My Strongest Suit

A costume drama is a term sometimes used for a period piece, set in Victorian England, for example.  I’ve encountered my own version of costume dramas. 

Sometimes it’s a wardrobe malfunction, like the time during Blythe Spirit my arm got trapped between the sleeve and the shoulder pad of a jacket during a quick change and I had to go on stage before being able to fix it.  I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to button my jacket and might have to spent the entire scene Napoleon style, with one arm clutching my clothing.  Even other actors would come pat me on the shoulder on stage and try to rearrange my outfit, all to no avail. 

I’m still proud of my 32 second dress, hat and wig change during Once Upon a Mattress.  Each night I’d begin pulling things off the nanosecond I was off stage, tossing my hat and belt, stepping out of my dress, and then into another which was carefully laid out on the floor.  Two people helped, one on the zipper, one on the wig, and with my feet hardly stopping, I made it on stage every night – sometimes with time to spare.

Most of the real drama involves creating costumes for others.  I once made a dress for an actress who was trying to lose weight.  Each week she wanted me to take her dress in another inch or so.  What was I thinking that I repeatedly obliged? 

A wedding dress was ordered for Jekyll & Hyde, and opening night was approaching fast.  With only 2 days to go, we learned the dress wasn’t coming after all.  In a daze, I contemplated sewing a wedding gown in two days.  This isn’t Project Runway!  I sewed until 6 AM that first night, and had it done in time.  I sat in the dressing room during Act I sewing on buttons so the dress would be ready to be worn by Act II.  Never again.

I have hot glued trim on a costume while someone was wearing it, gone onstage myself with a zipper pinned in place (something I’d never ask someone else to do!), and pulled clothes out of my own closet for others to wear more times than I can count.  It’s all about looking good, just like Amneris from Aida who claims that “Dress has always been (her) strongest suit.”  Next up for me – lots of chiffon and rhinestones for Xanadu!  I have a feeling I’ll be vacuuming a lot of glitter.

I Feel Pretty

Time flies when you're having fun.  Or when you're up to your eyeballs in theater projects.  It has been so long since my last post, so this one is a bit longer than usual.  I've been too busy doing to write about doing!

One of the tasks that often falls in my lap, sometimes by default, is costuming.  I am currently in a familiar mode.  Costumes are in various stages of completion and scattered all around the house.  I found someone willing to hem the 6 full skirts that are yet to be completed, but I have more work to do before I can get the skirts to her.  The tops are mostly done - mostly.  I've saved the hardest for last, probably because the progress is slowest with the more difficult pieces.  

I have a love hate relationship with costuming.  I am glad I know how to sew.  I would never go back to not having a serger and am loving my new dress form (since I am not the same size as everyone I sew for and trying things on repeatedly gets a bit tedious). However, I am not a confident designer, so I second guess every choice until a garment is completed.  Endless combinations of fabrics, patterns and trims swirl through my brain like a mad scientist trying to develop some magic elixir.  But the magic I seek is visual.  And since I can only dream what it would be like to throw down a piece of fabric and attack it with just imagination, scissors and a french curve (that's a design tool, right?), I am limited to using tissue paper patterns that I adapt and combine with an odd a blend of mathematical precision and reckless abandon.   I've developed a somewhat misplaced confidence in my ability to make any length of fabric somehow be enough for my design.  That means I've also developed some interesting skills at piecing together scraps.

I am learning as I go, however.  I have to fight my natural tendency, when costuming, to make clothing that is too street worthy.  I have come to realize that the best costumes are often a little bigger than life.  Wilder colors, extreme shapes, fanciful trims.  It depends upon the theme of the show, of course.  There is a place for understated and true to life, but an outfit that will likely be seen from a minimum of twenty feet away often needs to pop, needs to look like a costume.   Everything doesn't need sequins and beads, but there are certainly appropriate times to go for a big impact.   

The show I am currently costuming is set in middle America in the 1830s - 1840s.  It is still pre-civil war, pre-Victorian, but not prairie or frontier clothing.  Wedged somewhere between  the elegance of a feathered chapeau and the down home casualness of a calico bonnet, I've found skirts, blouses, vests and bodices that I hope will all appear unique, interesting, and fairly true to the period - or at least what is perceived for that period.  Oh yes, did I mention it all has to be done within a budget of less than $40 per outfit?  

What would theater be like if we had unlimited budgets, throngs of skilled and willing volunteers and (while I'm dreaming) endless queues of  patrons with bulging wallets? I'll probably never know, and don't have too much time to worry about it.  I've got sewing to do.