Tech dress.

Spotlight

Lamplight

Too busy to blog!

Check out this funny funny Q & A Interview.    Also here is a radio interview with Drew the Producer, from Vitamin S,  and for Facebookers, here is an interview with Vanessa from STAMP


   So, tech/dress tonight and then tomorrow is opening and we have publics coming to see the show!

  I spent yesterday making costumes, for the cast.  Tessa Tahi Sally Rose Anna and Alison, have all been rehearsing independently last night, and eek  I'm still building, and finishing some things...!
  Due to budget constraints I am using cardboard instead of wood for some final pieces which means the wooden structure under it needs to be strong.  We have a painting!   Which looks great but isn't in situ yet, and there are just a few other bits and bobs to attend to.

  

First Rehearsal! Photos by Finn (age 4)

Three days away from Dress rehearsal, we hastily put together our dance routine.  Finn my wee trooper did all the photos above.  We finished the evening with a wine and 'hot seat excercise' to talk about our 1930 characters, and Finn jumped up to take his turn, too excited to sleep later, he said it was the highlight of his day, oh except the light saber.

Thursday! Big Day in the Office for me and Finn.

Costuming and shopping, Finn became my top assistant today.  He pats me on the shoulder and says 'going well Mum'.  Score of the day was a 2 dollar light saber from the Sally Army, and my olde style bloomers are on hold till the set is done.

Wine bladder sandbags I invented for last year's Four Walls show will come in handy again.  

     

Wednesday... five days out from production week.

Well I only have two days to finish construction, and budget doesn't really allow for a lot of costume hire, so I've been having to get inventive with costuming, and so far I'm planning to dye several garments in tea and rouche them up to hopefully equate to a 1930 kind of bloomers undies outfit.  These to be mixed up with some slips and bits and pieces..



   30's undies were a mixture of totally cute and sexy tailored bras and corsets, and also there was a trend to go bra less and to let things be free rather than the strapping and binding trends that preceeded.  This info I've garnered in a short period of research so I am by no means an expert.   So I'm happy with the cotton undies kind of effect combined with a few slips and as much as I love corsets, I'm not sure they're quite the right thing...

   Tomorrow evening is our first rehearsal, and then Pack in for the Set is two days after that!  Then we're in Production week..  Goodness.

   So I've been up since six dyeing things in tea, and I'm just going out to pick up some wood and then we have costuming dates with Alison and Celia, two of the six performers I'm lucky enough to have in the show.  I'll introduce you in a minute...   pictures will have to wait..

Bathing with Elephants 26-28th January.

   The Girls, is only an eighth of the whole show Bathing with Elephants at the Civic 26th -28th of this month.   Only on for three days, with eight artists, I'm just saying you might kick yourself if you miss it.   

Hosted by Vitaman s Co-lab and STAMP, who are in turn hosted by The Edge, and taking the opportunity to use the Civic's Taj Mahal and Safari rooms, and the Wintergarden, while the Civic are 'in between' big shows.  

   My responsibility lies in a performance work of a different theatrical kind.  

           There are design, as well as technical and performance components in this piece. I’ve made this specifically for this context, and hope that it invites and teases the audience in a stagey girly kind of way.  I enjoy the magic of the unpredictable and here I hope that theatrical quality merges with a ‘gallery’ environment.  It’s my wish that the audience, -all set to peruse, (as you can’t help feeling you should be in the Civic), can to an extent feel transported for a moment or two back in time, and as well consider their presence in the moment of performative interaction.

            The 1930’s audience, was perhaps as lively and as ambitious as the building’s interior and flamboyant design.  A tribute to Stark, and the New Zealand showgirls influenced by Europe and America in 1930, the hope; toughness; desire; positivism; and the pride of the early 1930’s.  

Moulin Rouge .  Brassai

A Story,

You know, love is a strange thing,    

once I fell in love.

     Well that's nothing new, I had fallen in love before and I'm not the first girl to fall in love I know,
 
          Sometimes though, you know, we fall in love in a meaningful way when we are young even when we are children actually, and sometimes it happens like this,


   You know,
you are young and in the moment, you suddenly see someone,
maybe they were there already, or maybe they board the train, or you meet them at the library or something like that,
and you fall in love with them,
maybe it's short lived you know,
       half an hour

or the length of the train journey,
                                         or a show but there is something,
for some reason, you can remember this person, -there is an energy exchange,
       and it doesn't matter if you see them again, or if you hope to or anything like that,

It doesn't matter,

       because then it has been imprinted on your being, your memory, it was a love,


       perhaps a powerful love given it was fleeting,    ... do you know how sometimes it can happen like that? 


       I had a moment like this once, and I fell in love with a boy on a train, he was,
-it was the train example, -yes that's why I was thinking of a train, 
                                           this man, this,        young man, actually he was young, he was a boy,
because he was younger than I was,    oh so anyway,


  he was young, and it was stuffy on the train, so eventually I went to open the window, and he saw my gesture, and so, he opened the window for me.  


       I loved him.








You might think it ridiculous that I didn't say anything to him at the time.  Perhaps shy, but perhaps not so much, 
       in the moment a small act became a gesture of kindness, so that was enough, it was overwhelming, I'll never forget that.  



       

No time to Blog!!

   I have been sewing costumes and carpenting all day...   Great cast coming together for our few rehearsals soon!

   Concerns...  finishing the set!!  

Getting the set to the Theatre!!

When to fit in costume checks...         la la laaa

   Tech stuff tomorrow for the cupboard and the other bit.   hmmshhpfft.

This was always going to be an exercise in ticking as much off the wishlist as possible.   

on the go

Mudcake teaparty

I think perhaps for each generation there's a moment when you realize that beyond your parents, -there's a generation of stories and experience that is leaving the sphere of your own lifetime.  I'm especially interested in the 1930's right now because the people around to tells stories of that time first hand are to be leaving us soon.

An Olde Worlde Portrait, of 1930's lady in head dress
(Could be Alison's great Grandmother?)

There are design, as well as technical and performance components in this piece. All a fresh challenge!!
       I’ve made this specifically for this context in the Safari Room downstairs in the Civic theatre, and hope that it invites and teases the audience in a stagey girly kind of way.  I enjoy the magic of the unpredictable and here I hope that theatrical quality merges with a ‘gallery’ environment.  It’s my wish that the audience, -all set to peruse, (as you can’t help feeling you should be in the Civic), can to an extent feel transported for a moment or two back in time, and as well consider their presence in the moment of performative interaction.

Looks easy enough...

Whewee!

Find us on facebook!

  Just come from a tech meeting with the Stamp people in the Space(s) that we're using, and the other artists...    Very exciting but I'm not alone in it being a nervous taxi down the runway for a pack in in a couple of weeks.  Derek is also doing carpentry of a kind in his garage.

link to Derek's blog

   I saw Derek leaning against a wall with his eyes shut today, and some of the other artists had a pretty immersed kind of vibe!

 Thanks to John Hagen who is helping me with some tech elements and quite wonderfully the Edge who support Stamp to support Drew and the Vitamin S Co-lab which includes me.  This meant a small but intense swarm of tech assistance and safety considerations today, which means something...  close to deadline.

One of the images of Alison from yesterday's photoshoot.
The right one will be shopped and printed on canvas then touched up and framed.

Right ,
back to work

Carpentry in the Garage.

Hilariously, I am not a carpenter, and I am making this all up as I go along.  As you can see my garage has a personality all of it's own, like a monster.  It's dirty, concreted, old, and it floods every-time it rains with greasy groundwater that comes through the concrete.  

  with less than two weeks to go: rehearsals, electronics, and buttresses, costuming, printing the painting!  still to come, I guess the only justification for posting this is to share the fun.  However I now have flats. 

Helpers!

Thanks very much to Anna Sandra Rina Amy & John who have all helped a bit in different ways.  John came over with the Go Pro Camera this morning and it matches pretty nicely.  You might have to come and see the show to know what I'm talking about! 

It's so nice to have helpers!

This picture was taken yesterday, and  I have 10 days till pack in and quite a lot of work to do.  So I am t freaking out just a little bit.  My neighbours have visited with fried rice, and it all helps.  However as I've mentioned we're on a very very little budget and I'm going to have to get some funds together in order to continue.   So there'll be a garage sale coming up, and maybe a fundraising event.   I would've managed to swerve bankruptcy except a few hundred dollars went to fix my car which was broken into and damaged...    This is the life of the freelance artist!  and thanks to Raewyn for the plums!! 

stone the crows we're getting crafty in the lounge Amy helps me sew the throws.

Finn (4) paints while I build.  

A pile of christmassy curtains, was my christmas job, that was before I had the sewing machine.  These are to go in the little cupboards.  day before yesterday I went to Queenstown to act for a role in a friend's movie, and we performed in a circus tent.  They had a fabulous red velvet curtain with lights all around it for the performers to enter the ring...  I am now quite obsessed with red velvet curtains...  oo  the symbolism.  

Sandra Bell helps me build the cupboards for the wall (and loaned the sewing machine) -I can't make mine work,like I said... garage sale.

Reference / notes / Inspiration for the performers,

First of all. . .

Vanessa from Stamp who is hosting us here in the Taj Mahal room

 I jumped at the opportunity to develop an installation in the Civic.  One of my favourite heritage buildings in the country.  Clearly we have to be very careful of it!  I don't know why the Civic isn't being used at the moment but because it's closed we need to be chaperoned in the space, an added cost for a low budgie project.

Inhabiting the corridors and
downstairs rooms of the Civic appeals to me very much

 But simply brilliant to sit around a table and listen to everyone's concepts.  All quite ambitious.


The pragmatic part of mine involves creating a large freestanding structure that fits in to the preexisting room...  All the finishings are made of plaster and the floor is carpeted so the only thing I can do in the space is final finalizing, like putting a screws in or something like that.

My first set design plan, -has got progressively more official looking.

 My initial sketches worked like a wish list of how I'd like this to happen...    I completely expected to have a discussion about which aspects wouldn't be affordable.



Clearly there are some life lessons here I need to learn, because obviously it would be best for everyone if I pull out a miracle for $200 building materials and and artists fee of $500, and a company share of the revenue.





So working on pulling out a miracle now.  Makes things more exciting anyway.


Should the miracle come together, it might look a little bit like my colour scheme image here: