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.

Wrapping Up Work

Okay, so I have 2 costume plates left to draw then I can paint them and be done with the surprise 13 plates I set out to work on last Monday and that are due tomorrow at 9am. And what am I doing? Yep, procrastinating!

I think that the end of the fall semester is the worst. Or at least right now it seems like the worst. Part of that has to do with wanting to do the whole holiday thing (and today Target was a lunatic asylum and I was just there to buy paper towels!) but also because we're working towards next semester shows as well. On top of this costume project I'm completing for Kushner's adaptation of The Illusion, I've also got to get Pericles designed and drafted before we leave for break. :( It has been rough.

But my work for The Illusion is exciting. See this fun plate below (my apologies for it's weird scan... the book is too big for the scanner bed):



The show provides for so much more than just a simple design because it has three plays within it. So each of the plays are in their own time period and color. And I've added elements of commedia in order to inform some of my choices. I've really enjoyed putting on my costumer hat again. Hopefully this will bode well for Orpheus Descending, the last show of UNCG's season for which I will be costume designer.

Meanwhile, I'm still on the hunt for a job. :( I was kind of seriously considering another masters program (a 2 year one in another field) but, really, that would have just been hiding out from real life again. I am ready to have a job and make more than $1000 a month (for 8 months). I am ready to be able to afford holiday gifts and all that. Yep, I'm ready to be an adult for real.

But I guess I should pass my costume seminar first...

Oklahoma!

So, my exciting blog post? A photo essay of my work on Oklahoma. I was hoping I'd have gotten further with the white model today, but sometimes my perfectionism gets in the way. For now I'll just share the drawings that go with what's done in the white model... which leaves out a few key scenes, but I promise to update you as I get further in the process.

Step 1. A Model Box of the Space. In this case, the roadhouse on campus Aycock Auditorium. I've included the wing space, or rather lack there of, so that's why it is so long. There are only two pockets of floor space SL and SR that we can use, much of what you're seeing is housing an orchestra shell and an "office." Bollucks.

Step 2: Laury's House. As you can see from the original drawing, the house has switched sides of the stage, because of that blasted lack of wing space. There is some interesting ideas up my sleeve about how the show will begin with "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" but I'm not telling yet....

Step 3. The Dream Ballet (yes, I know I'm missing Judd's cabin, but bear with me). This hard-framed flat of trees will go into silhouette in the wedding portion of the dance and then silhouetted gas lanterns will fly in above the silhouetted dance hall girls when Judd's fantasy takes over. A little difficult to show that second part in the white model, hence my inclusion of my hastily drawn elevation.

Step 4. The Dance at the Skidmore Rance at the top of Act II. I've not gotten it done, but you can see that I'm working on creating a platform with posts that have lights strung between them. The second picture is the close up of the beads and thread I'm using for the 1/4" scale. It's stuff like this that makes modeling fun.

So obviously there is still work to be done (floor treatment, the house for the back porch scene at the Skidmore Ranch, Judd's Cabin). But I think I've made progress. I am feeling infinitely better about this design than I was about a week ago, and I think the director is feeling good, too. We have a final design presentation on Thursday, which means I'll be presenting my work to my faculty (most of whom have at least seen the drawings), the director's faculty (he's an MFA Directing student and this is his thesis), and some of the staff (Technical Director, Lighting/Sound Supervisor, Costume Shop Supervisors/Cutter-Drapers). So expect more updates soon!

The Fundamentals of Drawing

Once upon a time, in a classroom nestled amongst the cornfields of Iowa, a young woman learned about the fundamentals of scene design by putting pencil to paper. As this young woman continued her education in the art of design, she was directed to put her mad photoshopping skillz to use in her representations of her imaginative designs. But this young woman was sad. She didn't want to spend hours on the computer wrestling with the right brush size or calibrating the screen to the printer output. She felt angry and betrayed to be told that the wave of the future was in computer generated artistic output. So she decided to stop being a scene designer and work an office job inputting numbers, since she'd have to stare at a computer screen for hours on end either way.

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Okay, stupid story above aside, this is a dilemma that I face. I liken it to the philosophy about photography skills I learned in high school:

You have to learn the basics of dark room developing and manual camera adjustments before you can successfully navigate the digital tools that are becoming available in the photographic industry. Of course, one might argue that my teacher was just trying to explain away demands of the high school students to learn with the most cutting edge equipment, but I do believe that this philosophy is true because, having grown up with Photoshop on our home computers because my parents are graphic designers, it was not until I was in the dark room that I started to understand what burning and dodging was and how it could be applied digitally.

As I come into contact with undergraduates here at my illustrious institution who are being called upon to use Photoshop and turn to me with simple questions, it becomes difficult for me to teach them the program without trying to draw their attention to the real-life processes to which the Photoshop tools correspond. How can they understand that there are about fifteen ways that you can change highlight and shadow in Photoshop, if they do not understand how, in real-life, you might try to adjust those things in a photo dark room, with a pen, pencil, paper, collage, etc? If you can't walk, how do you propose you can run (or, more accurate an analogy, use a treadmill)?

It frustrates me to no end the emphasis that is being placed on digital output in theatrical design without spending time to make sure that the manual output is up to industry standards. Take drafting, for instance: many undergraduates do not know how to produced easily readable, accurate hand-drafting, so how can we expect them to create a good drafting packet in AutoCAD? Sure, they can tell you where all of the drawing buttons are and probably give you accurate information, but because they don't really understand what the purpose of line-weight is, or how best to visually indicate the sectioning of architectural and scenic elements, their computer output is going to be sloppy and difficult to process.

I think that knowing the fundamentals of the craft--being able to draw figures, accurate (or at least believable) perspective designs, evoking mood with chiaroscuro--is the only way that generating digital output moves beyond just basically relaying information and becomes an art itself. I don't know how many times I look at digital renderings and think they look flat and two-dimensional, like old-school digital animation. And digital animators start with the basics, gauranteed! Why, then, are we not spending more time teaching young designers how to get their great, imaginative images on paper rather than fussing with computer programs? The great thing about my generation and those after me is that our learning curve with computers is off the charts. Many of the people coming behind me were practically born with a mouse in their hand. We should shift our focus away from the how-to's of digital imaging software (Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc) and make sure that the how-to's of manual artistic expression are strong. Then tell the students the same thing can be done on the computer and sit back. Trust me, they'll figure it faster than you can say "create a new layer."