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.
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