Theatricalities Past...

Since I'm attempting to string out the boat-race pictures for as long as possible, today's post is a wander down memory lane to my days as a costume wench at Cambridge's ADC theatre...

This performance of Mozart and Salieri (February 2007) was my first foray into costume design, after initially doing lighting as it's what I'd done at school, and really set in stone my love for creating a character and for working in theatre in general... 

The production was brilliant, selling out a lateshow slot (absolutely impossible to do!) and the people made my entry into the horrendously cliquey world of cam-theatre extremely easy. 

Theatre is no longer a part of my life in a meaningful sense, as to be involved, you basically have to sacrifice degree / college life / friends / sleep / health - if you're me... It's actually in the CUADC constitution that if you get more than a 2.2 then you're not doing enough theatre! Totally true. Hehe. But I don't regret a single second of it. 

There were many other productions I was involved with, and each one makes me feel proud to have been involved and to have produced such professional quality work. It's a real team effort and Cam does produce some outstanding actors and directors and technical people, but I don't regret leaving it behind. I still have great friends from doing it, learnt loads of skills I'd never have had another opportunity to develop, and still occasionally work on the theatre box office. But not doing shows has given me and my health a bit of breathing room.

Heart-to-heart aside, this production was hella-fun. Despite breaking up with my long-term boyfriend the weekend before the show went up, it remains in my mind as one of the most positive experiences Cambridge has offered me (as well as providing a great rebound boy lol). And there have been many. (Not rebound boys ;-D honest!)

It is probably the darkest show I costumed, but its small scale and period costume coupled with freaky scary make up really made it fun... I'd been briefed with descriptions of Japanese theatre - particularly Kabuki, Kyogen (there were masks involved...) and Bunraku. 

The director had also expressed a wish for the types of coats for Mozart and Salieri to wear and the general colour schemes. For make up, I had Edward-Scissorhands meets child-playing-with-facepaint on Halloween with a bit of climbing vines, mould and rot thrown in... Haha.

And working with actors does make you open your mind to the ridiculous in life a little more...

And sitting in dressing rooms gossiping for hours with some of my closest friends, playing with green face paint isn't exactly the biggest chore in the world!

Ah... Here comes the "costume wench" photo! Don't I look so nervous! Ah to be a first year again. Sigh. Got to love all the costume repairs I did for that show, though it wasn't as bad as the show I'm going to show you next time when I had to fix the entire inseams of one of the boys' trousers with gaffa tape for the whole second half of the opening night as he'd been dancing so enthusiastically!

***Please excuse the crappy quality of the photos - the originals are on my removable hard drive which is currently at home, so these were copied off facebook, with resultant reduced number of pixels. I did my best!!!

I hope you enjoyed that little foray into my theatrical past... I'll show you some more shows and chatter about theatricalities in general in upcoming posts!

Xxxc