Long Time No Post

Has it really been two months since I posted in here? As of my last update, I was entering into a TA-ship at my former university program, and - if I remember correctly - looking for a second contract to fill in some hours in the week. That second contract turned out to be Head of Wardrobe for the local Nutcracker, and I've been hopping like a crazed jackrabbit on uppers ever since.

School's out for the term now, so my TA job is all grading and assignment marking for the two profs I'm working for (historical costume - read 'corsets and underwear' - and tailoring). And Nutcracker - well, Nutcracker is teching this week, so today is the first of four very. long. days. We preview tomorrow night and open on Friday.

This Nutcracker is slightly different than the traditional Christmas-party-and-Drosslemeyer choreography you're probably used to. This one has been choreographed for a Young Company of female dancers, with the exception of the Nutcracker Prince himself, one of the puppeters, and a janitor character named Mr. Nuss.

Set in a girls' school over the Christmas break, this version of the classic gives this city's younger dancers (apprentices - 9 & 10 years old, Company members tend to be 13 - 19) a chance to show their stuff. They dance with six adult professional dancers, work with pro coreographers, tech crews and wardrobe, and get a taste of what it's really like to be in a performing company on a large scale. And these kids? Are GOOD. Really good. Good enough that I'm a little wistful about never taking dance as a child, though my forays into skating were enough to prove that I have no athletic talents of my own whatsoever.

Working with teens and kids can come with its own host of problems, but either we hit a critical mass with this crowd or they're better trained than most. The bulk of them are far more professional than their ages would imply, and some of them - our little Rag Doll for instance, and a solid handful of the senior company members - are going to be stars someday.

So I've been having a great time, though I've been left with little time for myself, and once you add some real life issues on top of all that (moving house, for instance), I hope you can forgive my lapse in posting. If all goes well, I should have some Nut photos for you by the end of the week.

Coming Full Circle

I find myself back where I started this blog, a year later. Now, instead of taking my seat amongst fellow students in the classroom, I'm up at the front. Not teaching - that's a job for a prof with a masters' degree at least - but TAing two of the classes that I took during my tenure as a Costume Studies diploma student. It's an interesting psychological jump, thinking of myself as staff and no longer a student, hanging out in the office instead of the lunchroom. But I'm also loving the freedom of learning and teaching in this environment, and not having to worry about turning in assignments to be graded! No, now I'm the one who holds the reins of power! (When the profs allow it, of course...)

The TA position only takes up about 12 hours a week right now, though there'll be more when it comes time to do some serious grading. To fill in the rest of the work hours, I've just signed a contract to work as wardrobe supervisor for the local production of The Nutcracker. This is going to be slightly different again from anything I've done before; the production is the same as it's been for the last 15 years, so I'll be fitting and altering, repairing and rebuilding the old costumes. Amusingly enough, one of the profs I'm working for at the school was one of the original dressers for Nutcracker when she was a student and the show was in its early years.

The more things change, and so on...

So what're the themes for the blog this fall? Crazy Student Tricks and ballet bureaucracy! I'll do my level best to get back into a habit of regular posting, now that I have something interesting to talk about again!

Hobbitses!

More Hobbit photos behind the cut! We did the photo call today, and I followed around behind the photographer for a bit. She got more of the basics than I did, and I'll be spamming this thing with pictures once I get the disc of pictures from her.


















Also got a great review in the local paper - The Casket - this week. I have to hunt down a copy to transcribe, since it looks like articles aren't available online.

Hobbit Has Opened!

Hobbit opened tonight, and it went brilliantly. The kids really pulled it off, and the show was fantastic. There was only one major tech problem - Bombur's rope didn't release from the tree (got caught on something) - and one major costume problem (one of the trolls wore his torso backwards) - and only someone who worked on the show would really have noticed either. SO happy! I get my life back!

I still have work to do up here as head of wardrobe, now that my design stuff is done. Meeting tomorrow at 1, learning the tracking for Good Things that afternoon. That kind of stuff. Mom and Rich are up here right now, so that's also really, really nice.

I took a few snapshots backstage, though we're not doing the scheduled photo call until next week sometime. There was no time to get any really good costume shots today, but I'll get the official ones from Cara once she takes them.



Phil Cooper, our Gandalf, hanging out in wardrobe running his lines.



Carl Miller, our Bilbo, showing off the flowers his mom sent him before opening. Please to be noting prostethic ears and hairy feet.





Azog, Great Goblin!



Brighid, the dresser, doing the hair of Sarah, the Voice of Smaug (also, wood elf & background goblin). Unbearded Fili (yellow) is visible beside, parts of Thorin (red) and Balin (blue) visible in foreground.



Amy and Amelia, who have a huge number of minor roles in the show. Here as two of Elrond's personal guards.



Prince Elrond Halfelven, lord of the High Elves (hanging out with one of the puppeteers and Azog in the change room)



Jeanna (Elven queen) hanging out with one of the elf guards afterwards, still with her ears on.



Geordie, who plays Prince Elrond and Bard the Bowman, with his bagpipes at the afterparty.

More to come.

Making Lists

Packages I've received so far this week:

1. Gym slippers to be used for Hobbit feet
2. Four rolls of boning (2 x spring steel, 2 x rigelene plastic crap) to make trolls

Packages that will be arriving for me on Monday:

1. A wig and two sets of short elf ear tips
2. Four sets of long elf ear tips
3. Five wigs and a wig-and-beard set

Things to do on the show this weekend:

1. Finish assembling and paint two of three troll exoskeletons
2. Glue hair on Hobbit feet
3. Decorate vambraces for Laketown bowmen
4. Assemble five of six Ringwraiths
5. Makeup test for Gollum
6. Elastic on Galadriel's headpiece
7. Brush out and braid Elrond's wig

Things I love:

1. This job

Things I hate:

1. Weekend? What weekend?

This Summer's Reviews (so far!)

Reviews of the four plays which we've opened so far! I worked as Head of Wardrobe on the mainstage plays, and designed Bluenose Billy. No reviews yet for Automatic Pilot or Hobbit, of course, since both open next week.

Educating Rita (Chronicle Herald)

Woman in Black (Chronicle Herald - site appears to have eaten this article?)

Good Things (Chronicle Herald)

Bluenose Billy's Magical Button Box (Chronicle Herald, same problem as the Woman in Black review when I try to load it)

The director of Hobbit discussing the process, in the Daily News

The Story Continues!

Either I've been given a reprieve on the planned outage, or I miscalculated the time difference between here and the pacific zone! Given that I can still get in here, here are today's photos from wardrobe. I didn't have time to pose them all pretty-like, but you get the gist of it. I can't wait to have dress rehearsal mug shots to show off, except that it would mean that I'd need to be done in order to get them. [quakes] We've still got a long way to go.

Thorin Oakenshield, the tunic that you saw being laid out for cutting in my last post! With that, there's a swordbelt, a travel bag, black pants and solid walking shoes. I'm still debating whether to add a coif or not.

Gandalf the Grey, of course! The robe was a donation, the hat came from a box in the back of the theatre, and the cloak is new. He's also got grey wig and a red and gold ring, which you can make out looped over the top of his hanger. Gandalf is being played by one of the few older members of the cast, the chief surgeon of our local hospital. Keep your fingers crossed that no complicated surgeries come in which he's on stage. Gandalf getting a page would be a bit much.


Azog, Great Goblin, has an arming jacket and a pair of gauntlets that hould work pretty well. I'm still dithering on shin guards, but I'm heavily leaning towards doing them at the moment. Just not until the trolls are done.
Azog's goblin hordes will be wearing hoods and burlap tunics that are sprayed down to a creepier colour. They look pretty garish in daylight, but under the mood lighting of the loney mountains, it's pretty effective.

Bilbo's vest. That's a from-scratch build, and looks like utter crap in this picture. it's lined with blue, and has big-ass pockets on the front, and is all around gorgeous. I think our actor will end up demolishing it in the first runthrough. He's got knee pants with that, fake feet and ear prosthetics.

The houppelande for Bard the Bowman, to be worn with a poofy shirt, belt, bracers, black pants and a bunch of rugged and manly jewelery. The actor is also playing:


Elrond Halfelven, in vest, robe, and a 30-inch blonde wig that makes him look more like Haldir than Elrond, but this guy's complexion is so perfectly blonde that anything darker makes him look violently ill. Also, he gets ears.

Your basic wood-elf. Galadriel's got a troop of these guys backing her up, to the tunics are simple and easy to cut and stitch. We have a three-week build, after all, and no time to waste on too complex background characters. They're not getting ears (10 sets would be way overbudget), but they are getting hair extensions and fun things. One of my volunteers is a hairdresser who's promised to give my elves a tutorial on High Fantasy hair, which I'm going to sit in on myself.


Ringwraith, in repose. The director cast six kids about four and a half feet high as our puppeteers, and then asked for seven foot tall Ringwraiths. I'm pleased with the way these are working out; the kids stand inside (the cloth is transluscent from whatever side light isn't shining on, so the puppeteers can see out as long as they're partly lit, and the audience can't see in) and walk with the poles. There will be a mechanism inside to partially articulate the sleeves, the head and shoulders need to be padded out, and the robes themselves need a lot more breakdown/rags added, but overall they work quite well.

And speaking of overcomplicated... the director has a very specific image in his mind of what his trolls need to look like, and it involves a Lion King-esque "exoskeleton" for the puppeteers inside to work. Now I've never done anything quite like this before, so it's very much a matter of hit and miss. Here's the exoskeleton as it's being built. I'm pleased with the shape that I ended up with in the torso, but the arms desperately need the shoulder rig (which I don't have yet) to keep them in shape. It will all be spraypainted green.





And from the "not my department, but pretty damn cool" files, here's a shot of the set as it was about two hours ago. You can see one of the crew up on the ladder working on the lighting rig. The lighting's bad in the photo, but you can see the rock faces and scrims that will be creating our Middle Earth.

One of the scrims that will be used for Mirkwood Forest. I absolutly love this tech crew; the show is going to rock.

Hobbit Underway!

I've had some requests for photos of the Hobbit build, so here's what I've got! the first set was from move-in day, back at the end of July; the last set are from today, exactly a week before dress rehearsal. Most of the main build is done at this point; the only major piece missing is the Troll exoskeletons, which I'm working on. After that it's fabric paint, accessorizing, and breakdown.

As always, click on the pic to get a bigger (800 x 600) version of same.


This is the space we've been given for Hobbit - an old dressing room in the basement of an even older church. The stage door is just behind where I stood to take this photo, which is really handy when we need to grab a kid for something during their break times. it's a good thing none of them belong to Equity, or we'd have used up our allotted fitting times a long time ago!



The other half of the space. Within about ten minutes of this picture being taken, every surface was covered in bolts of fabric, stacks of thread spools, and rolls of trim. It's such a brief breath of potential.

I was able to pull a few things from the Festival's wardrobe storage that could be used for the show - unfortunately, nowhere near enough. Apparently, we were lucky enough some years ago to receive a donation from a member of the SCA, who gave away some of her older gowns and tunics. They're now going to be clothing Elrond, Galadriel, Bombur, Balin and Gandalf, so I'm thrilled!


And we're off. Thorin Oakenshield is the only one in the play wearing true crimson, as befits a royal King Beneath the Mountain. (yes, I know the colours of their tunics were specific in the book. I may be a nerd, but I'm not a purist, and this works with our Thorin.)

This is my stitcher and right hand gal, Laura, working last week. The rack is finally starting to fill, and we've had - at that point - about half of the fittings that we needed to get through.

More, mostly from today, later - I've got a flashing warning about a Blogger outage starting in 15 minutes, and the rest of the photos need to be rotated and resaved.

Eight Days to Go

Where have I been? I've been building The Hobbit. That means, I've been working 14-hour days, with lunch and dinner breaks for frozen meals...

I have a week left before the tech dress to finish building the Hobbit, two high school kids and one stressed-out student actor as hired hands, a workshop in the basement of a mold and dust-filled church, a budget of under $1000 Canadian, 22 actors, and a director who keeps adding background characters to scenes.

["So now we have *six* wood elves in this sequence instead of two, and sixteen goblins in the Azog scene instead of seven. And can the One Ring be both big and small at exactly the same time?"]

But yesterday I got the last of the Ringwraiths and High Elves cut, serged, and stitched together, which means that except for the trolls ["they need to be bigger than the actors inside of them - like great mechanical exoskeletons that give the impression of immensity... can we do that, wardrobelady? Of course we can."] every costume has been cut out and prepped, if not sewn and fitted. We are over the hump.

Now to get showered, dressed, and go spraypaint some goblin hoods...