Which reminds me, I must get on with editing all of my photos!
Tag: Neverwhere
End of the Line…
Saturday January 28th was the last day of Neverwhere at Progress Theatre. We saw the final performance, which was followed by a party. Louise and I were given mugs and cards from the cast, as a thank you for working on the costumes. The gorgeous rats were knitted by Kate – one for every member of the cast and crew!
The theatre bar stayed open until 2am, and a mere eight hours later most of the cast and crew were back (in varying states of sobriety!) for the Great Dismantling. Anything that was too covered in fake blood to be retrievable was simply chucked in the bin. Most of the costumes were re-homed in the theatre’s wardrobe, and the dressing rooms ended up even cleaner than before we’d started!
The set though… watching it being torn apart was heartbreaking. Some of the elements have been kept – the metal stairs, the handrail, and all the ladders have been stored until they can be used again. But every single roof tile, every brick, every platform… it all had to go so that the next production (Art, by Yasmin Reza) can get into the theatre and start building their own set and rehearsing in the space.
I have something in the region of three hundred photos to edit, so I can show you what I’ve been so busy with these past few months! Since before Christmas I’ve been saying “never again”… but seeing it all come together was so amazing that I might have volunteered to at least consider helping out with the summer Shakespeare production, Henry IV Part 1. You can keep the “I Told You So”s to yourselves, thank you!
Vandemar’s Raven Skull Rings
Oh dear, I’m doing it again. Blogging all enthusiastically, then disappearing for a week. In my defence I’m still working on the costumes for Neverwhere which, as well as doing the odd day or two of overtime at work, is taking up every spare minute of my time and then some.
These are three raven skulls that I made the other day – and in the process of doing so I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder that trapped a nerve, leaving me wearing my arm in a sling because everything hurt and I couldn’t feel my fingers. Oops. That’s what happens when you spend upwards of seven hours pinching a layer of Fimo into place over an armature of masking tape and paper clip wire, apparently. I won’t be doing that again in a hurry!
You can see the development of the skulls over on Flickr. I did the sculpting and, once the shapes were baked and hardened, I passed them on to Paul who painted them for me. We wanted them to look as though Vandemar had been wearing the rings for years, so Paul’s painted them to look somewhat aged and cracked.
In an ideal world I would have smoothed and sanded out all of those fingerprints, but time was of the essence! If anyone can see the fingerprints from the stage, I’ll be very surprised. Although Louise did spend part of last night’s rehearsal shortening Vandemar’s coat sleeves, otherwise nobody would have been able to see the skulls at all!
They’ve now been mounted onto rings, with glue that I can only hope will be strong enough to last through the entire run. Performances start next week, and I keep thinking that we must be into the final straight with the costumes by now. But Louise and I spent yesterday evening at the theatre and each came back with a to-do list longer than the one we’d started with, despite having sewed our way through the entire rehearsal.
We must be nearly there though, surely?
Spare Batteries
Happy 2012, everyone!
I’ve done a little bit of goal-setting and resolution-writing, but my personal New Year is going to have to wait. We’re eighteen days away (not that I’m counting!) from the first night of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere at Progress Theatre, and there’s still so much left to do on the costumes!
You can see some sneaky peeks of what we’ve all been up to over on Tumblr, and I’ve uploaded some costumes-in-progress photos on Flickr. The costume team are going to a rehearsal tomorrow, to spend the afternoon doing fittings and making a massive list of all the things we need to get finished in the next couple of weeks.
I’m mostly ploughing on with my to-do list, ticking off each little thing as soon as it’s done, and trying not to panic about it all. Most of the big things are now sorted out (with the exception of one complete costume, eek!), so my list is mainly comprised of odd little things like “bring sandpaper” or “buy brown boot polish”. Oh, and “don’t forget the batteries for Owen’s wig”.
Obviously.
Making Progress
This is what a costume-sewing day at Progress Theatre looks like. On the floor is Louise, making a start on Door’s costume. Standing at the back is Laura (Door), working on the Angel’s costume. Pam is running up monks’ robes on the overlocker, and Liz (Old Bailey) is painstakingly hand-sewing feathers onto her own costume.
The costumes are for Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which runs from the 19th to the 28th of January. Last Friday evening we interrupted rehearsals for WriteFest and The 39 Steps to take over the stage for a photo shoot. The publicity shots are being sorted and edited, and I can’t wait to show them to you as soon as they’re released. A lot of the costume pieces we used for the shoot are only temporary, but the overall atmosphere of the photos is absolutely brilliant.
I’ll be posting more little bits and pieces on here, but I won’t be showing you full pictures of the costumes – we’d rather you came to the theatre to see them! For sneaky peeks, your best bet is to follow @RdgNeverwhere on Twitter.
Tickets are on sale now, but you might have to be quick – a tweet from Neil Gaiman toppled the theatre’s website and generated an awful lot of extra interest! I’ll be involved in costume fittings throughout the rehearsal process, but I’m really looking forward to going along as a member of the audience and seeing the whole show for myself.