As I sit listening to Ruddigore, my upcoming design project, I'm wondering where I even begin to start describing the last three months of my life. There is no need to specify that i am writing about the "costume" section of my life, because lately costuming is my life! In October the Harold Pinter play, Betrayal opened in a very small black box theater. My good friend did the lighting, so it was that much more enjoyable to work on. This show was unique because not only did I design costumes, but the set as well. The set design was difficult for two reasons; I have no background in set design and we had no budget. So basically I did some rendering and model making and the director did some thrifting, and together we built something that loosely resembled the renderings and actually worked very well for the play.

For those of you who don't know the story, it goes backwards in time basically starting from the end of a love affair and reversing to the beginning. The telling of this story is applaudable for the mere fact that writers rarely tell a love story in that direction. More often we hear see the acts leading up to the truest of love, but when do we ever get to wittness its undoings--and backwards for that matter? The peice was definitely a theater-goers choice. Not for the masses and not for the family and not for the romantic-once-a-year-date-to-the-theater. Although the audiences were half-full at most, I felt I was working on a real thesbien's play. The fact that there was no musical element helped me pay more attention to the language and rythm of the writing, realizing that Pinter was not only a master of pauses (as he is famed for) but double-entendres as well. I watched the play several times during the tech process and liked it more every time, where as usually I feel more and more annoyed with a work the more I am forced to watch it.

As far as costuming goes, there was almost no budget, so I made an art of pulling from stock. The director came up with Memory Waistland as a visual tag for the production aesthetic which I feel read in the set. But if I had to describe in two words the costumes I would have called them British Cottage. The two men characters are both in literature, one an agent responsible for finding new talent in fiction and the other in publishing. The third character is the publisher's wife, who was also having an affair with the agent, the publishers best friend. And it goes backwards in time over two decades, and their are four different settings, and we had 20 square feet of stage, and we had no crew. But the cast was great and overall, I think it was an artistic success.

~

The work I was most excited for this year, Music Man, for a professional, partial-equity theater, was a logistical nightmere! "Lately I feel more like a racecar driver than a costume designer," I told one of my seamstresses. I never found a rental I could live with, let alone one that I liked. I ended up pulling and collaging from four rental houses, one lending, several thrift stores, and building a small collection of pieces. It was nice to work with some costume builders who I really enjoyed. One artisan, who is much older than me, had her own private studio where she also built costumes for movies that had come and left Chicago. She knew all the right questions to ask and did impecable work. I made patterns and then she built the costumes for Marian the Librarian. Marian had three major costume changes from her librarian suit for the first act, to her dancing dress in the beginning of the second act to her stunning and glamourous dress during the climax of the play and the famous song "Till There Was You," which I could have sworn was written by the Beatles.

Also, I was treated like dirt by the production manager:

"Hi, I'm here to measure the cast," I show up on the first day of rehearsals.
"Well I really wish you wouldn't," she glares at me. I stare back confused. With no production schedule update in the past four months, no indication of scheduling fittings for me, and no planned production meetings I really didn't think anyone would measure the cast for me. Nore did I think anyone was about to call me to ask when I wanted to measure and fit. I'm 26 years old, I look like I'm about 19, I dress like a little punk, and I'm always really excited about what I'm doing. My appearance and overzealousness seem to clash with jaded production managers who don't care if I can afford rent and food.
"Well Director said that tonight would be a good night for me to take measurements because the entire cast would be here." I explain.
"Mmmm Hmm." she doesn't smile and only looks at me with disdain. After about fourty-five seconds of ignoring me she goes on, "It's just kind of akward to break the cast up during their first full read-through. Sometimes Director ends up pissing himself off." This would be the first time she called me awkward.
"Oh sure, if tonight's not a good night, then when might be a good time? I guess I should have called you first."
Blank stare. Actually, I don't think she even looked at me. I think she continued to ignore me. Then "wait over there," she barked. Pointing to the quary of student folding tables and soda machine. Rehearsals took place in the basement cafeteria of a day-care center. She began sending me actors one at a time after tapping them on the shoulder.
A few months earlier, she had emailed the design team to see if we could do an additional tech rehearsal which wasn't in our original contracts. The email recipients proceded to list off days when they would be interested in production meeting. In response to my email of availability all she wrote was "That's great but can you do the extra tech rehearsal?" In other words, fuck the production meeting. We'll just give you all that extra rehearsal at the last minute and hope for the best.
When I realized she was not going to coordinate a meeting between the director, other designers and me, I proceeded to meet with the director on my own and do my best with the set renderings, his concept, and my own ideas. To be continued...