Words of Wisdom

Youth is wasted on the young.

Sunday 18 October 2009

Because I Still Really Miss It

School is back and Lord knows I am right up to my neck in it but.....I can't help a bit of nostalgia having received a whole disk of photos from our official 'photographer'. And yes I know I shouldn't be showing faces but I am so over that anonymity thing. First off, let's start with me.
I call this one 'No Sleep'.

And this one 'Dressing Room Sweatshop'.


Here I am getting 'notes' from the Director onstage after the show.


And wrestling with that bl**** red dress...

I love the literate message left on the mirror from the make-up girls.
But now I must tell you about my inspired 'prop'.

There were a number of large props called for in the script which could have proved quite overwhelming and expensive: staircases. beds for the orphans, different rooms in the mansion; some of these were built, some summarily 'deleted' and others, as they were not 'on' for very long and arguably did not add much to the story but gave flavour to the production, teetered on the brink. Three such items included: a dog cart, a laundry hamper and a hot dog stand. One afternoon in the school basement I spied an old TV trolley which sparked a 'brilliant' idea! The trolley would become the frame for all three props.

The laundry hamper could hang inside the frame. This had to be big enough for Annie to hide inside and be wheeled offstage in. The hotdog stand would need sides which we hooked on: the dog cart could be the reverse sides of the hotdog stand. There were actually four sides to the thing but as you can see here at the dress rehearsal getting them all flipped over and reattached in time could be a problem.

Here's all our servants wearing those problematic uniforms which I seemed to be cutting out for EVER. The worst part was cutting them out at night. The black knit fabric was slippery and hard to see with my aging eyes. The blue kitchen staff dresses I borrowed from another school (yay).

Finally, here's the tech crew.

Two of the little blonde lads on the left were the ones who were 'sharing the headset' in the lighting box :-D....awwwwww....they are such babies....

And now, we return you to normal transmission.

8 comments:

Stacy said...

Thanks for sharing the photos! YOu did a fantastic job and should be really proud of yourself. That was a lot of work, and it looked like you worked REALLY HARD!

HipMomma said...

Well, I'd say it looks like you did an awesome job and that all of the hard work payed off. Don't you think you'd do it again in a heartbeat?

The Honourable Husband said...

Ah, my dear Arizaphale. You DO love it.

May I reveal to the blogosphere that our dear flaming swordmistress was once a professional thesp, and is brilliant at it.

If I believed in a God, I would swear that He put our fine friend on Earth to tread the boards. When are you going to get back into it, Riz?

chaoticfamily said...

Fantastic... Love it all. Annie is such a classic too! Way to go.

Elisa said...

SO CLEVER with the cart! Wow - you did a wonderful job on all of it!!!! Great job!

Is what headbang8 says true?

A Free Man said...

Is it really necessary to censor the word "bloody"? Are you going for a G rating (or whatever the G rating equivalent is in Australia)? I knew beneath all that grumbling that you were loving the production, good to see you admit it.

Arizaphale said...

AFM: The censoring of bloody is something of an affectation I grant you but I do like to keep in mind the sensibilities of my more delicate readers.

Unknown said...

That first shot...oh my goodness, that is hysterical! But it was worth it, and you DO LOVE IT, don't you?

The genius of the prop x 3 - that just proves that you were MEANT to do that - those kids are so lucky to have you.