Loving My Creative Life

Look what leaving your husband can do for you.......

Sugar, The Musical:

My return to the stage after 13 years.

Suessical:

JoJo....and yes, she was a girl in this production....

Our bird girls! Loved these outfits, and the day after this, we dyed all their shoes orange with my brand new washing machine (the other one died)

And here's the Amazing Mayzee!

From the back for privacy reasons; the same reasons that see my lovely kids with lime green squares over their faces in the other picture......

Horton! Best ever ears.....(not made by me)

Mayor and Mayoress of Whoville
We had so much fun with these costumes....

Then there was........

 Wicked!

I was just a backstage type..... but here are my charges...

The Tin Man

The winged monkeys.....

Look at these guys!!!! <3 p="">

Herself in her insignificance, posing in front of the Emerald City...............

Finally: Pirates of Penzance.
This is the first act set which I oainted from scratch. My colleague is adding a boat.

This is the second act ruined chapel, which my partner did. Except for the crappy tombstones. they were all my own work :-(

I must have painted and repainted these guys 5 times!

Here's the first incarnation, when my aging techniques rendered them utter unreadable from a distacne.

And here's a final version of one of them.

So now I am officially 'show free' until after my trip to the UK.
What, wait....I didn't tell you about my overseas trip??????
Stay tuned....

Shadows Are Harder Than They Look!

So I'd been working on the sets for a week or so when I suddenly realised I had no idea what I was doing!


We got the framework of the palace ballroom into place and then I was left with the job of creating 3D looking columns.....

I asked the art teacher at school where I was going wrong and she cautiously said, "Well, you have to decide where your light source is coming from. At the moment you have shadows on both sides of the column..."

Of course!

Back to the drawing board.

Me: They're still not right....
Her: Yes, well, you now seem to have light coming from the floor, resulting in those shadows above the middle ring...."
Me: Curses....
I tried a number of methods....

But all in all it was looking pretty rough. The next one is where I stopped even trying to do anything with the columns and the bottom one is the 'finished' palace set....

Because in the end you can go on and on and on trying to get things looking right...and the audience won't even notice.

Last weekend I had a professional join me to complete the garden scene and the interior of the inn. This guy is AWESOME!!!! I learned so much just from watching him and following his instructions Here he is fixing my sad attempt at a window seat cushion...

And LOOK at what he did to the foliage in the garden scene!!!!

He let me finish the wall and the bushes underneath........I am not worthy.

Here's where I got up to with the inn interior....

 And here it is as finished as it will ever be. I would have loved to do a bit more decoration, photos on the wall, horse brass thingies, maybe some curtains...
Also, the wooden beams on the right need to be thicker but again,  you've got to know when to stop...

On a completely different note, the school musical has been announced. We're doing 'The Jungle Book'! Happily, my director does not want to do cutsie animal onesies but wants to go with suggestions of animals, in human clothing. Here are some ideas off the web. They have built upon the Indian setting and focused on fabric to create the characters.

This is Shere Khan and Kaa, the snake.

This is Mowgli and Bagheera.

I absolutely adore the idea of 'human' animals and I'm looking forward to getting creative with fabrics and Indian traditional costume.

Meanwhile, I've been co-opted to manhandle my sets for The Student Prince (ie be a part of the backstage crew). It seems there are not enough divas in the Light Opera Society already!!

Valley Week

Yeah it's been a valley week. None of us get through these with out our 'peeps'.

Started off when I went to a Quilt Meeting to find the 'Kidzone' design I had been working on was too modern, unrepresentative of Sunday School through the ages, and would need to be re-thought. They were nice about it and it isn't the most world stopping design, but....

Then I had an email from the agent saying there'd been no enquiries so he wasn't going to do an open this weekend. And then I opened some work emails late one night to be flooded with cries of "when are you going to see me/have that meeting/take that child out of my class/ provide me with the answers to life the universe and everything...?" and suddenly I feel a little overwhelmed.

Last night I attended the 21st birthday of a young lady who has known the BA since 2003. It was a Disney party. I had to cobble together a costume.

"When did Disney do chimney sweeps?" demanded the hostess's brother.
"Mary Poppins!" said his exasperated girlfriend.
"Ohhhhh,"the light bulb flickered, "and you've made the broken umbrella and everything!"

Now given that he could not remember the chimney sweeps, I was amazed that he could remember what the bankers did to Mr Banks' umbrella! Nevertheless I informed him,"It's not an umbrella, it's a chimney sweep's broom!!!!!"
"Since when did Mary Poppins sweep chimneys?" insisted my inebriated friend....
Oh never mind, have another drink.....

Today I went into a local amateur theatre group's headquarters to start painting some sets, only to find they expected me to run the whole thing. This was fine except that I was not expecting a 20 foot by 8 foot backdrop and all my sketches were in the wrong ratio.

Cue redraw, cue OHP in a brightly lit shed at 30C+. Cue fail.
By 4.30 we had sketched up one out of three scenes and everyone had a dehydration headache.

Tomorrow I have a Kidzone (Sunday School) meeting with our new minister and the gang, during which we need to discuss the lead up to our centenary celebrations and our role in that context. Pretty sure it will be high-jacked by the new guy. Oh well! Such is life.

My Baby Angel, my work colleagues and my church friends, not to mention my Bestie and the family via Skype, have all been upholding me.

This too shall pass.