Week 3 1st-7th April. My Reflection.
This week at CCM has been incredible; I have met so many more talented students and Professors, within the university and have been blown away with the extent this institution goes, in order to put on a creatively outstanding production.
It has been extremely tiring, balancing out my classes and my backstage wardrobe duties, doing 8am- 12.30am days, but it has increased my stamina when working in this career path. I feel that this week in particular has strengthened my organisation, communication and professional skills.
Tech runs, have ran from 31st March until opening night on Thursday 4th April, with the show running until the matinée on Sunday 7th April. It has been challenging but has opened my eyes to the responsibilities and stimulating schedules which occur within theatre productions particularly opera.
Through the repetition of dress/ tech runs, my routine backstage became very easy to complete. Each night improving and evolving the way I worked in order to speed up, costume changes and a smoother transitions backstage. I was the main dresser for the character ‘Papagana’ played by Emma Cardiff, and Ariel Deshotel. This role was double casted (like most others principle roles), so two sets of costumes were needed for the production, throughout the week.
It was an amazing experience working with Opera singers; opera is a performance art which I have not been involved with before when working on productions. It was fascinating working with a new genre and discovering the costume challenges and solutions in order for the production to be successful, for example the costume restrictions and the ability for breathe and support.
It was extremely interesting working with Dean Mogle, the costume designer for this production. I was able to encounter his design work and how his ideas evolved from page to stage, through fabric samples, experimentations, meetings and discussions with the director. His costume designs/ renderings are outstanding with great amounts of research and creative artistic license; his detailed sketches sends out so much information and it was fascinating seeing the final garment next to his sketched design.
This week I attended all classes that were available to me. In tailoring class, I was able to start my 1830’s men’s formal coat, drafting from detailed instructions from historical tailoring books. I have picked dark navy blue wool, to create my coat with black lining, and I hope to use black velvet on the historical collar. I have found it reasonably understandable to draft this pattern and I am particularly excited to see what I can produce, to a professional tailoring standard. I wanted to push my tailoring skills but not to the extent that I would create a costume that I was not impressed with or did not like the shape or era that it was from. I purposely chose historical fabrics that would fit in well with the formal occasion of the coat, the fabric that I chose was described as ‘very Collin Firth as Mr. Darcy’ by Regina Truhart the Costume Professor here at UC CCM, this was pleasing as this was the style I was going for.
I was able to progress in other classes such as Millenary, Costume Shop management and The Biz of the Biz. My mask for Millenary has evolved and developed into an almost complete elderly woman’s face, and for Costume Shop management work was set, to supervise and organize budgets and workloads for 4 different productions. I was also able to construct a professional resume for The Biz of the Biz in order to gain improvement feedback. Overall I feel this week has been overtaken by ‘The Magic Flute’ opera unmistakably very encouraging for my career.
It was during this week that I found out the incredible news of an offer for an Internship in Costume Construction and Design at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in New Jersey. I have chosen to accept this incredible experience and look forward to visit the US again this summer. I was incredibly shocked and please that I received this offer; it has given me a massive boost of confidence in terms of perusing my career and building my experiences. I am very proud that my skills in costume construction have shown through my resume and application to the program.
Overall this week has been very overwhelming and challenging but I am very impressed with the way I have overcome obstacles and managed to maintain my attendance and enthusiasm throughout the week. I am still eager to complete next week’s tasks and challenges and I hope to keep in contact with everyone I have met during this week.
