Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts

Saturday, 12 December 2009

All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go?

So today, I have managed a two hour bar shift at the theatre, and an epic queue in Borders, and not much else... Post-term lethargic FUG-time. Joys.

But to cheer me up was a dress I'd been sent by the lovely people at Covert Candy, a great site dedicated to both vintage shopping and swapping! It revolves around a "credit-based system" where if someone wants an item of clothing you no longer need, you can send it to them in return for credits you can then spend on someone else's lovely stuff! They also have a section of the site dedicated to a small, but well selected Vintage Emporium run by the site owners, and there, sitting in the Clearance section, was this adorable dress. It has such a cute print and perfect colours... It's definitely about to enter my day dress collection!


Ok, so it's not remotely wintery, but WHO CARES?!

My room is lacking in any accoutrements with which to dress up this little number, as I'm halfway through moving out, and have no high heels due to a bottom-of-the-foot injury a few weeks ago. Thus the outfit photos with bare feet or Converse!

This was my attempt to play with the length... Thoughts?

So, I should really be packing... Instead I was just distracted by boy, then started watching Angel, then started organising holiday theatre... Might leave Cam by 1am. Maybe. Oops!

Night guys! London tomorrow! Woop!

Xxxc

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Green Light at the end of the dock...

Now I'm the first to admit that I've been crap at this blogging malarkey of late... It's been bloody ages since my last post, and I haven't even been checking in on other people! Naughty huh.

I've been working at my internship since the end of June and I think that I just needed to separate work and play a bit. Inspiration has been oddly lacking, and I've been madly dashing from one "London thing" to the next, so updating online hasn't exactly been a priority!

My life of late has been hectic to say the least, filled with lots of time with friends, theatre, film, art and yummy food. Claire from The View From Here is teaching me how to bake, and life's really rather satisfactory.

Work's fun as I work with lovely people, but I have come to realise that as much as I love fashion and clothes and making visual statements through my wardrobe; creating a character, I don't want to make it my career... Which I guess is why I haven't been online. I need a bit of separation between work and play.

However, with fashion week coming up, and work being frenetic, I thought now would be an *ideal* time to start blogging again (see the slight sarcasm?)!!! ;-D I won't be around commenting too much, but I'm going to try to post content more often.

So. Where to start?

Well, first up, I have a couple of reviews and an update on my current addictions:

1) my name necklace

Okay, so Sex and the City is a looooong way gone, but I got sent a Cassiopeia name necklace by the lovely people at mynamenecklace.co.uk! Exciting times. I shall put up a photo as soon as I can, but my camera is currently not exactly working. It's silver and I wear it several times a week. It makes me smile! It's good quality and came in a lovely purple gift box too. I'm a sucker for pretty presentation... The only reason I don't wear it every day is that as far as jewellery goes I usually prefer gold, and I wish I'd asked for an 18" not a 16" chain, but overall I'd really recommend this website if you are going to get one! I certainly love mine, and if I weren't completely broke I'd get myself another one!!! I rather like the acrylic necklaces like this one. So thanks to Steve for getting me involved!


Again, everyone's got one of the Tavi tees by now, and the Igor and Andre blog ones are doing the rounds too - and you all look GORGEOUS! But since I haven't been online much lately, I thought I'd just spare a moment to wax lyrical about these tees. These are my favourite basic wear-with-anything-anytime tops. I wear them to work with skirts and belts and on the weekends in city or country with jeans or dresses. The cotton is so thick and yummy and though they blatantly don't exactly make me look stick thin, I love them anyway... The adorable Drew even sent me this lovely specimen new one that, bad me, I'm not sure which blog it belongs to, but I adore, which again I will have to wait to put pictures of up as camera = dimwitted. I am also *loving* Rumi's one and have had a long term crush on the one by Bonjour Girl... Wish (as usual) I wasn't so darn broke!!!

3) lots and lots and lots of theatre

My life of late has revolved around shows... I love that the calibre of things being put on in and around London this summer has been so high. As I had saved up to enjoy my time at home, I've done a tonne, and loved every minute of it.

A few highlights:

Dominic Cooper in Phedre. Love Racine. Love his arms. Sigh.
Ian McKellen in Waiting For Godot. Perfect. Bumbling through Beckett. A Class Act.
Arcadia... Just a lovely play.
The Mariinsky Ballet at the Royal Opera House - not technically theatre... The Homage to Balanchine was amazingness personified, and their Sleeping Beauty was breathtaking.
Jerusalem at the Royal Court. I've loved Mark Rylance since he was artistic director at the Globe, and he's just AMAZING. Such stage presence. Such a beautiful voice. Such a great play.

I've also been to a lot of Proms - managed 5 concerts in one day on the bank holiday!!! And a lot of film... Anyone who gets a chance to see Mid-August Lunch SHOULD!!!

Okay, enough rambling now. I should sleep. I'm off to the Tate in the morning bright and early to see the Futurism exhibition with one of my closest friends who has been away in Edinburgh for a month... Woop!

Night. I promise there'll be more pictures next time!

Xxxc

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Kidnap / Escape, Countryside, Theatre... Oh, and a GIVEAWAY!!!

Yesterday evening, I went out to dinner with my best friend, Will.

In honesty, I have four people in the world who I might genuinely refer to in such a way... To me, the term is one I personally don't attribute to the people I've known the longest, or neccessarily to the people who know Absolutely Everything - friendship is a voyage of discovery after all! To me, a best friend is someone I feel completely myself with and trust to be able to deal with all my crap if I need someone to be there for me, without worrying they won't be there the next time. (And it goes the other way, as the million-and-one conversations on the kitchen floor with room-mate attest.)

Will is basically my adopted-big-brother. His mother does actually describe me as "the daughter I never had", so that's pretty much correct... These two photos pretty much sum us up - one was taken at a May Week (in June) garden party last summer, and the other was at a friend's birthday party about the beginning of my 2nd year.


Anyway... Carrying on with my ramble...

Will, being the dashing gent he is, recognised, over dinner, the distress I've been in, and immediately decided that I could not spend Easter weekend in Cambridge, but that I was going home with him to his parents' house in the Hampshire countryside. Let me just point out, that I know his parents very well, and this is not an irregular hide-out for me...

So, at 4am this morning/yesterday, after racing each other down the motorway, we arrived at his. Since then, it's been pouring down with rain, but it's warm and cosy and quiet... Well, note exactly true, as they have a dog and a puppy! (I'll try to post pictures of them before the weekend is out, as they're JUST ADORABLE.) Not managed to do work yet, but that's partly due to exhaustion. And yet I do feel inspired. It may be grey, but the colours of the landscape around are so comforting. The greens and browns and occassional flashes of red and yellow from hedgerows and gardens make me smile...



I was also the happy recipient of benefits of someone else's misfortune. Will's younger brother, who came home from Oxford today, was ill and unable to attend the performance of Merchant of Venice that was on at the Watermill Theatre tonight with Will and his mother, so I was roped into attending too.

Oh yes. Such a hardship. I hate Shakespeare I do. Oh wait. I love Shakespeare. I lied. Very Badly.

The production was directed by Edward Hall (Sir Peter Hall's son), and had an all-male cast. They are doing Merchant in rep with Midsummer Night's Dream, which Sally (Will's mum) went to on Monday and proclaimed as hugely successful. Well, tonight's performance was equally successful. Though the women really annoyed me - partly from inconsistencies and partly because the guy who played Jessica was Just Weak! Basically, it was really well staged, in a prison, with a great set of leads and some really strong acting and direction. Merch can be incomprehensible at times, but this interpretation was affecting and clear in direction and speech from the word go. Brilliant. I just hated that Portia was played like a Tranny, while Jessica seemed to be supposed to be a girly actual-girl which were portrayals neither consistent with each other, nor with the prison-setting, in the case of Jessica. But that's small fry really, considering it was a throughly engaging production of a play I've never before liked. Even the gory scenes like the eye-removal were done well! And the choosing of the box for Portia's hand in marriage - pick which of the gold, silver and lead boxes have Portia's picture in, get the clue right, or otherwise get a skull or a mirror with mean verse attached - was extremely well done. Especially considering the last Merchant of Venice I saw, my mother and I almost shouted "sack the hatter" at bows... They did have silly ones.

So anyway. In the spirit of this week's outfit posts, I do have a few, though please accept my apologies for the wearing of the same dress I wore last weekend! This time, with different stuff, but essentially, not Massively interesting...

- "slaving" at the computer...
- poseeeeer! that fire is so so toasty! this is the annexe downstairs, that is basically a self-contained flat, where I'm working / sleeping for the weekend.

- this weird lavender thing makes me happy!

- reading Conrad by the fire...

I wasn't massively dressed up for the theatre... It being a provincial one, there's no need to think more than country-smart and warmth. So I'm wearing my Acne Jeans, Topshop dress, mother's old charcoal cardigan, Kate Kuba heels and Tiffany tear drop necklace, bracelet and earring set. Relatively standard in a countryfied, comfy way.

Hmmmmm. This was supposed to be a short post... So I might stop there. And go to bed. Lol.

But before I go... Lazy Oaf have a SALE on til Monday... 20% off at the checkout with the code youareggshellent until Midnight, Easter Monday! Check it out! I'm thinking of getting one of these... Maybe...


Night night!

Xxxc

Friday, 3 April 2009

Musical Theatricalities!!!

Has anyone heard of the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet?

We did it as the Lent term musical in my first year, and it was SUCH FUN! "Shakespeare's long lost rock-and-roll masterpiece" pretty much says it all... (Look it up on itunes and you'll see what I mean! ;-D)

Basically, it's pretty much the biggest show of the year, and I'd applied to be costume assistant... It was my SIXTH show that term and I was exhausted and got really ill in the middle of term and hadn't noticed that the actual costume designer had done nothing...

So, with A WEEK to go, he pulled out, citing wanting to run for CUSU (our student's union) as reasons he couldn't do it... Basically elections were at the same time. LAMEST EXCUSE EVER!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was suddenly costume designer for a show that went up in a week, with no costumes made and 22 people waiting to be able to practice in them...

Let's just say, it was one of the most stressful, but exhilerating weeks of my life... We basically redesigned the whole costume concept, and I roped in an absolute horde of people - mostly techies, more used to hanging lanterns, carpentry and programming sound desks than to sewing machines, mountains of pink fabric and miles of ribbon - to help with endless sewing, sticking badges onto shirts, and glitter-glue-ing late into the night! 

And it ended up beautiful! We got rave reviews and I made a tonne of new friends in the process... Silver linings eh!

This is the show where one of the boys' pants split mid-show and gaffa tape was the only option... My favourite costumes were definitely the neon pink dress we made for the lead, out of UV spangly material, from scratch... Oh, and the cute little shirt-shifts we made for the girl pilots... They had ribbon hems and were just So Darling!


The most fun thing to make was the hat for the robot (bottom right and left above). It was a colander we'd bought from Tesco, spray-painted silver, with millions of little LED lights all over the place. It was fantastic, and I will be forever indebted to my best mate, Will, for sorting all those fiddly little blinking lights, when he was supposed to be orchestrating the building of the entire set (as he was Technical Director, so supposed to be in charge of everything Else!)... Hooray for girlie charm eh! ;-D

And, of course, the necessary costume wench pic... Look at me in my boys shirt and red lippie! Odd angle, and rather ill, but Too Cool For School anyway eh ;-D - can't believe this was 2 years ago! Gawd I feel so OLD!

Hope you like the pictures! 

Xxxc
Photos are either my own, or copyright Charles Arrowsmith and Damian Robertson. Poster copyright Esh Alladi. Thanks on this post have to be extended to WW, SM, PN, JD, H, PMD, HO, EA, HS, AB, SP, RL, The B, Spangly G, R, HG, The WHOLE S.O.D. and many many more...

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

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

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

The Weekend of London Lovliness Series - #1

As I said... This weekend, at the boat race, we did a photoshoot.

Although I said the photos would be in limbo, T-B has come through for me, and since there are a few different aspects that I want to show off, I'm going to break down the shoot-posts into three 5-picture parts... # 1 is the photo shoot itself, # 2 is inspiring images of the surrounding area and # 3 is detail shots.

I'm going to do them interspersed with posts about my former life as a costume wench at the ADC theatre in Cambridge, so bear with me this week! Hopefully there'll be plenty for you to enjoy feasting your eyes on, and I'll try to find interesting things to say about it all ;-D

So...

Step 1) Ignore boat race. Hug instead.

Step 2) Go home and dance in the streets

Step 3) Admire motorbikes.

Step 4) Have fun with reflections

Step 5) Strike a pose. In. Vogue. (Well, almost...)

It was a great day, and thanks to all involved in that. Not only was the exhibit in the morning one of the best museum trips I've ever had, but my friends at the boat race were on top form, and taking T-B to my childhood-home bit of London - Chelsea. 

We moved to a more suburban area when I was school age, but due to friends and family, most of my formative memories are here... It's where I am most comfortable. Our flat was above a quite famous pub on the even more famous King's Road - where Vivienne Westwood had her SEX shop...

In a Susie-Bubble-esque shops-googlemaps-venture, on a smaller, much more personal scale, I created my London Life-Map (1 - Chelsea). Hopefully I'll do some more soon, but here's for starters... 
View Larger Map 
- when you click to a larger map, you need to go up and to the left slightly if you can't see any of the pins or the KR - for some reason it sometimes decentres... -

Going back in the midst of stressy dissertation time was a breath of fresh air.

Anyway... on the day I was wearing Adidas patent basketball shoes - bought in Paris with my mum on a girlie holiday last year, the Topshop tights, the purple leather skirt from Rokit, blue GAP tee, GAP shell pink cardigan, scarf from charity shop in Rochester, Toy Watch, purple leather flower cuff from ARK, Rodchenko and Popova exhibition brooch (detail forthcoming in #3), Dolce and Gabbana red patent clutch bag, Paul Costelloe coat...

Oh, and my AIDS day ribbon that I refuse to take off. I'm Cambridge's student's union executive Sexual Health and HIV Awareness officer, so wearing it is part of my job description as well as being for a cause I really believe in. It's so so important... Have a look at CAMFED - a campaign to educate girls in rural Africa and help them gain economic independence after leaving school in a bid to end their poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS. It's a really amazing cause!

Until next time chicas!

Xxxc

Monday, 30 March 2009

Theatrical musings and Russian 1920s art...

So I used to be a costume wench (designer) for theatre productions... I spent most of first and second year dressing other people for the stage before I buried myself in work and came back into the collegiate fold.

But that doesn't stop me having a bit of a thing for theatrical aspects of clothing and a bit of a crush on costume and set designing artists...

So anyway, yesterday I went home to London again, this time for the Oxford Cambridge boat race - we lost... BOOOOOOO! - and to go to the Tate Modern for the Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism exhibition... 

The boat race was lovely - it was sunny, everyone was happy (until we lost) and all in all, it was great seeing my friends... T-B and I Did do a photo shoot, but that will emerge later in the week as those photos are currently in computer-limbo until he's back from a visit to his girl in Bath. 

So... The exhibition was also AMAZING. I must admit to being a huge fan of a lot of modern art - I spend a lot of my free time at the Tate Modern, and this is no exception. I love their use of line and colour. We were in quite a silly mood and spent quite a lot of the exhibition trying to decide what images they could be behind the abstract-ness...
 


The collage is mainly Rodchenko and his graphic design work, while the paintings are some of Popova's GORGEOUS stuff. I love her use of colour and shade. It's so subtle and expressive!

Both Rodchenko and Popova, under the early years post-Russian Revolution produced first studio easel work FAR ahead of its time and then moved from conventional artistry to posters, textiles, graphics, architecture, furniture and mass media - designing for a worker's club (we played a game of chess on one of the boards Rodchenko designed) and the poster for "Battleship Potemkin" for example... The colours and shapes are so striking and I ended up dreaming about it all last night. A simple but beautiful exhibition which I really felt opened my eyes, both from a more traditional painting POV and a graphic / textile design one.

They also designed clothes and costumes for theatre and Rodchenko designed stage sets, which were amazing...

Aren't these kwl? They're dress and textile designs by Popova... I just love the patterns and the muted but strong colours... They had a scarf in the hammer and sickle design. I didn't get it but now wishing I had. I might nip back in if I'm in London again while the exhibition's on... Naughty eh ;-D
And this is my favourite costume by Rodchenko... I'm a sucker for a)burgundy and b) uniform. Hehe.

In the shop, I fell in love with something else... A book on Russian and Soviet theatre which is not only really interesting about theatre under oppression but also contains some AMAZING photos of sets and costumes...

the Classicising figure in the bottom left is Just To Die For, especially considering it's pre-Revolution and yet looks like it could be put on stage tomorrow!

None of the images in these two collages are from Rodchenko and Popova, but from the book "Russian and Soviet Theatre" byRudnitsky
I wish I had time to snuggle up with this book, but it will have to wait a while... Until then, it is sitting on my shelf, unread, but filled with possibilities. I am really feeling some of the make up techniques and the harsh lines.

Xxxc

Friday, 27 February 2009

Feeling Black

I always used to be a NO BLACK CLOTHING zone...

But lately, black has been jumping out at me all over the place... (sorry about the tiny-ness - click on it to see a bigger version.)


In recent weeks I've also acquired a few more black things to try out anyway...

First up, black Topshop hareem trousers. Just so f-ing comfy!

- with h&m top and tibetan stole plus footless tights from a play and m&s flats


- with black tights probably from sainsbury's lol, primark tee, charity shop necklace and urban outfitters horsey scarf. Worn with black m&s flats again. 

I also found THE heeled oxfords today... Ok, so a few months ago I would have said No Way to black, but now it feels good. And they were only £25 in a sale here in Cam. (I also got a longer pair of brown boots which are yummy and I will post soon!) I am SO SO SO loving the sheer ribbon laces! 
And, here's a pair of silk 3/4 lengths from 3.1 Philip Lim, in the Luisa Via Roma sale that Bryanboy alerted me to! You can't really see the silky shininess, but trust, they work for the pjs trend lol. I'm using them as surrogates for a pair of ice blue long silk pants I almost got from h&m a while back. Still regret leaving them. But these will do... Even if my room mate thinks they're ridiculous!!! ;-D
- just with h&m top...
- with h&m top, the oxfords, vintage belt from the mother and vintage porcelain pendant.
- I've had this black (Jack Wills - eeeuuuurrrch!) cashmere (so so so so so soft) jumper a while... worn with Kat Kuba shoes, Acne jeans, h&m tee underneath, vintage silk scarf and Paul Smith mustard blazer. I wore this to my Classics class on Wednesday and TOWERED above everyone. Hehehe.

What do you lot think of black at the mo?

Xxxc

Tuesday, 17 February 2009

Love for Literary Feeling

Jumping on the Clothes Horse's beautiful bandwagon... I love bookshelves. When I go to a lecturer's office for a supervision, nothing fascinates me more than taking a gander at their bookshelves. One thing in this place that makes us lucky (in my view) is all the lovely lovely space for books. I have 11 good sized book shelves in my room... Far more than I could fill with the books my parents allow me to lug back and forth, but I do my best!

So... Up first we have my two 'down time' shelves... Top Shelf: One half filled with dvds (a strange and mildly embarrassing selection of Studio Ghibli cartoons, Buster Keaton silent loveliness, Star Trek films, chick flicks of an extremely unintellectual nature, and lots of French films), the other half, with juice (and alcohol out of the picture... Such a student eh ;-D)
Bottom shelf: Holst - The Planets score, psychology books, bibliophilia and fashion interviews, my Ghana guide, a bit of (soc and bio) anthropology and some 'classics' - I believe we can see Tolstoy's War and Peace...
 
Now we have a little further along the same bookshelf, missing out Mitford, Golding, Dante and Rillke, we come to my depressing Russian novel, Kapuscinski and Tenessee Williams obsessions, part of my Cambridge Pocket Shakespeare collection, Henry James spine chillers, the obvious Austin, the Bride of Lammermoor and Wuthering Heights... The stripy spine is a book of ghost stories. The rest of this shelf contains marshmallows and a lot of books on sewing and costume, a book on Mikhail Baryshnikov and my college's 500 anniversary book.

See! Lots of scary science and management... Though some of those management tomes might work their way onto my shelves next year since I'm (*crossed fingers*) taking it for part III... What a strange thought!

Bookshelf organising aside, I really am a bibliophile... I love spending hours in book shops... Independent, new booksellers or Dusty old booksellers. Just no high street chain, thank you very much! My favourite places have to be Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street and John Sandoe Books off the King's Road, both in London. The former is an amazing building, filled with travel writing and fiction mostly, but they have a gorgeous 2nd hand gallery above the Western Europe room. John Sandoe is probably where my heart lies... I've been going there since, well, I was pushed around in a pushchair! We used to live in Chelsea, on the KR itself, and it still feels like home to me. I try to make a trip to John Sandoe about once a fortnight when I'm home, as the people in there are so amazingly knowledgeable, and I've known several of them since I was teeny-tiny... They can find anything, from anywhere too!

I also love to read books about books. If you ever want a quick and uplifting read, Anne Fadiman's 'Ex Libris' is a beautiful little collection of essays. And looks cute too!

Finally... If you're ever in a bookstore with me, get out of the way... I'm a fiend when it comes to buying the things. Always have been, always will be. 

At least I don't buy Mills and Boon by the bucketload anymore!!! (Yes, that was a middle school phase...) Hehe ;-D

Xxxc