Saturday, May 26, 2012

A Great Review, Next Season, and NO!

First of all, I apologize for not posting pictures this time... Now that you've forgiven me, read on.

Check out this awesome review of Hairspray!  http://www.examiner.com/review/musical-review-hairspray-goes-over-big-at-the-mesa-arts-center  Hopefully, you can copy and past and see the review.  If not, there's a link on my facebook page.  :)

In other news, I spent time working on a wedding dress I need to finish for a friend of a friend.  I also did some shopping at the Joann's sales for upcoming sewing classes and Princess Amerah.  You see, she asked me if I would design a little wardrobe for her new video.  Yah, it's kinda a big deal and I'm really excited she asked me.  Of course, I'll post lots of pictures!  But just so we're clear on one thing, It's going to be amazing!  And no, I'm not going to divulge the details of what we're up to!  It's a secret!  (until I start making it and then, well, my secrets become public).

Tomorrow Beauty and the Beast closes.  That means I get to go squeeze everything into my car (ha ha) and then sort & wash sweaty laundry.  Then put it all away.  It's not my favorite part of the job, but at least I'm not building another show this week so there's less stress to get it all done.  I'll just say goodbye to the living room for a few days...  good thing we stocked up on fabreeze...   I will have exactly one full week to finish getting B&B put away before Hairspray comes home.  Seems a shame, spending so much time building a show for a 2 or 3 week run.  Then again, I am fortunate and am able to re-use costumes over and over again.

I've also almost solidified my work schedule for the next theatre season!  You'll get to see the building process of some awesome shows!  I'm super excited.   This summer I am building Charlie Brown (MCC) and Spelling Bee (MCC) and then the year is kicking off with The Aristocats (DFT) , followed by Into the Woods (DST), The Pajama Game (DFT), Pippin (DFT), Wrong Window (DFT), Sunset Blvd (DST), All My Sons (DFT), Company (DFT), and Aladdin Jr (DFT).  That's it!  I'm committed to keeping the show schedule down this coming year.  Sorry to anyone reading this who has hopes to hire me, I'm booked.  BUT I do have an open studio and you're welcome to come rent whatever you may need from my stock.   See?  My "No" isn't broken any more.  In fact, I said no to several different jobs this past week.  No, I don't want to make your brides maids dresses.  No, I don't want to alter your daughters wedding dress, and no, I simply can not fix your formal.  I think no is my new favorite word.

Lastly, and on a personal note, I cooked dinner for the fam for the first time in weeks.  I also washed the dishes, found the top of my desk (it's wood!  Who knew?) and almost caught up on all the laundry.  Did you know there was a kitchen table under that huge pile of clothes?  Shocking, I know.  Don't worry, I'll have it all covered up by tomorrow night...

Happy Sewing!

Friday, May 25, 2012

Big, Blonde and Beautiful

Here's one last little gold nugget from Hairspray.  The lovely and talented Indiia Wilmott plays Motormouth Maybell and brings down the house with her powerful voice.

And that's how it's done folks! 

Good Morning Baltimore!

Who's ready for OPENING NIGHT? Hairspray opens TONIGHT at the Mesa Arts Center.  Here's some pictures from tech night.  Remember, it's a tech/dress rehearsal so some costumes, props, etc weren't completed at the time of the photos.  :)  (that's my disclaimer, so if you don't like something just tell yourself "well, that must be something that's not finished yet"  but you'll LOVE everything!   (sorry for the poor picture quality - small camera, far away, moving actors... if you want a better look-see, get off your booty and come see the show!)

Here's Tracy - waking up in the morning, singing to the whole neighborhood. Funny, Rachel has the same comforter on her bed!  Maybe I can get her to wake up and sing good morning mesa?  Hum...

Here's one of the "quick change" racks in the green room. 

Big, Blond and BEAUTIFUL! 


I'm pretty sure this is where Tracy tries to fly through the streets of Baltimore... 



Here's Corney Collins

The Nicest Kids in Town (which are kind of the meanest kids in town...)

Edna, Penny's mom and Tracy.  Penny's mom is played by the fantastic Becky Martinez!  Seriously steals the show so many times! 


Momma I'm a Big Girl Now - with the fantastic Shari Watts as Velma.  

L to R  back row - Penny's mom, Edna, Velma and front row- Penny, Tracy and Amber. 

Link and Tracy (Link now wears a different costume so he no longer looks like a game show host)





Miss Baltimore Crabs! 

Detention Kids

That's Seaweed dancing in the middle. Another fantastic dancer is Nathan Luis.  He's on the left in the orange shirt.  He's not dancing here, but his dancing alone and strong energy is enough to come see the show!


This is the Madison scene.  It's also where the battery died in the camera, leaving me with only my memories.  I tried to stick the USB cable into my head to download the visuals so you could all see, but it didn't work. Ok, I really didn't do that.  But you thought I did, right?!? 


So here's HAIRSPRAY!  Today, as my first "day off" in awhile I slept in (7:30 is sleeping in around here) and I'm still in my polka dot pajamas.  It feels SO good!  Now I'm going to switch the zippers on Belle's dresses to velcro, head on down to the MAC to do a few alterations, play with the littles, clean the house, start catching up on the laundry and then drive up to Desert Foothills Theatre to see Beauty and the Beast with the family.  Sounds like a nice, calm, relaxing stress free day off.  (insert laughter here).   

Thursday, May 24, 2012

This is IT folks! There's so much in here you're gonna freak out!

First of all, as if this were a super long facebook post, what's on my mind is this:  1. My back hurts SO  badly I can't stop thinking about it.  2.  I simply cannot believe how much we got done in the past couple of weeks!  3.  Is it true?  Are both shows up and running? 4.  Wow! I have my life back!  5.  oh, that means I get to catch up on house cleaning and laundry.....

Ha ha, right?  But I'm serious people.  Serious.  I had good intentions to post this morning on what happened yesterday, but time escaped me and I had to get to work.  Consider this a double whammy!  Yesterday started out with SO much to get done.  I made 3 "Pinky's girls" dresses, worked on Edna and Tracy's 60's dresses, did a ton of alterations, switched some zippers for Velcro (sad day when a zipper just isn't fast enough) and tons more.  Monday - Wednesday nights were spent at the theatre sewing and fixing this and that.  Last night Austin brought the littles (and pizza!) and we all watched the show.
Here's the boys in the green room, having our little family dinner.  :)  

So, I see a lot of theatre.  I see it in so many different theatres; youth, adult, straight plays, musicals, all over Phoenix.  This, and the fact that I know how the backstage magic works, makes me a bit of a critic as to if a show is good or not.  This being said, I sat down in the audience to see Hairspray for the first time and didn't have high expectations.  I was simply just going to see the show and figure out what costume issues needed to be addressed.  Well, I'll tell you honestly that this show is AMAZING!  Down right AWESOME!  The choreography is spot on and fantastic, the actors are all on and in character and the direction is by far the best I've seen in a long time.  My friend, Kyle C. Green is the director/choreographer and he did a phenomenal job!!  I am very proud to be part of this production, and must say that I encourage everyone to BUY TICKETS NOW to see the show.  


Now... here's the moment you've been dying to see... the moment where I share pictures from rehearsal!  Mind you most of these were taken with my iPhone camera, and I was half way up in the seats... and it's tech rehearsal so there's the board right in front.... ok here you go! 
Welcome to the 60's!  This is before we put the blue feathers on Edna's dress.  Now they're on, but you get the gist of it. 
This is after rehearsal, when Kyle (in the green shirt) was talking to the cast, who are mostly in costume still.

More talking/listening.


And here you can see Wendy sitting at the board, where they set all of the cue's into the computers for the lights, etc.  

Here's Shandi modeling Edna's 60's dress after the feathers were sewn on today. 

Here's what the green room looks like on a random show night (it happened to be tonight)

And here's what the shows all about.  Hair!  Joe Navan did the wigs and they're amazing.  So amazing I couldn't get them all in one photo!  The empty Styrofoam heads are home to wigs already being worn by actors. 


Here's more back stage in the hall at Mesa Arts Center.  There are some of the actors talking to a stage hand. 

This is Joe, the super wig man, putting makeup on Joel - Corney Collins. 

More wigs!  

One of the prop tables.  In theatre, prop tables are taped off leaving little labeled spaces to put specific props.  This keeps everything organized, and makes it fast to grab and easy to return. 


I have several pictures from the show, but my computer is running super slow.  I will post again tomorrow with the rest of the pictures.  Remember - BUY YOUR TICKETS for Hairspray at the Mesa Arts Center!  It's SO awesomely good!  



Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Who needs sleep when you get to have back to back tech weeks?

Well, I need sleep.  But not yet.  Must sew!  Ha!  Hairspray is coming along well, though VERY behind. Ive been working so hard to get it done I haven't blogged.  In addition, we've been asked to not post pictures of what's going on in the show until after opening night.  So, I have some sneak peeks but nothing revealing.  I'm a tease, I know.


DO NOT miss this show!  Seriously readers, it's worth it!
















 I've been doing nothing but building costumes, making runs to get zippers/buttons/fabrics and, in general, not much of anything else.  Thanks to my husband who's had the fantastic opportunity to be Mr. Mom for the past few days! I seriously can't wait to be done with this and resume my "regular" life.

Runs to the store (SAS) look a little like this:


And some of the fun things I get to work with look like this:
And, sometime during last week's tech I ran into the armrest in the theatre and so my leg looked like this: 

This is my thigh the morning after...




And here's my thigh (with really bad lighting!) today.  This seriously hurts.  I'm a casualty of theatre...


Between tech week, My awesome nephew got married.  At one of the family parties they had a photo booth and we got to take pictures like these:



I know, that has nothing to do with work- but the pictures are funny and I wanted to share.  Plus I figured you needed something to take your mind off of my sexy thigh bruise. 


At the MAC, I spend my time in the dressing room.  I took over Little Inez's mirror spot and, well sit there and sew... 

I sew things like this!  I know you're DYING to see what this is going to be! 


And I get to work with fun trims like these:


Lots more was made (and is being made) - and loads of funny things went on this week.  There's just no time to blog it all... and, well, several times I wanted to take pictures but the littles hijacked my phone to feed their angry bird addiction...  

See you at the theatre! And keep and eye out because I'm going to reveal some goodies SOON!!



Friday, May 18, 2012

The Show(s) Must Go On!

What a week!  I am so behind on blogging.  I have simply been too tired and too swamped.  Here's the skinny on what went on at the Wardrobe (and theatre)...

Here's what some of the cast looks like on stage, in costume ready for rehearsal.  But, before we got this far we had TONS of work to do.  There was a mix up in communication and, well, it left us with WAY more things to do than originally thought.  But we pulled it off, after long, long hours and lots of deep breaths.

And I couldn't have done it without my faithful costume team!  Everyone was busy all week, everyone worked longer hours than usual and I appreciate the team SO much!  Here's some pictures from the week:





And then there was tech nights... and I snapped a couple pictures with my phone just so you could kind of see what it all looks like. 


And we FINALLY finished Belle's pink dress... thought that would never happen!

Tonight was opening night.  I had family plans (Nephew is getting married tomorrow!) and didn't get to go.  But, I did faithfully facebook stalk all those associated with Beauty and the Beast and proudly stole their pictures.  Here's what I found:


Super cute, huh?  I'm not sure what's up with the beast on the left, he looks kinda crazy.  The prince on the right is the prince before he turns into a beast. The pretty girl in the middle is one of the narators.  And a Silly Girl. 

Now, you might be wondering what is going on with Hairspray?  Because mostly I've been talking about Beauty and the Beast. Well, don't be alarmed because in the midst of all the B&B stuff we've also been working on Hairspray.  For some reason or another my brain gets on one thing while writing the blog and forgets to switch to the other.  Hairspray opens next weekend and I am LOVING the costumes!  Here's the Dynamite dresses (but they don't look so good in this picture.  They're form fitting and super cute on the girls) 
Actually, there's 3 dresses there.  :)  The girls have bright floral dresses and lots of checks and plaids.  The boys aren't as fun as the girls, but they're looking fantastic, too!  Especially the ones I get to dress up like girls.  Ha!  I will post more pictures soon.  These past few days have been so busy I haven't taken many new ones.  :/   Onward and Upward! More pictures promised soon!!