"Glamis Hath Murdered Sleep!"

Before taking on the costuming for the Paper Wing Theatre's production of "MacBETH", I thought of the magnitude of the project. MacBETH is no small scale black box show. There are nearly 30 people playing MORE than 30 roles, which means that the true difficulty in this is the organization of the thing! Still, with my motto -- FEAR NOT! -- I jumped right in.

I grabbed a binder and began to prepare. First, the easy stuff: the rehearsal schedule and the preliminary cast of characters. Then, the list of critical questions: What's off limits? What resources? What's the budget? 

As much as possible, I have been recording info in a document I am calling Dseigners Forms.  This is in MS Excel and consists of many tabs with names CAST LIST, CAST SIZES, COSTUME CHART, COSTUME CHANGES, COSTUME BREAKDOWN. This list grew as I moved on to my next priority... the LOOK BOOK.

The LOOK BOOK was as much for me as it was for the Producer and Director. I started off with a thought - what are the elements of the period and the famous productions? What photos are available online? The major performances were all there including Orson Welles. The photos ranged from period to present day, and searching the web began to feel overwhelming.

My mom always tells me to break things down into baby-steps and that was just the advice I needed for this.  Finally, the natural pattern of the Scottish play emerged: Groupings -- MacBETH Traditional, MacBETH Modernistic, MacBETH Poster Ideas, MacBETH Set Ideas, MacBETH with the Three Weird Sisters, MacBeth with Lady MacBETH (blended), Lady MacBETH Traditional, Lady MacBETH Modernistic, and Lady MacBETH AVANT GARDE. This last section included such things as a "fur" coat made of looped video tape, a "fur" stole made from crocheted shredded white plastic bags, Punk Rock and Vampire designs, and the Unisex Fashions of the Rad Hourani Fashion House. 

This blended approach facilitated an organized brainstorming session with the Director and later with the Producer. It allowed me to hear and observe their impressions and expressions. I could see what excited them and where they wanted to pull back. To be honest, this method worked surprisingly well, and still serves as inspiration for me. 

I intentionally made the margins large so there would be room for notation, drawings, or doodles. The pages were carefully arranged so that the layout was balanced as opposed to looking "thrown together" or sparse, and since it was to be printed back-to-back, I made sure that each facing page complimented the other. Printed in full, lush color on 20 lb paper, the LOOK BOOK was 3-hole punched and placed in the binder.


By this time, I had collected a large number of photos and was about to start searching for Forms for Costume Designer Organization. I realized that this too would be a lot of information so before I proceeded any further, I set up an organizational system in my Costume Design folder. Here's a screen grab of it. 

From here, I was able to drag photos or docs to the appropriate folder, and am prepared in advance for files & images that I know are coming and will need a home. 

At this point, I had been working on this project for two (2) days, and this was when I started to work on this in my sleep. It recalls Lady MacBETH who re-enacts the murderous events in her famous "sleep walking" scene. OK. I didn't murder my ideas, nor did I sleep walk. Still, I was recreating my waking work in my sleep. Needless  to say, this has led to far less sleep - the trapping of deeds that MacBETH recognizes when he exclaims following his act Regicide, "Glamis hath murdered sleep!" Luckily for me, this gives me joy!

I will continue to elaborate on my  process in my next post...

The Gothic Gourmet: Dreaming of Costumes Blog

I have been dreaming of costumes for my whole life.

I’m sure it started with my mother dressing me in beautiful dresses as a little girl. Once I turned "Tom-Boy", I liked the more sporty stuff. By High School, I was a New Romantic / Punk wearing leather skirts and just starting to explore the ‘unisex’ look. First year of college brought me into Designer clothes. This was just one part.

Then there was Easter, Christmas, and Halloween. Easter shopping was elegant and always “something more’. Christmas was about color and celebration. Halloween, though, as you probably have already guessed, was where the concept of DESIGNING took shape.

The early years saw store bought costumes. One favorite was “Casper The Friendly Ghost”. Dang! How old was then? Maybe 6? Maybe 7? Eventually, I started to come up with my own costumes. The routine was like this: “Gah! It’s Halloween tomorrow and I haven’t made a costume yet! What do I have?” followed by a search through the closet, then the garage. Inspiration usually came from a weirdly bent piece of metal or a branch that had been trimmed from the tree in the backyard. Once I had a concept, I would go back to the closet or more likely the scrap bag of fabrics. From there I would start “my build”. To be honest, there were very few times when I sewed an outfit completely, though I sew. No! On such short notice, creativity is the master of invention and costumes were constructed from my wild imaginings. I wish I had photos from back then. It would be interesting to see how many of those creations were truly successful and how many were… not.

Anyhow, those were the early years… the courageous early years where I learned how much I LOVED COSTUMES! I loved the potential. I loved the failures almost as much as the successes because inevitably those unsuccessful ones taught me to take a chance, even try a new technique, damn the consequences. Oh, I just love that! “Damn the consequences!”

In recent years, I’ve been more precise in my practice. Some costumes: My son’s Space Cadet costume was fun; Renaissance outfits for Dane, Patrick, and myself. Those were very demanding projects and didn’t employ any “build” to them. They were straight up sewing projects. No child will forget my "Other Mother" from "Coraline" complete with button eyes that I wear for two straight days. There's just too many to enumerate. The next “build” was my DALEK GOWN. I have photos of that process and will post them in a separate blog entry. The idea there was to de-construct a gown to re-construct it… and then add the DALEK to it. It was a very fast-paced project and really was the longest in the end.

And here I am today! Embarking on a super secret dream that I didn’t realize I had until it was handed to me. I am so in love with this idea! And yet, I admit, it’s a – - BIG. SCARY. COMMITMENT. That’s OK. I have a new motto this year – NO FEAR! Or put more poetically – FEAR NOT! Ha! It makes me feel better when I say that… and that is what gets me through all of the scary stuff I’ve been through in my life only now it has a name – FEAR NOT!

When I accepted this challenge, the first thing Patrick said to me was, “You HAVE to Blog this! Blog the whole process.” Something about that rang so true in me. So this is the beginning of that. Now that my costuming background is exposed, I’ll move on to my process in the next post.