Bringing out the murderous little old lady in me

Arsenic and Old Lace

When I contacted the director at the local private high school, to see if he needed any help with the show this year, I learned that he would be moving just before performances, as his wife had found a new job out of state. The father of one of the students had already stepped in, so that the play could go through to performances, but he had little theatrical experience, aside from set building, so he welcomed me with open arms.

The division of labor quickly settled thus: He directed the action and headed set construction. He worked on programs and some advertising. I covered costumes, makeup, painting the set, props, cast t-shirts, additional advertising, and rounding up extras for some curtain-call cameos.

It was a really fun group of kids to work with, ranging from 8th to 12th grades. They were lively and spirited. It could have been an awkward and difficult situation, taking over for another director in the midst of the rehearsal process, but it all went quite smoothly.

The original director had planned on doing the whole show, sets, costumes, etc, in black and white. The new director decided he would prefer to use sepia tones. From there, we moved forward, buying things in deep and/or dull reds, and neutrals. (Would that we had money to buy things in the colors we really wanted!) In the end, if it didn't exactly look like a sepia tone photograph, it still gave off an old-fashioned feel, which was really the point all along.

For the most part, I hit up second hand shops to clothe the cast. I was kind of at the mercy of our local shops as to styles and colors, but over all the look came together smoothly. There were a few costume we knew from the outset would need to be rented. For instance, the script called for 3 police officers, and the director had added 2 more. There wasn't much chance of us finding 5 matching uniforms in the right sizes second hand. We also rented the costuming for Teddy, the lead character's nutty brother who believed himself to be Teddy Roosevelt. We rented a tails-tux, and a jungle explorer costume for him.

After some looking, I decided to construct a costume for our "leading lady." I contacted a local woman who had done some sewing for Shakespeare Players in the past, and she took on the project, and knocked it out of the ballpark, so to speak. We decided that the flirty girl next door would be a great spot to add some stronger red, and put her in a slinky little cranberry-colored satin cocktail dress. Then we added a sharp little blazer with pearl beadwork and lace, and a beige trench with satin accents.

My biggest project for this show, though was the wallpaper. The director was adamant that the walls not be a plain color, but we soon discovered that any wallpaper we could find had a prohibitive price tag. So I got out my stencil I'd made for "Meet Me in St. Louis" and went to town. I painted the set a base coat of a tera cotta burgundy tone, and then added some white to that for the stencil color. It gave a perfectly old fashioned old lady-ish feel.

I had originally been assured that I would have all the help I needed for the stenciling, and for the first day or two, that seemed to be the case. But as time wore on, my helpers wore out. By performances, I had been seen painting in the auditoreum past 2am on a number of occasions. One night I stumbled into bed at 5. But it was worth it. Every night, I heard exclamations about the beauty of the "wallpaper."

Another fun challenge this show presented was that most of the characters needed to be aged. I got lots of opportunity to brush up on my aging makeup techniques, as well as some contouring to make our leading couple just as good-looking as possible, and something of a crash course in Asian faces, something I had almost no experience with prior. Until you've worked on facial features of another race, there's really no way to know how different we all truly are.

Performances came off beautifully, with only occasional ad-libbing, and none such that the audience recognized it. We did have a little fun with the script, switching a deceased character's church affiliation to the prevailing local denomination. The line, "he's really quite good looking, considering he's a Wesleyan" got gales of laughter every night. Other favorites were when one of the police officers, a pretty blue eyed girl with soft golden curls, throws the unconscious bad guy over her shoulder and carries him off-stage. The audience also really enjoyed the curtain-call cameos. In the script, it's suggested that the old ladies' victims come trouping out of the cellar, where they've been buried, walk across stage morosely, and exit. Each night, it took them just a minute to figure out who these elderly gents were, doing a curtain call, though they hadn't been onstage during the performance. Of course, it was even funnier that all of our "dead guys" were teachers at the school and fathers of our actors.

This show really confirmed for me that I am pursuing the field I should. While certain aspects of the show were frustrating, I realized that it's my passion. I also had a chance to think about what I might do in a show where the budget was a little more generous. Rather that pulling off an entire show (rights, scripts, sets, costumes, advertising, etc, etc, etc) for $1500, there are shows that drop $1500 on one special effect, or on costuming for one character. I know I'm not likely to have that kind of money to throw around right away, but it's still fun to imagine what I might get to do one day.

Photography in this entry by Ron Bradbury.

The Fairies

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The fairies were a lively, colorful bunch. I opted to put them in cool colors and neutrals, to provide a unified look, but still allow for variation. With heavy emphasis on the blues, we also included greens and purples, and a bit of gray, ivory and gold.

For the queen of the fairies, Titania, we cast a curvy statuesque young lady with elocution and presence to spare. We considered her and another actress for both the role of Titania and that of Hippolyta. When the other actress requested a small role, the decision was very easy, and both delivered their roles stellarly.

We decided that rather than encumber Titania with lots of details and frills, we would embrace her near-austerity, and work with one piece of fabric and her natural assets to create a uniquely ethereal look. A piece of teal-blue crimped material with a velvety sheen cascaded from her neckline to a puddle on the floor, its color, texture, and movement giving a definite aquatic impression. It draped and moved beautifully and afforded her a sensuality and a regal presence that pleased us tremendously.

We added tulle in a variety of light colors as a train and a furry-textured striped material as a shoulder strap, incorporating all the fairies' colors in the gown of the queen. I made a tiara of blue and green beads and gold wire to add another layer to her aquatic inspired look, and a delicate choker in tiny seed beads of blues, greens, and gold to add hints of sparkle.

With the fairy chorus, we were going for a very light-hearted, childlike ensemble, and encouraged them to play simple games like hula-hoop, pat-a-cake, paper-rock-scissors, tag, monkey-in-the-middle, and jump-rope. We encouraged giggling at any moment that wasn't specifically serious, and achieved the silly fickle-whimmed affect we were after.

In the script, Titania is given four attendants: Mustardseed, Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Moth. We didn't challenge the immediate assumptions much. Mustardseed wore gold. She played her character with an innocence and a joyfulness that reached from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Cobweb got gray and black, with bits of lace trim trailing from her arms to her bodice. She had the most dynamic makeup, with a cobweb painted on her cheek and bold green eyeliner. She lurked in corners and hung from elevated set pieces, exactly as a Cobweb ought. For Peaseblossom, we opted to focus on the "Pea" rather than the "blossom" and put her in lime green (which worked well- it's the actress's favorite color) with some circular motifs in the bodice and the hair. She had a natural enthusiasm tempered by sarcastic wit that read at a distance, and she played so sweetly with our changeling boy. Moth wore ivory with small accents of red. Her costume was very symmetrical and included large swooping pieces of beige lace draping below her arms. She developed her character beautifully, holding poses for a period of time before quick flighty movements brought her to a new pose.

We thought it seemed unlikely that Titania would assign all of her fairies to attend on Bottom, and introduced four more female fairies, and encouraged them to come up with their own names and personalities. Jay and Skylar were our "twins." At auditions we watched for a pair of girls with similar voices and builds who could split the opening scene with Puck, with one's voice fading and the other's voice building in the midst of a line. They learned to move in ways that would mirror, compliment, or balance one another. Their robins-egg blue costumes, including feathers in their hair, cemented their twinship in case anyone had missed it. Periwinkle was played by a delightful pre-teen whose family is heavily involved in the local town theatre. I was so pleased to bring her in and see her work with the other girls as she found her character: soft and sweet, like her namesake flower. Raspberry wore a vibrant hues in the berry-into-plum range and brought an sweet-tart impish quality to the group. When we needed a fairy laugh, Raspberry delivered, providing a range anywhere between a light giggle to something nearing a cackle.

When it came time for the lullaby, we asked if any of the fairy-ladies would be comfortable with a solo, and Raspberry volunteered. We conferred with her, and she conferred with a music major friend of hers to compose a suitably haunting and lovely melody to match the rather unusual lyrics Shakespeare penned. She sang the verses as a solo, and taught the chorus to the rest of the fairies. As they finished singing each night, the final note lingered over the audience, casting a very real kind of magic that only music can.

For all the lady-fairies' costumes, we went with a very organic process. I chose almost entirely knit materials, so that we could leave all their garments unhemmed for a raw natural look without having to contend with overwhelming fraying. The knit materials also meant that the costumes didn't have to fit closely and could drape and flow and flutter as they moved. Three of the actresses wanted to make their own costumes, and I encouraged them to, as I knew it would relieve the seamstresses' work load, but even better, allow those actresses to make the character truly their own from start to finish. I discussed shapes and lines with them, and gave them some sketches and a stack of fabrics and let them play. To say I was pleased with their products would be something of an understatement. For the other five fairies and Titania, I set up one-on-one-on-one costuming sessions, where an actress and I went to a seamstress's home and discussed and draped until we found shapes we were all comfortable with. The seamstress safety-pinned things in place and took notes, and sewed them up in the day or two following the meeting, so as to have a clean workspace when the next costume consultation came along. It was an unusual but very tactile and fun process.
For the changeling boy, we needed to find a careful balance. He needed to be young enough to have an immediate "cute factor" but old enough to know what was going on and not need his hand held every second of the process. Again I brought in a contact from the town theatre, the eight-year-old brother of our Periwinkle actress. As the changeling is the son of an Indian follower of Titania's, we decided to put the changeling boy in a loosely South-Asian- inspired outfit, with a turban, blue foundation and heavy eyeliner. He definitely had the cute factor under control and delivered a charming and detailed performance.

As with his the fairy queen, we thought that Oberon would likely have more attendants than just the one (Puck) that is mentioned in the script. We added Bower (after the deep blue bower bird who collects shiny prizes to woo mates) In our show, Bower lured Mustardseed away for a romantic tryst, just moments after she promised to "stand sentinel" over Titania's sleep. Bower also helped Puck in the confusion and misdirection of the lovers as they stumble through the dark woods in the night. With Puck on one side of the stage and Bower on the other, both calling to the lovers, it is little wonder the befuddled humans gave up the chase.

The other male fairy we added was Verde, an energetic young man of small stature in vibrant tropical greens. We had fun adding moments where Puck could dump some of his less pleasant tasks on Verde. In the scene where Oberon sends Puck to fetch the magical flower, Verde is leaning against a rock munching an apple. Puck promises to "put a girdle 'round about the earth in forty minutes" and then sends Verde after the flower and promptly starts to eat Verde's apple. When Verde returns triumphant, and starts towards Oberon, Puck intercepts him, takes the flowers, returns the clean-picked apple core, and declares exultantly (around a mouthful of apple) that he has done his master's bidding. The male fairies added such a mischievous, deviant quality to the show, as they watched the lovers' quarrel, bickered amongst themselves, and taunted the female fairies.

With the male fairies, we wanted costuming that seemed a bit more human than their female counterparts so we put them in shirts and pants with a vest or jacket. Oberon, the "king of shadows," wore charcoal gray and navy in shades that shimmered and blended. A floor-length vest/cloak/thing swept behind him dramatically. I made a simple circlet in black, gray, silver, gold, and bronze beads and wires to affect a casual kingliness. The reason I opted for such a casual, simple look for Oberon is simple: his voice. Both scratchy and resonant, throaty and authoritative, his voice doesn't make sense in any sort of quantitative way. But the second we heard him speak at auditions, we knew he would rock the part. Add to that a truly unique face, a casual but confident way of moving, and good instincts for interaction, he was a perfect king of the fairies. I knew that with such a strong voice and presence, to give him an ornate or commanding costume would make him totally overwhelming.

All of the actors cast as male fairies had dark hair and tended towards shaggy hair and scruffy beards, both of which we encouraged. By encouraged, I mean that I forbade them to cut their hair or shave.

One notable exception to the scruffy beards of the male fairies was the young lady we cast to play Puck. Of the many capable audtioners, there really wasn't any question who ought to get the role. Her voice was high and clear. Her energy filled whatever room she was in. Her face was unlike any face I'd ever seen- a lovely mix of big feminine eyes and strong angular jaw. Add a willingness to play with short hair styles and extreme hair colors, and we had Puck. As we developed the look for Puck, we came to a few basic decisions. We tried her in the female fairy makeup, but didn't love it. We tried a hybrid of the female fairies' "albino" look and the male fairies' "fox" look, but that didn't work either. In the end, we did essentially the same "fox" look as we did on Oberon and his other followers. To spice it up though, the decision was made to dye her hair the color of a fluorescent tomato. We tied this in throughout by having the lights turn red, or at least pinkish, whenever Puck's magical mischief was afoot. And let me just say that bright red hair under bright red lights shines almost as brightly as the setting sun. As for Puck's actual costuming, I did up over a dozen sketches, but in the end, my co-director and I decided that we liked the idea of Puck almost blending in with the humans, or at least blending as much as a fluorescent-haired, fox faced fairy can. We put her in plaid trousers, a pinstriped shirt, a black jacket, and bare feet. The thought was that by almost blending in with the humans, she could "disappear" into a crowd without actually using magic to disappear. People see what they want to see.

Our goal with the two fairy groups was to be "equal but opposite." The females traveled in a large pack; the males as a small group of best friends. The girls retained a sense of formality in their court through more elegant clothing, social structure, and dialogue; the boys were more comfortable in the woods, very casual in garb, pose, and conversation. The ladies were light; the guys were dark. When they were in their two separate camps, there needed to be clear delineation, but when they came together at the end, they had to balance each other and fit together.

The fairies added a delightful aspect to the production. In some versions of "Midsummer," the fairies can feel weighed down or forced into some sort of ungainly characterization. By encouraging the actors to find their own characters, and to become real-life friends offstage, we achieved a carefree, exuberant, and decidedly supernatural ensemble. I knew from the start that the fairies would be the most wide-open and freeing part of the costuming. I had no idea that they would also be the most challenging aspect of the show to design and execute. In the end, I am beyond proud of how the fairies came out.



Photography in this entry by James Ratchford, Zachary Garber, and Molly Wilson

Beastmaster 3.0

A new generation of Beasts

I have two handsome young nephews who come from out of state to spend chunks of time here with us periodically. One day I pulled them away from their Thomas the Tank Engine, I got out the Beast mask, and we had a fun little game/photoshoot. We all took turns wearing the mask and roaring at one another, even if the mask was quite sloppy on their smaller heads. It was a fun way to spend part of the afternoon, and fun photos like the one above will always be cherished for the warm memories they bring back.

The "Other" Rich Folk

A Midsummer Night's Dream

While the lovers carried a third of the show, the other upper-class humans didn't have a lot of lines. Despite their lack of stage time, they were prominent members of society, and their roles were important to the plot. It was paramount that they have presence and be able to immediately convey who they were as individuals and as a class.

For Lord Theseus ("All hail! the LORD!" or at least, that's what he wanted us to believe) we found a sophomore who beautifully carried off the maturity, effortlessness, and confidence someone of his station should have. There was something stern, yet casual, about his bearing that made it clear this man was every bit as comfortable in the courtroom as he was in the forest with his hunting hounds.

In Egeus, we needed an angry, disapproving father, but we also wanted him to be a sympathetic character. We called on a group regular who had played Shylocke in "The Merchant of Venice" and MacDuff in "MacBeth" to bring the same sort of weight to the role.

Hipployta was an interesting role to cast. We found two actresses who seemed mature beyond their years, and as luck would have it, this show has a queen of the fairies and a queen of the humans. To make our jobs even easier, one requested a smaller role, so we plugged her in as Hippolyta, and she delivered with timeless charm, poise, and an undeniable queenliness.

For Philostrate, we could have put just about anybody in and they would have done fine. We didn't have to settle for just anybody. There was a group regular who had a certain elegance and class in her bearing, mixed with a quiet warmth that made her perfect for the role.

When it came time for costuming, we put both of the guys in borrowed tuxes, and called them done. When our Theseus brought in a gray jacket he thought might be fitting for the hunt scene towards the end, I told him go for it. (Who am I to disagree with The LORD?)

For Hippolyta, we followed the same formula as Hermia's peach dress. Table cloths and curtains, a basic dress pattern and some creativity, a shawl swapping out for a suit coat, and we had a queen on our hands.

Philostrate was another easy costuming project, as she wore the same size as my co-director's mother, who is heavily into theatre and historical reenactments. Philostrate may be the most historically accurate character of the show.

We also wanted to add a few servants to Theseus' house. Three young ladies came along who enthusiastically took on the challenge of bringing silent characters to life. At performance time there was no question who Hippolyta was conferring with: the temperamental wedding planner, the surly mistress of kitchens, and the lowly peon, torn between obeying the higher level servants.

All of the rich human characters worked together flawlessly to establish a mood, a superiority, and a sturdiness which allowed the mechanicals, and especially the fairies, their flamboyance. While never lacking in humor or intensity, they were the solid base which made the rest of the show sing. The fact that most of their scenes took place in front of a black curtain not only allowed, but commanded, their performances to shine. Their well established characters, strong expressions, and clarity of emotion drew the audience in and made them easy to identify with.

Photography in this entry by James Ratchfor, Zachary Garber, and Molly Wilson

The Lovers

A Midsummer Night's Dream

When it came time to cast the humans, we were faced with a number of tough choices. With the four lovers, there was a particular challenge in that we needed not only chemistry within the couples, but we needed all four to be really strong and compatible with any of the other four. During various points in the show, just about any pairing in the group are close friends, and at other times, enemies. Both guys start out pursuing Hermia, but later spend time chasing Helena and shirking Hermia. In the beginning, the girls are best friends, but later, have a huge argument. We had an easy starting point: two of the group regulars were a married couple, and while we did consider other options, none of them had chemistry as good as theirs. So then it was a simpler matter to find the two more to make it work. At the end of casting, we had a perfect quartet. Where one was maybe weaker, another had strength. They balanced each other remarkably well.

Then one of our guys was faced with a scheduling conflict mandated by his major, and we were left with about a month to find a new guy, bring him in, teach him the lines, hope the chemistry still clicked, and put on a show. It took a few attempts, but we finally found him. He hadn't done a lot of acting before and was new to the group, but the first time we saw him read with the other three, we knew he was right. He wasn't the same as the guy who had left, but he brought his own strengths, his own spin on things, and the other three did a great job adjusting to bring him in flawlessly.

When it came to costuming, we had not only our Victorian-inspired era to guide us, but also several clues based on the characters, to guide us. For the girls, it was important that they be equal but opposite. They had grown up together, were presumably of similar social status, and would be exposed to the same fashions of the day. However, we gather that Helena is less flirty, more of a tomboy, and less pursued by the boys than Hermia. To that end, we put Hermia in a peach dress covered in white lace and ruffles and Helena in a more streamlined blue dress, with black trim, and only a little bit of lace.

For the guys, we just raided closets and second hand stores, finding suits for the main scenes. In the final scene, the wedding, they needed tuxes, so we just called up guys from the college choir and asked if we might borrow theirs. This was by far the simplest costuming of the show.

Helena's dress was an existing garment one of the other actresses owned. It didn't fit our Helena, but I was determined to make it work. I added a white blouse and black underskirt to give it a good foundation. I brought in the side seams, and added in the black lace trims and black facings. I did everything with large stitches that would be easy to remove at the end of the production to return the dress in its original condition.

Hermia's was quite another matter. Not only did we construct her dress from scratch, but we had an added challenge in that our actress was five months pregnant by the time performances came around. She told us at auditions, so we asked her to consult with her doctor. He said the activity of the role would be fine, and that she wouldn't be showing too terribly much. He was wrong. While she stayed perfectly healthy, and their baby girl is gorgeous and healthy, she was definitely a little rounder during performances than we had originally expected. We covered the bodice of her dress in frills and lace, including some hourglass shaped lines, coming to a point in the middle of her belly, serving to disguise her condition and slim her. It was successful. When people saw her out of costume in the days surrounding performances, they were startled to realize that actress as big as she had gotten could carry off a romantic lead so well.

Whether it was bickering or loving, shoving or snuggling, bringing dresses in or letting dresses out, losing an actor or gaining a new one, the lovers were a fantastic group to work with. Their scenes were fun to direct and a joy to watch.

Photography in this entry by James Ratchford, Zachary Garber, and Molly Wilson

The Sets of Venice... Or Italy, Anyway.

Merchant, Part Deux

I've already given the background on my Artistic Direction in the Shakespeare Players' 2007 production of "The Merchant of Venice," in the entry about costuming, so I won't bore you with all that again.

When it came time for sets, we realized that the scenes were almost evenly split between scenes in the street in town, scenes at the heiress' estate, and scenes to be done in front of the curtain. We decided to make 3 large wall units, two of which were reversible, to accommodate both the city streets and the palatial home of Venice's most eligible bachelorette. For the city side of the walls, the director's mother and brothers did a half-beam stucco faux finish, and for Portia's house, the director and her brother did a marble faux finish. These finishes were ideal, as they were indefinitely reuse-able for the consistently budget-strapped Shakespeare Players.

There were two hinged wall units, so they were easy to rearrange. We did three basic layouts with the stucco sides: as the external corners of two building protruding from offstage on both sides, in a stairstep configuration along one side to imply two buildings butting up against one another, and with the front sides aligned, leaving a gap for a removable lintel to show the front door at the titular merchant's house.

The third wall unit was a flat 12 foot unit, in the marble finish, with an arched door in the middle. Whenever the marble side was visible, the walls were arranged in the same layout, with the door in the middle and the hinged units at the outside. The resulting "back wall" was 28 feet long and filled up the vast majority of our stage's width. The size and symmetry helped establish the grandiosity we were aiming for with Portia's house. The furniture within was swapped out between two arrangements to show different rooms within Portia's home- one was the room where she met suitors and presented them with a challenge to see if they would be a worthy mate. The other was an inner, more intimate chamber, and was much less formal.

I also painted six "tapestries" for the show. For the formal receiving room at Portia's house, we placed a set depicting male and female peafowl flanking the main door. This emphasized the obvious theme for that room: finding the right mate. For the less formal space in Portia's house, I painted the other four "tapestries" with pairs of birds: falcons, doves, storks, and pheasants, each of which carried symbolic importance in Shakespeare's day.

The final component of the set for "Merchant" was a backdrop. Rather than paint a specifically "Venice" scene, the director's father, various cast members, and I painted a more generic, more broadly useful, Italian mountainside town. We painted mountainous peninsulas coming in from both sides of the drop, to imply one of the many many Mediterranean inlets. We used bold turquoisey blues for the water and sky, various golds, greens and browns for the land, with gold, terra cotta, and ivory in the town . If you remember from the entry about the costuming of "Merchant," we used a similarly dichotomous color scheme there as well, putting the Jewish characters in turquoise, and the Italian characters in warm earth tones.

Perhaps one of the best known portions of the play is the test with which Portia presents her suitors. She shows them three "caskets," one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead. These boxes are referred to frequently throughout the show, and are important symbols for the whole production. During the last dress rehearsal, it came to light that the props master wasn't having any luck rounding up the boxes, or the articles they were to contain. I quickly became glad that I was done with sets and was down to a couple of accessories for the costumes. I spent that evening and the bulk of the next afternoon after work scouring town for suitable boxes and articles. Luckily, I found them, and if the paint was still drying when the curtain opened, the audience sure never knew.

Please note that the photos in this entry are from rehearsals and do not show completed sets or costumes.

Photography in this entry by James Ratchford.

Stencilmaker, Stencilmaker, Make me a Match!

She Loves Me!

In 2008, one of my favorite families decided to put on a show. They went with something suitable for a small cast, of course. They chose the musical, "She Loves Me!" which is based on the same story as the vintage movie classic, "The Shop Around the Corner," and the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film, "You've Got Mail!" This version takes place in Maraczek's Parfumerie. (That is, the toiletries shop owned by Mr. Maraczek... Don't ask me. He's Polish and the store is French?) While they had enough people in the family to take the leads, they needed to bring in a few friends to help round out the cast, and I was one of the lucky ones to get tapped.

Other cast members took care of sets and costumes, so I got to focus on details. My favorite part was the chance to try my hand at stencil making. I did some research on Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the art movements relevant to the show's 1900-ish setting, and designed a logo for the store that seemed fitting and passed with the director's approval. From there I made a set of three stencils and used them on each of the clerks' stands and on the back wall over the door.

As with most of my first cracks at things, my first try at stencilling taught me a few things to do differently next time, but ultimately, I am really pleased with what my efforts brought to the set.