The first round-trip weekend

Let's just get down to brass tacks, shall we?

Thursday - I met with another costumer to pull from stock for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Shakespeare & Company. That was -- interesting. The area where the costumes are stored has renovated last year, and the bins are crammed nilly-willy in a small storage room. And trying to find mates for boots - fuggetahboudit! I could have spent all night going through the bins and boxes, but that wasn't practical. So I took what I could fit in my car and ran. Hopefully, I'll be able to use most of what I pulled.

Friday - I sent my kids off to school, with the intent to leave for Bemidji by 9:30 a.m. Except, my oldest daughter wasn't feeling well, and I had to pick her up from school, before I even finished packing. I threw clothes into a suitcase, packed boxes of costumes into my car, and hit the road around 11 a.m. A couple of stops, and I was in Bemidji shortly after 3 p.m. It was good to see the other tech people again, some of whom I haven't seen since last summer. And I got settled into my dorm room. Yes, we are staying in dorms! The Paul Bunyan Playhouse has an arrangement with Bemidji State University to house the actors and technical staff that come up to Bemidji from the Twin Cities. We each get our own room, with a single bed and a little refrigerator. And whatever we bring to make it like "home". It's very much like being back in college; for many of the other staff, that wasn't so long ago, but I was in college 25 years ago! I am the old lady in the group, sort of the "house mother" of theater camp, and I don't mind. Certainly several of the actors are my contemporaries, and the guest director has a good decade on me. But for the summer, I am the "older sister" to the majority of our gang.

After settling into my rooms (I get two connecting rooms, because my children will be coming up to stay with me throughout the summer - it's like having my own suite when I'm alone!), I went over to the shop to unload costumes and start cleaning my workspace, and grab the items that I had left there last summer. And had my first shock of the season: my fuzzy blue fold-up chair was missing! I could have sworn I left it under a shelf last August, but it wasn't there now! My lamp was still there, my dishes, but no chair! :-(

So, to drown my sorrow, I went out for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Bemidji - Brigid's Cross Irish Pub. A lamb sandwich, a pint of Mighty Arrow, and the Twins baseball game on t.v., and I felt slightly better. Later, we all went out for drinks at Keg 'n' Cork, the other "Irish" pub in town, and right across the street. One of these pubs is more Irish than the other - when the owners designed Brigid's Cross, they brought an architect from Ireland to give the place an authentic feel. The same care was taken with the menu and the bar: shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, and a whiskey mushroom soup that warms my heart. Keg 'n' Cork, on the other hand, is a typical college town bar, and this is where the college crowd hangs out. It's definitely the place to go for cheap beer, shots and fried food.

Saturday - This was our first real "work" day, though we've all been planning, shopping, acquiring the various items needed for the first show at Paul Bunyan Playhouse this season: "Biloxi Blues", by Neil Simon. It is a World War II era play, based on Simon's own experiences in boot camp in Mississippi. So, no battles, no gunfire, no Blitzkrieg - just a bunch of new recruits and the sergeant who has to train them. Most of the scenes take place in the barracks, and the characters are in uniform for the entire show. So, this means finding six matching sets of khakis and fatigues, plus the sergeant's uniform. Nothing glamorous or glitzy, not even a choice of colors: khakis, and army green fatigues.

I started clearing out all the costumes from the past winter that needed to be put away, and - YAY! - found my chair! It was under the cutting table; I don't remember putting it there, it's possible somebody moved it, but it was there, intact! And now it's in my dorm room, along with the matching ottoman. My home away from home. After lunch, I put in some work in the dorm kitchen, getting all the cooking utensils, pots and pans ready for the summer, and inventorying what all we have, to let the arriving actors know what there is to work with. Then I was back on the road, heading home after a mere 24 hours in B-town.

And it's a good thing I came home when I did: something killed a lot of fish in Bald Eagle Lake in the past 48 hours, and hundreds of croppies and sunfish washed up along the shore. AND, when I did a load of laundry on Saturday night, after getting home, the washing machine decided to leak.

Sunday - this was a big clean up day at home. My family spent Sunday morning cleaning up the shoreline, scooping up the little fish corpses and burying them around the yard. There were also quite a few weeds and grasses pulled up and put to compost. Then I cleared out the laundry area and mopped up the standing water around the washing machine and laundry tub. I still need to find the cause of the water on the floor, if it is a leak or just water spraying from the washing machine hose. Finally, I got back to some costume work - buying fabric for "Midsummer" costumes, and one piece for a stripper costume I will be creating later this summer for "Gypsy", a musical based on the life of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee. More on that later.

Now it's time to start on Titania's beautiful butterfly costume.

The Road to Bemidji

Sounds like a Hope/Crosby movie, doesn't it? I drove a little over 200 miles today, to start settling in at my home-away-from-home for the next two and a half months. Beautiful Bemidji, Minnesota, in the heart of the North Lake Country. Northern Minnesota was built on its summer tourism trade, which is still holding strong. Boating, fishing, swimming, hiking - all sorts of outdoorsy activities, for families and friends to participate in during the day. But what to do at night? Another tradition that caters to summer tourism is summer-stock theater. Or, as we insiders call it, "theater camp for adults".

Five theatrical productions. That's what we'll be producing between now and August 14th. Ten weekends, 45 performances, all live, each show having a 10-day rehearsal period (except our first show this season, Biloxi Blues". Because of Memorial Day, we lose one full day and one partial day of rehearsal time.) The rehearsal period is short but intense. Three 3-hour rehearsals each day. Long hours of set construcion, costume fittings and alterations, finding just the right prop. This is the work of the designers and tech people who are here for the whole summer. See, the actors are only here for one show, two at the most; but those of us behind the scenes, we do this every day FOR TEN WEEKS. Exhausting, nerve-racking, frustrating, and yet it feeds our souls, this intensive, all-consuming life of summer stock theater. And we wouldn't trade this life for anything.

Next up: Prep work?

I originally wrote this post after May 16th, and never got back to edit it or add to it. So I'm posting it as is, and will get caught up with happenings from the last two weeks. :-)

This past weekend was overfull of family, parties, friends, events, and a little yardwork and housework. My youngest's birthday party, a friend's wedding, a day-long theater workshop for my oldest, a "good-bye & farewell" final cast party for a local theater, the high school theater banquet....It was go-go-go for three days. I've recovered (mostly), and am getting ready to strike my last show of the spring - a musical revue about the Andrews Sisters.

In the midst of all this activity, ideas for my summer shows were still percolating, and actors were contacting me with their thoughts. At the wedding reception, I had a quick chat with "Puck" about sunglasses for bug eyes; once again he and I are thinking along the same lines. (It was a theater wedding; a lot of the guests were performers/directors/designers, and much of the talk centered around our various upcoming projects. this is a common occurrence in our local theater community, this overlap of work and social life; we may work together for a short, intense period of time, then see each other every few months at social gatherings.

Collaberation.


Theater is a collaberative art: the director, the actors, the designers, the stage manager, the crew all bring the various pieces together to create the whole - a live performance. When we as artists understand this process, we create something greater than ourselves and our egos.


Tuesday, May 11, 2010: We had the first read-thru for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This production will be at Shakespeare & Company, an outdoor classical repetory theater in White Bear Lake. It isn't the first show that I will open this summer, but the first to start rehearsing, and the only one in the Twin Cities. This is S&C's 35th season, and the umpteenth time that they have produced Midsummer. It is an audience favorite, and each production has had a unique look.


The design concept for this particular production started in my living room 12 years ago, with a conversation between George Wade, the founding artistic director, and myself (myself? me? I'm not sure which is the proper grammatical usage. 'myself' sounds right!). George asked me how I envisioned the fairies; I thought they could represent the four elements of the ancient Greek beliefs: water, fire, earth and air. And it was really important to me that the fairies have wings. Then George told me his vision: bugs! He thought the fairies could be different insects, fantastical winged insects. He even wanted the young children of the company members to be extra fairy insects that could just wander through the audience! I brought these two design ideas together in my mind - insects to represent different elements - fireflies, waterbugs, earthworms, moths and dragonflies, hornets and wasps, insects that live in the ground, that swarm in the air, that light up or hover over the water.


Sadly, George Wade died the following winter, and this idea was put on ice. Until this year. My husband knew about this collaberative concept that George and I had, and he is directing this production. Last night, we presented this concept to the cast; and they may be almost as excited about this as I am. The actor playing Puck has already contacted me with some ideas for his "insect" - Puck was the one character I didn't have a final insect decision on yet. And it turns out he and I had similar ideas; we've already shared some photos, and I may even have the base of his costume ready to go! Some of the other actors talked about character traits, and possible accessories for their costumes.

This is how collaberation should work - we share ideas, and build on a concept to make the whole greater than the pieces. So far, so good.

As a free-lance costume designer, I take work as it's offered to me, usually. I have to look past the current project, past the next two, three, four, five projects, to keep work on my calendar. Sometimes I have small, much-needed breaks, and sometimes the calendar is overfull. Most of the theaters I work for are in the Twin Cities metro area.

As a mom, I have to oversee my three children's schedules, schoolwork, parties, playdates, events, activities, nurture their interests, and keep them fed/washed/presentable. Sometimes things fall through the cracks. I hope my husband will pick up the slack, but he works fulltime, and has his own activities and events to get on the schedule as well. And mostly, it works.

My main reason for starting a blog now, is because my life is going to be crazy-busy for the next few months, and I want to be able to track what I'm doing. I am costuming SIX (yes, 6) plays in three months; I am acting in one of the plays; five of these plays are at a summer stock theater in northern Minnesota; and the sixth one is at an outdoor classical theater in the Twin Cities. This means: a lot of driving, especially in June; a lot of costumes to build/pull/buy/alter; a lot of actors to dress; three directors to keep happy; and three children to keep track of, often from long-distance.

I don't know what the exact costume count will be. I plan to track the costumes, accessories, shoes, and wigs through my posts. Same with the actor/character count, and the driving time and mileage. The casts have changed a little bit over the last couple of months, but I think they are all finally set.

My next few posts will detail the plays, the theaters, the directors, and the design process. I need to get back to being a mom right now. My younger daughter's birthday party is on Friday, and I need to start getting ready for that. More about that later as well.