The Taming of the Shrew gets under way

Big events today on the Design Show & Tell. To everyone's dismay and Adrian Noble's fury, nobody was present from the set design team to introduce the model or answer questions. After the incredulity had subsided Adrian introduced me in glowing terms, and I took everyone throu my concepts - to varying degrees of comprehension(!)

In the afternoon we had the fitting for Bree Welch's costume that we were reviewing on Saturday. Noah Tafolla was there again to film so Maxwell came in too. Louise Powers' work was much admired. Bree had the perfect figure for the dress and was delighted with it.






Very few alterations were required, and as this is the bridal dress we left it long to create a train.








These are swatches for Fitzroy, an ambitious equerry, in Madness of King George.


I plucked up courage to ride my bike into work across the park. On the way back a passer-by, hijacked by Maxwell, took this photo of us with a statue of Kate Sessions, a lady who spent 60 years of her long life clearing Balboa Park of the desert scrub and planting the beautiful parkland one sees today.

Getting down to work

The task on Saturday was to discuss the wedding dress for Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. This is a mock-up of it in what we call calico, but the Americans call muslin. It will be an extremely ornate dress worn by the actress Bree Welch. She has not yet arrived in San Diego, so we're going as far as we can from her measurements.

During this session we were being video'd for a film being made in conjunction with the Historical Museum for a 75th Anniversary Exhibition of the Old Globe, featuring the work of the costume department.

The costume is being made by Louise Powers. Here she demonstrates for the camera how the corsage of pearl embroidery will be fitted to the bodice. We found this in a wedding gown shop, where it would have been destined for an ornate bridal gown. I've always to use one of these, but they've always seemed too OTT, but this is absolutely what is wanted.

The dress is supposed to demonstrate that her father has a great deal more money than taste and this corsage spoke to all of us as soon as we saw it!

The under-dress is a classic Elizabethan farthingale shape of ombré-d pink silk, which will help the light over-dress appear to vary its colour with the light.

We then needed to discuss the fabric that is to be used for the latter and here the Head of the Costume Shop Stacy Sutton is giving a view.

The top fabric will be multiple sun-ray pleated circles of shell-pink organza, edged with fine filigree gold.


Because my costume drawing is from the front further questions then arose about how I intended the back, and so I had to do a further drawing of the back to show what I meant.

It was particularly unnerving to have to do this with a video camera a foot away from my nose.



Here you see the final result. The original drawing of the front is on the right, with the new sketch of the back on the left, which shows how the over-dress is pinned and falls.

Next we needed to discuss the ombrè-ing of the pink silk with Teri Carignan the dyer. She is holding swatches of experimental colour tests she has made in order to find the closest match.

The shadowing of the pink will echo the way the pleating goes on the overdress, but you can't dye organza without it going floppy, so to get some movement into the colour we have to treat the under-dress to do the work for us. With us is Charlotte Devaux, who is Stacy's main assistant and the chief costume supervisor.


Afterwards we went over to the workstation of Erin Tavares who handles metal craftwork and fabrication. She has questions concerning the armature that will support Bianca's ruff in order to make it stand out horizontally. What she has done is absolutely right for the needs of the costume we have been discussing.

A useful Saturday afternoon!

As a final glimpse of work in progress elsewhere in a costume shop of 50 people: here work is proceeding to create body padding for the extremely fat Prince of Wales in Bennett's The Madness of King George, later in the season.

San Diego 2

Maxwell traveled out with me to have an Easter holiday and help me settle in, but has been grounded till heaven knows when by the ash cloud. He's booked to go out on Tuesday but the signs are not looking hopeful.
And Adrian, who is directing the Madness of King George and Lear is due to arrive on Monday, but may well not... The entire company will be lined up, the refreshments will be ready, but we are all at the mercy of the volcano. At least we will be allowed to get on with fittings. Unfortunately Ron Daniels, who is directing Shrew, is working on a production of Bohème, [or possibly Traviata] in Denver and won't be here either.

Meanwhile we have been choosing fabrics and the 'drapers' have been cutting trial shapes, which is going very well - it's a very good wardrobe.

I have taken the brave step of renting a ”woman's step through“ bike which will be delivered on Monday morning so that I can ride to work through the park in a stately sort of way.

An earthquake on our arrival

After a 10 hour flight backwards in time we arrived in Los Angeles only 3 hours later. We left London at 10:55 and arrived at 14:15, traveling in brilliant sunlight at 35,000 ft all the way. We were greeted by an earthquake! Standing by the check-in desk as we waited to transfer to the local San Diego flight it felt as if the desk was rocking on the floor, or that feeling you get when you've been on a ship all day and then return to dry land. We commented it on it to the woman, wondering if it could be the precursor to an earthquake and whether we should head for the open door to the tarmac, and she said: "I thought it was just me." This surprised us, as we imagined all Angelenos would be used to the sensation.

Nobody seemed very concerned, but shortly afterwards it came on CNN that there'd been a 6.9 quake (later upgraded to 7.2), whose epicentre was near Callexico. When we arrived at San Diego everyone was talking about it as an exceptional occurrence, and had their own stories of pictures falling off walls and swimming pools overflowing.
;
Our apartment is tasteful in the extreme, in coordinated shades of brown. In a condo, which is itself in coordinated shades of beige, just a block away from Balboa Park. So far Maxwell has been driving me to work, but shortly I intend to rent a bicycle as it's all level; and I'm hoping it will strengthen my weak knees. However it's well equipped and has an open air swimming & spa pool, just visible in the picture below, as well as a gym and games room.

Setting off for San Diego

Finally off on this adventure.

I am designing the costumes for the entire 2010 season at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park, San Diego. The plays are King Lear and The Madness of George lll [Alan Bennet] both directed by Adrian Noble, and the Taming of the Shrew, directed by Ron Daniels.

There are 80 drawings done at considerable speed which will generate something like 230 costumes - it’s a good thing that Stacy the head of wardrobe is so efficient. I’ve had 41 emails from her so far! Including lists, cross-plots, ‘draper notes’ [US for cutter] I had to beg her to desist from sending me every piece of reference for all 3 shows, sometimes several times over.

I have made prints of George, but will do the others there, partly because art paper weighs so much, and ink is expensive – and I ran out of time.

There is still much colouring in to be done, but the ones on the Hannemuhle Antiqua paper look so nice in pencil that I may just leave them. I’ve put colour notes on the prints instead.

Tomorrow, Ron Cooling the company manager will help us to get local sim cards, there isn’t a phone in the unit, it costs a fortune to use a British mobile, and I can’t rely solely on Skype.

On Wednesday we will go to LA for the dress rehearsal of die Gezechten, [the Stigmatized ones] the peculiar Schreker opera that Sam and I helped out with some principal’s drawings for. Ian says he has been having a vile time, little money no designer and the wrong set. For the Ring Cycle apparently, vertiginous rake and a fixed gauze – terrible idea in my opinion.