. I did 10 fittings today for Tristan, Isolde, Bree, and Ada's costumes. Because I am only on campus in the afternoons and Joe is only on campus in the mornings, I am taking photos of the fittings and texting them to him so he can see what I'm doing and gives him the opportunity to give me his input while I'm still in process. The fitting photos are all below.
9-9 Wednesday: I did three more fittings on King Mark. I ordered the morph suits today. There were a million different kinds and colors. I had to coordinate with Chris to make sure that I was buying ones that were as close to the same color as the green screen that Chris had already purchased but hadn't received yet. It was kind of a crap shoot, because we were both looking at the items on different monitors over zoom and trying to guess which would actually be the same color. We made our best guess and I ordered the suits on Amazon. They'll be there in two days.
9-10 Thursday: I did five fittings on King Gormund, Morell, and the Baron.
9-11 Friday: I did three fittings for Queen Aofe, as well as Victoria, and Kyndal.
9-14 Production Meeting Monday 1 pm. The Morph suits arrived today, and Nick came in for his fitting. The product reviews warned that they weren't easy to see out of and Nick agreed.
9-15 Tuesday Now that we had one actually green screen product, Chris borrowed Nick's morph suit to take with him to Home Depot so they could mix the green screen paint he was buying to the exact shade of the morph suits. The actually green screen back drop had not arrived yet.
9-16: Wednesday The black leather bracers I ordered for Morell arrived.
9-17: Thursday The four shirts and six pairs of gloves that I ordered arrived. I announced that we'd have a work call on Saturday from 12-5 and I sent in my request for air conditioning.
9-18 Friday The chain mail coif and hood for Morell arrived.
9-19 Saturday. There was no air conditioning at the work call. I thought I'd be alone, but seven students came to work which was great as it was very short notice. We did get a lot of work done but for some reason the hot water was turned off so everything that I dyed didn't actually dye which was a huge waste of time, energy, and money.
9-20 Sunday: I had planned on coming in to do a lot of patterning and cutting out the dresses we have to make but since there was no air conditioning on Saturday, there was no way there'd be air conditioning on Sunday and as I am old, fat, and have hot flashes now (which are brought on by re-breathing my own hot breath in a mask), I stayed home.
9-21 Production meeting Monday 2 pm. Filming was supposed to start tonight but Chris needs more time with lights and sound so instead, we're moving what we were supposed to film tonight and tomorrow to the end of the week on Saturday. That really helped me out because we're not finished with the Irish guards or Isolde's court dancing dress. I'm staying till 9 anyway to work on the costumes. The Baroness' blouse came in the mail today. Joe sent over everyone he wasn't using so I got a lot of unexpected help. I spent my time cutting out Anna's dress for the English court dance.
9-22 Tuesday. No filming tonight, but I stayed anyway to get more work done, this time Taylor came over and helped me but he was called back almost immediately. I spent most of my time sewing Anna's court dress together.
Fittings
Wig Tests
Joe wanted Aofe to have hair like Merida in Brave, so I ordered this wig from Amazon. It looks great on camera. Micah has almost no hair since she cut it all off after Chicago, so she ordered a blonde wig but when we did a screen test, it was so light it didnt' show up against the green screen, so we had to order a darker blonde one with Rush shipping so it would get here in time for the shoot schedule. Fortunately it did and it shows up on camera. The second wig has weird sides though and there's no way to pin them down because Micah has no hair so we had to improvise a wig cap out of stockings in the moment so they wouldn't flap up. The next day Micah bought some wig tape and that helped immensely.
Purchases
Filming Journal
Sept 23 Thursday: During lab hours the crew designed and painted the Parmangie sigil for Rual's tabard. I used a black and yellow tabard from storage, so I chose a yellow ground for the sigil and we put a badger on for the crest. I drew it on and Rosie painted it. King Mark needed a tabard for his hunting costume, so I made that from scratch during lab hours. It took longer to finish than I thought and I didn't get it on set until 6, mostly because Brooks never came last week for his fittings, so we had to do them at 5pm right before he was supposed to be on set.
We were supposed to start filming at 5:00 but due to sound issues we didn't start filming until 7:30. so it didn't matter that it took till 6 to finish the sewing. There was some sort of mic or cable problem that took a long time to hunt down. The first scene went off without any costume problems. In the final scene for the night, Young Tristan is supposed to show King Mark how to dress a stag, but the prop stag didn't look good on camera, so Joe put on one of the morph suits and played the dead stag. We stopped filming at 9:30.
We were supposed to start filming at 5:00 but due to sound issues we didn't start filming until 7:30. so it didn't matter that it took till 6 to finish the sewing. There was some sort of mic or cable problem that took a long time to hunt down. The first scene went off without any costume problems. In the final scene for the night, Young Tristan is supposed to show King Mark how to dress a stag, but the prop stag didn't look good on camera, so Joe put on one of the morph suits and played the dead stag. We stopped filming at 9:30.
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Sept. 24 Friday: during lab hours the crew painted the sleeves of Tristan's red leather armour blue to match his Cornish tabard for the two fight scenes we're filming tonight. We also designed and painted the Irish snake sigil for Morold's tabard. Rosie did the research and found one that was an actual Irish family crest. I drew the design on the fabric and then Eduardo painted it. We were supposed to start filming at 5pm, but didn't actually start filming at 6:30 tonight. which was good because costumes weren't ready. Patrick got left off the shooting schedule, so at 5:00 Taylor came over with Joe looking for his Patrick costume, because it was still in the shop. At that point Eduardo was still sewing the Irish sigil on Morold's tabard.
We filmed three scenes tonight. We spent a lot of time on Aofe's white fur collar on her cape. The fur looks strange on camera because of the green screen behind it, so we tried hairspraying the fur and brushing it down so that it didn't stick up as much and distort the light. We also draped Aofe's red wig down the sides of the fur collar to give it a more definite outline to separate it from the green screen. The lining of the cape is a shiny taffeta and reflects badly on camera, so we safety-pinned the front of the cape back so we wouldn't see the lining. We also had problems with Tristan's chain mail coiffe falling back off his head during the battle with Morold. I tried safety-pinning the mail to the hood, but it just didn't work. In the end, the chain mail hood was just too big for James' head, so we cut it from the scene. The armholes for his blue tabard showed way more red leather armor than I wanted, so since we're going to have to reshoot the fight with the dragon anyway, because the fx trick with the thrown dagger wasn't working out for Joe, I'll make sure that we get more blue paint on the armholes Monday before we need to do the reshoots. Also, the blue paint was too shiny and we had to dull down the shine with hairspray for the camera. We stopped filming at 9:15.
We filmed three scenes tonight. We spent a lot of time on Aofe's white fur collar on her cape. The fur looks strange on camera because of the green screen behind it, so we tried hairspraying the fur and brushing it down so that it didn't stick up as much and distort the light. We also draped Aofe's red wig down the sides of the fur collar to give it a more definite outline to separate it from the green screen. The lining of the cape is a shiny taffeta and reflects badly on camera, so we safety-pinned the front of the cape back so we wouldn't see the lining. We also had problems with Tristan's chain mail coiffe falling back off his head during the battle with Morold. I tried safety-pinning the mail to the hood, but it just didn't work. In the end, the chain mail hood was just too big for James' head, so we cut it from the scene. The armholes for his blue tabard showed way more red leather armor than I wanted, so since we're going to have to reshoot the fight with the dragon anyway, because the fx trick with the thrown dagger wasn't working out for Joe, I'll make sure that we get more blue paint on the armholes Monday before we need to do the reshoots. Also, the blue paint was too shiny and we had to dull down the shine with hairspray for the camera. We stopped filming at 9:15.
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Sept. 28 Monday: During lab hours the crew painted more of Tristan's red leather armour blue around the armholes. We also mixed the metallic blue paint with matt black so it wouldn't be so shiny on camera. I drew and Rosie and Eduardo painted the Irish guards sigils for their tabards. I finished Isolde's nightgown, fit it on Micah. Taught Micah how to properly put on a wig and how to do her hair underneath the wig so she could pin into it. I let out the darts and center back seams on the blue doublet I made for Servant of Two Masters so that it would fit James for Act 1 scene 6. Tonight we're filming four scenes. We began filming at 5:30 due to Lee our sound man not getting out of class till 5:30. The only last minute adjustments we had tonight was Aofe's wig. She didn't have it on correctly so when she "woke up from her nightmare" it fell off. We had to take a five minute break for me to put it back on her and show her how to do it correctly the next time.
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Sept. 29 Tuesday During lab hours, we finished alterations on Isolde's final gown, and made a new tabard for the green gown she's wearing on the ship from Ireland to Cornwall. I needed to find another costume for Bree to wear in that scene as well. We finally got the Baroness' skirt re-hemmed and we finished sewing the Snake sigils onto the Irish guards tabards.
We were down three crew members tonight. Our SM had foot surgery and our ASM was home nursing him. Our second camera man, Nick Webb, was also out due to his daughter's Sweet 16. We were lucky to have volunteers to come in and sub. Randy ran the camera and did props, while Jaden and Matalyn took over SM and ASM duties. Tonight's lesson was the blue stretch velvet cape I bought for Blancheflor made her actual blue and silver costume look grey on camera, so we couldn't use the cape. Isolde's costume for the ship voyage looked great on camera, but the gold metallic belt was so shiny it only reflected the green screen so we couldn't use it. I substituted a painted gold leather belt instead and that worked just fine. We had to spray the girl's black jazz shoes with hairspray because they were also reflecting the green screen light. The other not so surprising thing was that only the very largest ring in my jewelry stock could be seen on camera and it's so large that it doesn't fit on Ada or Micah's fingers. We had to put a ton of tape around the band for it to stay on the girls' fingers. Fortunately the red satin lining on Isolde's purple gown isn't a problem for the green screen and the lighting.
We were down three crew members tonight. Our SM had foot surgery and our ASM was home nursing him. Our second camera man, Nick Webb, was also out due to his daughter's Sweet 16. We were lucky to have volunteers to come in and sub. Randy ran the camera and did props, while Jaden and Matalyn took over SM and ASM duties. Tonight's lesson was the blue stretch velvet cape I bought for Blancheflor made her actual blue and silver costume look grey on camera, so we couldn't use the cape. Isolde's costume for the ship voyage looked great on camera, but the gold metallic belt was so shiny it only reflected the green screen so we couldn't use it. I substituted a painted gold leather belt instead and that worked just fine. We had to spray the girl's black jazz shoes with hairspray because they were also reflecting the green screen light. The other not so surprising thing was that only the very largest ring in my jewelry stock could be seen on camera and it's so large that it doesn't fit on Ada or Micah's fingers. We had to put a ton of tape around the band for it to stay on the girls' fingers. Fortunately the red satin lining on Isolde's purple gown isn't a problem for the green screen and the lighting.
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Sept. 30 Wednesday During lab hours, I patterned and cut out Isolde's Trial by Iron dance dress and sewed it together. Micah needs to come in for a fitting tomorrow before I set the sleeves in. Rosie put together King Mark's tabard for one of his scenes tonight.
We filmed four more scenes tonight. The first one of Tristan and Isolde in bed together went very well. The second of the Baron and Baroness getting wise to Tristan and Isolde's affair also went well. At that point I excused myself to continue patterning and cutting out the sleeves for Isolde's dress for tomorrow. Rebecca came in after she was finished filming her scene and sewed her nightgown together. I had let the cast and crew know ahead of time that if they needed me to come over to fix something just to text me, but the other two scenes were the same people in mostly the same costumes, so they didn't. Only King Mark and changed costumes, Taylor changed characters so that involved a change of costume but it was back into the same one he wore last night so it was fine.
We filmed four more scenes tonight. The first one of Tristan and Isolde in bed together went very well. The second of the Baron and Baroness getting wise to Tristan and Isolde's affair also went well. At that point I excused myself to continue patterning and cutting out the sleeves for Isolde's dress for tomorrow. Rebecca came in after she was finished filming her scene and sewed her nightgown together. I had let the cast and crew know ahead of time that if they needed me to come over to fix something just to text me, but the other two scenes were the same people in mostly the same costumes, so they didn't. Only King Mark and changed costumes, Taylor changed characters so that involved a change of costume but it was back into the same one he wore last night so it was fine.
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Oct. 1 Thursday
The most important thing I had to do during lab hours was finish Anna's dress for the English dancing scene and Isolde's dress for the Trial by Red Hot Iron scene. I'd been working on Anna's dress all week. All I had to do to finish was finish sewing the bias tape in the waistband and then run the elastic through. Anna came in for her fitting and then stayed to help. She hemmed her sleeves and the bottom of the skirt. Micah came in for her fitting on the purple dress. It fit really nicely, then all I had to do to finish was sew the sleeves together, put them in, then make piping to finish off the neckline. I wasn't done with the two dresses by 4:30 when we started filming so I had to keep sewing and missed the wedding scene filming. Both dresses got finished just in time for their scenes that night. I put a belt on Isolde's dress and it looked really nice, but the whole outfit could have used a tabard over it. If she weren't having to do an intricate dance while holding a "red hot iron bar" I would have made one. I stuck around to watch the rest of the filming and the trial by red hot iron scene went really well.
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Oct. 2 Friday
This was our first day of nine hours of filming. We started filming at noon, so I didn't have the normal three hours of lab hours and students to help me that I normally do. NIck Webb even cancelled his script analysis class so that we could film all afternoon, Fortunately Rosie came in to help and stayed all night. I had to make pants and a doublet for Tristan's Irish dancing scene. We were filming the Archbishop scene and we had to let down the hem of the white gown for that scene because the last person who wore it was Josh Purvis in Doubt and he was much shorter than Garland. So we quickly let the hem out and ironed it nice and flat. We also had to let the hem out of Isolde's dress about three inches and then rehem it. I found some really pretty Celtic trim to put on Tristan's doublet so I spent a lot of time hand sewing that one while watching the filming.
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Oct. 3 Saturday
Today was our last nine hour day of shooting. All I had to do was finish the alterations on Isolde's Irish court dress and put the cuffs on Tristan's sleeves. Since the court dancing scene was going to be filmed last, I decided to make new pants for both Jay and John's characters for the dance. Rosie came in to help and we finished the last stitch at 3pm. When I got back from our dinner break at 4:30 I was apprised of the fact that both the Irish guards tabards were blending in to the green screen floor. Emergency sewing was required and Rebecca helped me make two new tabards out of black fabric. We took the Irish snake sigils off the old tabards and put them on the new black ones that we pumped out in half an hour. The other green screen problem was that the fabric I picked for Tristan's sleeves were also blending into the floor, even though they had a dark green pattern on them with gold embroidery, they still disappeared on camera. So I had to quickly rip the sleeves off and give him another shirt. Joe filmed some second unit stuff for the montage of Tristan and Isolde falling in love to give me more time to finish the new black tabards. The court dancing scenes were filmed with no problems after that. The next problem was with Tristan's battle wound from his fight with Morrell. We filmed him getting rescued by the Irish village girls already in which he had taken off his armor so as to not be discovered to be the one who killed the Queen's brother. So we put him in his English clothes, but no one thought to give him a visible wound last week So tonight we are filming when the Irish village girls bring him to the Queen to heal from the poisoned wound. So instead of ripping up his shirt and making him bloody, we wrapped his wounded arm in a bandage with red paint on it, as if the village girls had dressed his wound on the way to the Queen. This is the only day that we've had the Irish King on set so it was the first time I'd seen his costume o stage. Fortunately it looks great on camera even though it's very green, so I didn't have to change anything.
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Behind the Scenes: The making of Tristan and ISolde
Last Shot
Waco stages hold fall offerings in-person and online
Carl Hoover November 4, 2020
McLennan Theatre's production of the medieval love story "Tristan and Isolde," with James Ivy as Tristan and Micah Sandusky as Isolde, goes online Thursday through Saturday on YouTube. Joseph Taylor photo.
McLennan Theatre’s production of the medieval love story “Tristan and Isolde” goes online for viewers this weekend. Director Joseph Taylor and co-writer Nick Webb adapted the tragic 12th century tale about Cornish knight Tristan (James Ivy) and Irish princess Isolde (Micah Sandusky), whose love is tried by a love potion gone awry, marriage to others, royal jealousies and fatal mistakes. “It’s kind of like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ without all the family fighting,” Taylor explained. “It’s a true fairy tale . . . It just ends tragically.”
The 17-person production was filmed in front of green screens with digital backgrounds added in post-production. COVID-19 restrictions forced rehearsals via Zoom and limited scenes with multiple actors, those filmed only after actors passed temperature checks and symptom screenings. And kissing? Well, the art of theater and quick cuts go a long way in suggesting.
The project required extra computing power to handle the digital processing and editing, and a delay in equipment arrival pushed its viewing from mid-October to this weekend. Those wishing to see the final production of “Tristan and Isolde” can find it on YouTube Thursday through Saturday, using the keywords “McLennan Theatre” and “Tristan and Isolde.”
McLennan Theatre’s production of the medieval love story “Tristan and Isolde” goes online for viewers this weekend. Director Joseph Taylor and co-writer Nick Webb adapted the tragic 12th century tale about Cornish knight Tristan (James Ivy) and Irish princess Isolde (Micah Sandusky), whose love is tried by a love potion gone awry, marriage to others, royal jealousies and fatal mistakes. “It’s kind of like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ without all the family fighting,” Taylor explained. “It’s a true fairy tale . . . It just ends tragically.”
The 17-person production was filmed in front of green screens with digital backgrounds added in post-production. COVID-19 restrictions forced rehearsals via Zoom and limited scenes with multiple actors, those filmed only after actors passed temperature checks and symptom screenings. And kissing? Well, the art of theater and quick cuts go a long way in suggesting.
The project required extra computing power to handle the digital processing and editing, and a delay in equipment arrival pushed its viewing from mid-October to this weekend. Those wishing to see the final production of “Tristan and Isolde” can find it on YouTube Thursday through Saturday, using the keywords “McLennan Theatre” and “Tristan and Isolde.”