Month: May 2017

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A Reflection of Performance

On the 22nd of May 2017, Rubbish Theatre performed If An Orchid Was All You Had at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Throughout the process of rehearsals as a company we have learnt to be patient and collaborate with all ideas that are provided. We worked as a team to create a visually stimulating performance and installation for our audience. In the final show we received positive comments from our audience complimenting our performance as a whole. Without all of the aspects such as Set Design, Costume, Choreography, Directing this performance would not have been possible. Carlson quotes Goldberg within his book explaining: ‘ The history of performance art in the twentieth century is the history of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables executed by artists impatient with the limitations of more established forms.’ (Goldberg, 1997, cited in Carlson, 1996, 84).

Lincoln University

Before the Show. Photo Credit: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre

 

Our performance in particular could be described as an ‘open-ended medium’ due to the comments made by the audience. We discussed as a company how we wanted our show to end, but in the end result our show was open to interpretation for the audience. The different ideas and endings the audience came up with for our performance opened our performance up to and interpretive piece. This inspired me. The creation that we as a company created had been recognised and analysed by an audience and changed in different ways, all that make sense. This added to our piece being an ‘open-minded medium’. This was because our piece was an exploration of madness revealing selected stages that we discovered and researched. This gives tAndy Jordan Emailhe audience already the opportunity to reflect on what we had discovered yet connect to the character that Jacob Toon was performing ‘The Man’. The reflection from the audience could not have made us as a company more proud. We all collaborated and created a beautiful piece that was described by one of our audience members and lecturer Andy Jordan as: ‘ A suitably challenging, wacky, baffling, intelligent, artful, entertaining, madcap enterprise.’ (Jordan, 2017). The experience in creating, choreographing and performing If An Orchid Was All You Had was inspiring and memorable and I could not be prouder of my company with what we created.

 

References

Carlson, M. (1996) Performance: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

Jordan, A. (2017) Orchid. [email] Sent to Emily Brunt, Aiden Clark, James Crawford, Kerrie Crockford, Jacob Kay, Joshua Pearson, Jake Skelton, Rowanna Soyza, Jacob Toon, Rebecca Watson, 22 May.

Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts (2017) IAOWAYH photos [image]. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/with/34016768033/ [accessed 29 May 2017].

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Post-Show Reflection –

Costume Designer Log – May 23rd, Tuesday, 2017

Yesterday was the showing of our production If An Orchid Was All You Had and I overall feel that the performance was very well received and executed to the best of our abilities. I think the costumes that I worked so hard to realize in the real world fit the aesthetic of the piece perfectly and, coupled with the hair and make-up and the set design of the piece, presented a really strong, unique, bizarre and semi-dystopian aesthetic that was the original goal of the entire design process. I feel like, once everything was fully painted and prepared and all the costumes had been tried on and practiced in, all the alterations made during the design process were for the best.

Despite this, I am regretful that I did not have time to implement some of the more intricate design points I wanted in my costumes. I feel like having some further individuality between the creatures would have only added to the general aesthetic and that the piece could have only benefited from this. If I had more time during the process to work on costume and more budget to get materials with, I would definitely have tried to create more dynamic mechanical elements within the costumes like I originally had in mind.

Working as costume designer for a show as unique and insane as this one has been a real challenge at times, however seeing the finished product on stage next to all the different pieces of set and hair and make-up really reinforces the feeling of accomplishment from having undertaken this job and seen it through to the end to the best of my abilities.

These Photographs were taken during our dress rehearsal. They show the costumes in the stage lighting and how each one of them looked on stage

These Photographs were taken during our dress rehearsal. They show the costumes in the stage lighting and how each one of them looked on stage

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References

– Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts (2017) IAOWAYH photos [image]. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/with/34016768033/ [accessed 27 May 2017].

 

 

 

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Creation Day – Last Minute Finish

Costume Designers Log – May 21st, Sunday, 2017

A collection of shirts sewn and ready for the show tomorrow

A collection of shirts sewn and ready for the show tomorrow

Today we had a full day of creating set and costume ready for the show tomorrow. As you can see from the pictures above, a large majority of the costumes were finished on this day with the assistance of Becka and Rolo. I proposed to the others the idea of changing the women’s designs from having straight bottoms to skirts and there was a unanimous decision to make the change. I let Becka oversee this as she appeared to have a strong idea on how to change the designs and make them wearable, comfortable, and efficient for the cast wearing them.

Becka's sash design before being painted or modified to make it more of a shirt

Becka’s sash design before being painted or modified to make it more of a shirt

Overall I feel that the designs I originally started with have been altered for the best – be it because of time constraints, budget requirements or otherwise – and that whilst not all of my designs have been completely realized, the overall look and concept behind them has translated extremely effectively to the finished product. I am excited to see how these costumes will look once they have been finished and finalized for tomorrow’s performance.

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Progress Update – Sewing Machines and Glue Guns

Costume Designers Log – May 20th, Saturday, 2017

This is a shirt which has been traced around on Hessian and cut out. The hessian is waiting to be sewn onto the shirt.

This is a shirt which has been traced around on Hessian and cut out. The hessian is waiting to be sewn onto the shirt.

As mentioned in the previous post, one of the ideas I was thinking of to create the costumes and stop them from being almost transparent was to purchase clothing that would go on underneath the hessian material. I decided this would be the easiest process even if it is the least cost effective method. My reasoning behind this is because it not only already gets me my measurements for different costumes and gives me a base to be working from, it also stops the light from rendering the hessian see-through and makes it more comfortable for the performers as the hessian is a fairly rough material and can cause irritation against bare skin.

The sewing machine sped up productivity and made making things such as the shirts, a lot easier.

The sewing machine sped up productivity and made making things such as the shirts, a lot easier.

As the sewing process was taking longer than anticipated and my limited skills when it comes to hand-sewing were restricting the speed and efficiency of creating the costumes, I decided it would be best to acquire a sewing machine to help me speed up the process of attaching the hessian to the clothing. Despite some setbacks (including a faulty machine for a short period of time), the sewing machine proved to be a useful and worthwhile investment as, for some elements of the costumes such as the shirts, this was extremely useful as it sped up the sewing process considerably and allowed me to focus my time on the bottoms.

For the bottoms, the majority of clothing I picked was baggy cheap jeans for the men and leggings for the women (with the exception of Kerrie who needed shorts to be able to take them on and off for the dress that her ‘Woman’ character was wearing). The jeans proved initially problematic – the dense material that jeans are made from meant that sewing through them was difficult and often ineffective – so upon further consideration I decided the best way to deal with the jeans was to upcycle scraps of hessian that wouldn’t be used for anything else and cut them into patches which could then be glued onto the clothing. This created an interesting aesthetic, making them look bulky and more distressed than the other clothing.

This is what Jake Skelton's trousers looked like after being hessian-ed, painted and distressed

This is what Jake Skelton’s trousers looked like after being hessian-ed, painted and distressed

For the women, my initial ideas proved hard to realise. I was informed by Becka, the assistant costume maker, that the women’s clothing I had purchased to be the under layer was made of more elastic material than the men’s clothing, and that sewing onto them made it impossible for the women to wear the costumes as they were too restrictive due to the un-elastic nature of hessian material. To overcome this, I have planned to ask the group whether they want skirts or trousers for their costume, and alter my designs.

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Making the Costumes

Actually making the costume proved to be much more challenging than anticipated. Hessian is a difficult material to work with as it is far from opaque and had no elasticity. We had to attach the hessian to cheap clothing so that it was no longer see-through, though the final product has the desired effect as when cut the hessian frays creating an interesting effect.

The first piece I worked on was Jacob Kay’s top to be worn while he was one of The Creatures. I followed the design drawn up by our head costume designer Aiden which consisted of a vest top with a tail-coat inspired tail and one loose sleeve. I used varying styles of stitching on this top to create different appearances and textures, for example I made a thick strip down each side which added an extra dynamic to the top.

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(Fig. 1)                                                    (Fig. 2)

A major part of our aesthetic for the show is showing process and development. Any mistakes such as a dropped stitch or an uneven hem were left to be a part of the costume. We also did the stitching on the outside keeping the process visible. This came into play when a huge oversight was made with Rolo’s top. With her undershirt being stretchy, once the hessian was sewn onto the undershirt it was far too small. A quickly thought-up solution consisted of cutting away at the sides and adding on four small strips of hessian to hold it in place. I used the mistake which was made and turned it into a positive whereby I could make something even more visually stunning to look at with an interesting display of progress and process.

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(Fig.3 )                                                   (Fig. 4)

The boy’s trousers are made from excess pieces of hessian, rather than throwing these pieces away we glued them to the base trousers creating a patchwork style effect. I used larger pieces of excess hessian to fashion wrap skirts for the girls. This idea of using things which would otherwise have been thrown away again relates to the creation process of our set, finding the beauty in the rubbish.

rubbish (Fig. 5)

rubbishtwo (Fig. 6)

Works Cited

Fig. 1 – 6:

Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts (2017) IAOWAYH photos [image]. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/with/34016768033/ [accessed 27 May 2017].