http://www.etsy.com/shop/SmallStars

So I saw this photoshoot from the November issue of Vogue a couple weeks ago, when I bought it to read on the plane to London to go see family, and although I ended up chucking the Vogue away, (which I did feel a little criminal about) I ripped out this photoshoot. The pictures are beautiful, but also really lovely to see because the man in question is Jeremy Irvine from the play War Horse, which I had the fortune to see before I left London, but which is now on stage at the Lincoln Center in New York. Its coming to The Ahmanson in LA in June 2012, apparently, which I hugely excited about.

The play follows a boy, Albert, and his horse, Joey, who is sold into the British Cavalry in WWI. The play is amazing largely due to the  life size puppets that make up the horses, who you genuinely feel for.

The puppets are made by a South African company, The Handspring Puppet Company and made of really light-weight material, bent and lashed cane,  to make them easier and more comfortable to wear. The skin is made of nylon mesh with the mane and ears made of leather. They’re controlled from underneath by 2 puppeteers, with the actors handling the head,neck and ears, as they walk or ride the horse.

There’s a fantastic interview w the creators here:

And the link to the broadway site is here:

For the complete Vogue photoshoot see here:

I’m finally foraying into dance again, which has been fun,  designing 2 pieces for Clairobscur Dance Company, who will show on November 5th at Dance Arc in Pasadena.

It’s been an interesting process for me, and had me designing in a very different way. The pieces I’ve designed are not period or character driven, and although they do reference the material the artistic director, Laurie Sefton, has created from, there has been a lot of freedom to create something fresh and different, particular in the second piece.

The first piece Oblivion Soames, is based on the world of medicine. Going through the motions of operations, shuffling in and out of hospitals,  the vulnerability and sense of self-protection one must have to get oneself through it all.  For this piece I created silk chiffon medical gowns (the nicest you’ve ever seen ) that flow softly with the performers and show their bodies (all bias cut… yes, a nightmare, but so worth it). They are open in the back, and also incredibly sheer, showing the vulnerability of the patients. I was watching the film Never Let Me Go, as I created them, which seemed like an uncannily good choice, watching children created to be organ donors go through endless cold procedures.

The second piece, (which I have to say I’m most excited about) I had no real brief for. It’s a dance created around a piece of music that was written about the I5; the composer was shuttling back and forth along the road commuting for months and wrote the piece to celebrate the I5- particularly the drive between LA and SF. As someone who has taken that road way  too often,  (my parents are in SF) but is now so sick of it I always take the 101, it was nice to go back to that road to create this piece.

After researching travelers, traveling clothing, deconstructed clothing,  and sculptural shapes             (looking at Vivianne Westwood, Hussain Chalayan, and an amazing book by the V&A called Radical Fashion), sitting down with Laurie, we realized that none of the shapes I had chosen would accentuate the body, something she was really set on.

So I went back to the drawing board, empty handed. The only thing we agreed on was colour- the dusty yellows, that look like they are smudged pastels, the seared burnt umbers, the washed out baby blues, the saged greens, and patches of brown- no really flowers, but just dried grass and fields for miles. So I decided to create just that.

I took images from along the road- the grapevine, pictures of hay being burnt, the windmills around Tracy, the flats just after the grapevine, the single ant trail of cars as far as your eye can see, turned all those images on their side, and then collaged them all out of fabric. Easier said than done…

which is why I took some pictures of my process

Uncertain Terrain will be performed at 8.30pm on the 5th and 7.30pm on the 6th of November at Dance Arc in Pasadena, 1158 East Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, California  91106.

For more from Clairobscur’s official site see here

They look so awful, in the most wonderful way In all honestly, I did tone myself down, especially on the leads… an even managed to get a marvel shirt on our Robbie.

Anyway here are some pictures from the show, and some of the costume designs they came from. I kind of felt I was cheating a little when I started the first design, printing 80s images off getty images and painting over them; then I remembered there were another 94 to go   a number that only went up in the last 2 months.

Its a sweet, funny show, directed by Jim Hormel and the choreography is amazing, the dancings fantastic and did I mention it’s really funny?

So go see!

The Wedding Singer @ Cypress College

9200 Valley View, Cypress, CA 90630

open for one more weekend- October 14th and 15th

My next show is Loot, written by Joe Orton in 1965, a dark comedy satirizing the integrity of the police and ridicules the idea of being an upright citizen. It’s all based in a nursing home where Nurse Fay McMahon has successfully had yet another rich patient die on her, while the dead patients’ son is interested in larger sums of money, direct from the local bank.

Its a chance to venture into 1960s England before the swinging sixties really took off, and also a chance to explore Joe Orton, his work, and untimely death, at the hands ( and hammer) of his lover Kennith Halliwell in 1967. There’s an interesting article about Orton’s death here that exposed quite how paranoid Halliwell was, calling Joe’s friends and pretending to be Joe to find out what they really thought of him and asking about his lack of invitations to parties, after Entertaining Mr Sloane was produced in London in 2009.

I’m  also watching endless sixties classic and b-movies, (Psychomania! – so bad its good 60s motorcycle gang flick) ; Prick up Your Ears, the movie after Orton’s Diaries of the same name collected together post humorously by John Lahr (everything you possibly or didn’t want to know about cottaging);  Psychedelic Decadence: Sex, Drugs & Low-Art in Sixties & Seventies Britain ( which has great lists of 60s B movies), and The Sixties: Big Ideas, Small Books by Jenny Diski.  Its making for interesting reading

Loot by Joe Orton, directed by Bert Pigg
September 23 – October 29
Talk Back 10/16*
Runs Fri & Sat @ 8PM; Sun 10/16 @ 7PM; Thu 10/27 @ 8PM

http://www.littlefishtheatre.org/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_36

So in honour of the lovely cast of Southern Exposure…

Deep Dish Tomato Pie

Don’t forget to wash your hands with Listerine first

More pictures to come- once I get my hands on them- including the fabulous Cindy Smith as Wonderwoman

this month they’re in San Pedro, on the ocean at Point Fermin, and then touring around beaches of LA until August.

Pictures!

We built all the soldiers costumes, and the ladies dresses, other than Antonia from scratch. I have learnt so much about down and dirty construction ( on very few hours of sleep) that still looks pretty damn nice. And then for the next week there were about 30 tunics built for Lear, the second show, pictures of which I’m sure will come soon.

http://www.shakespearebythesea.org/calendar.html

for dates

all pictures courtesy of Rich Clark

http://richclarkphoto.zenfolio.com/p469549442/he028114#h26dc0ffd

In the meanwhile I’m taking a hiking, kareoke, concert going, serious-cheese-eating break before the next project starts- A Comic Con Costume in collaboration with Crab Cat Industries, which will be a little(!) bit different

Time to get a move on… the next project is here!

I’m Costume assisting for Shakespeare By the Sea, and for those of you that don’t know about it, its an awesome program.

19 Beaches, or Parks, in one summer, with free performances of King Lear or Much Ado About on alternate nights. Its a really fun program because its a little bit like the circus, drive up to the site in the trailer, pull out the set, assemble the set, hang up the costumes on separate nails for each performer and put on a show, pop it all back in the truck and drive on…

Anyway, the costumes promise to be beautiful, courtesy of Costume Designer Valerie Blair, and both our stitching skills

So come out!

Shakespeare By the Sea opens with Much Ado About Nothing June 9th at Point Fermin in San Pedro, all shows start at 8pm.

Bring your own food and drink,  and lots of blankets for Point Fermin- it gets super chilly.

For the tour dates see here:

http://www.shakespearebythesea.org/calendar.html

Places:
AL = Altadena [map, more info]
BH = Beverly Hills [map, more info]
ES = El Segundo [map, more info]
GP = Glenoaks Park, Glendale [map, more info]
HB = Hermosa Beach [map, more info]
LB = Long Beach Museum of Art [map, more info]
LC = La Crescenta [map, more info]
LN = Laguna Niguel [map, more info]
LW = Lakewood [map, more info]
MB = Manhattan Beach [map, more info]
NB = Newport Beach [map, more info]
PF = Point Fermin Park, San Pedro [map, more info]
PV = Playa Vista Central Park Bandshell [map, more info]
RHS = Rowland Hghts Schabarum Reg. Park [map, more info]
RHP = Rowland Hghts Pathfinder Comm. Park [map, more info]
RM = Rossmoor [map, more info]
RPV = Hesse Park, Rancho Palos Verdes [map, more info]
RPVT = Terranea Resort, Rancho Palos Verdes [map, more info]
SP = South Pasadena [map, more info]
TOR = Torrance [map, more info]
WH = Whittier [map, more info]