Pericles or How I Learned to Stitch

As promised, an entire blog post dedicated to my design of Shakespeare's lesser known play, Pericles, at Shady Shakespeare this summer.

The summary of the story is that King Pericles goes on a journey to find a wife and ends up visiting all kinds of strange lands. The director for this show, Shady's resident dramaturg, had been working on the concept of Pericles being set in space rather than the Mediterranean for seven years, and finally it came to fruition in this production. Each land Pericles encounters represented  a sci-fi/cult-classic/other planet from many well-known movies and TV shows, from Flash Gordon to Star Wars to Mortal Kombat.

I became the Costume Designer for this show after the concept had been fleshed out in design meetings. And while I did create the sketches and make some artistic decisions, I cannot take credit for much of the over-arching concept of what lands would be represented and by whom. The whole thing was an adventure that rivaled the epic story Shakespeare wrote.

Pericles' home planet of Tyre was that of the venerable Star Wars Jedis. He wore the many-layered Jedi tunic, obi, shoulder armor, and robe. And his most trusted advisers were modeled after very iconic Jedis from the many movies.

He visits the land of Ming the Merciless as well as a Klingon planet.

As you can see, the costumes were the most important part of telling the story of where Pericles journeyed--the scenery was a unit set and had only a few elements that changed.

Perhaps my and the audience's favorite part of the entire show was the lightsaber fight.

Yes.

Lightsaber.

Fight.

Each Knight was a different kind of sci-fi character, much decided by the actor themselves.

From Left to Right we have: A Tron-ish, Mandolorian-ish fighter; A White Samurai; A Darth Maul-ish Character; A Matrix-inspired Fighter; & Our lady fighter in a bit of goth mixed with Tron.

I'll leave you with one more image that needs no explanation.

Please visit my website for more!

The project was eventful and hard. The performance space was in the Sanborn County Park in Saratoga, and so everything was remote and out of the way. I'm sure I shouldn't assume all summer stock Shakespeare will be like this, but I don't know if this kind of work is really for me. In the end I did 10 loads of laundry and took pounds of dry cleaning to the cleaners.... Can't wait to put this all behind me.

Radio Silence Over

You know how it is, you put something off for so long that getting back to it becomes harder and harder. Especially as a blogger, where do I begin in the time that I've been away. How long do I push the rewind button?

So much has happened.

I finished up the drop I last wrote about and never got any kind of production photos.

I supervised the costumes for Broadway By the Bay's The Marvelous Wonderettes and taught children at Pied Piper Players's inaugural summer camp.

Teaching children about theatre is the most rewarding, and I had my first experience working with a child with Asberger's. It was a challenge, but I felt very good about how everything went.

This is the cast and staff of Charlotte's Web. I love this picture of everyone and you can see the awesome backdrop the kids designed and painted!

And our small but mighty cast of How to Eat Like a Child. You can't see it here, but they also designed and painted two legs. This was a great group.

Possibly the most exciting bit of work I did this summer was a design for Pericles at Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company. I have some great images from that show and will be uploading them in a blog post all their own.

So, this summer was a success in the freelancing world, although I nearly dropped dead the week that Pericles was teching and we were finishing up the second session of camp. I've got some fun projects on the horizon, most notably working on BBBay's A Chorus Line and a few actual designs. I'm also going to try to get back to blogging. No more excuses because we're all caught up!

Oh, also of note: Working on my biggest design yet: My wedding!!!