After our move to The Exchange, as mentioned in my first post there followed several years’ worth of productions in which I was not called upon for costume assistance although I regularly helped my artist friend who designed and painted the Panto scenery, and assisted with makeup. I once got the chance to make a giant beanstalk for our “Boy and Some Beans” Panto, after which I quite often was given the “head gardener” position whenever the scenery needed “vegetation” in addition to the painted sort.
In the mean time, and for several years running, SNADS were asked to put on some form of Haunting for the Halloween weekend at the local ruined mediaeval Wardour Castle.
Each year we wrote a short play, the various scenes of which took place in different spaces within and around the castle and it’s stone grotto, and 2 or 3 performances would take place each night over the nearest weekend to Halloween. This was great fun, even if decidedly cold and/or damp on occasion, and we actually got paid for doing it! It enabled me to expand my special effects makeup, which I had learned about at a theatrical summer school. It was there that I learned of the amazing things you can do with gelatine and porridge oats!
I always liked to be a witch or a ’orrible ’ag as this gave me greater scope for doing ’orrible makeup and practicing my witch’s cackle!
I was tasked with making a prop for our 2010 Panto Arabian Nights. The Sultan had a tame rat, which I was asked to produce as a hand puppet so that it could open and shut it’s mouth and wave it’s paws in a menacing way, and it was to have eyes that would light up red. This of course I made in felt (wet and needle) and my husband provided the tiny red lights for the eyes from his model railway stock. To make it more believable I needled a false hand onto the back of the rat and the section of arm extending from that hand covered the actor’s own arm as it disappeared inside his sleeve. From the auditorium it was not really clear that the hand holding the rat was not the actor’s own, except that it was not the quite same colour as his real hand – which should have been made up but wasn’t.
For the same Panto I was asked to make up the Genie. Here he is with a camel. (I didn’t have anything to do with either costume though.)
I was actually the front legs of this camel in our 2017 panto Ali Baba – great fun but tiring because my head was in his front hump and my arms were up his neck, holding up the head with one hand and using the other to poke out his tongue! This is the least tiring two person panto animal we have, at least for the back legs actor, because s/he is able to stand up with his/her head inside the second hump (it’s a dromedary).
In June 2013 the Society obtained permission to perform Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment. This is the one which is (loosely) based on the story of “Sweet Polly Oliver”, as she is called in the old folk song. She joined the British Army, dressed as a man, to try to find her brother, who she had looked after as a boy. (The “Monstrous Regiment” of the title comes from a pamphlet written by John Knox in the 16th Century – a “gentleman” who I think would have felt quite at home in today’s Afghanistan in regard to his attitude to women.) In addition to the Company’s enlisted “men” – all women pretending to be men – the Company boasted a (female) vampire and a mountain troll (also female, but it is difficult to tell the gender in the case of trolls).
I was cast as the troll – Carborundum by name. Mountain trolls are actually living rocks and I thought that I could do something with the costume for that. I had, a few years earlier, needle felted some bas relief gargoyles/water spouts using mixed bats of Jacob fleece, which actually looked like stone – as long as you didn’t get close enough to see that it was hairy, I should have borrowed my husband’s razor!
So I thought I could use felt, but what to attach it to so that it looked like rock and not clothing? Well, a couple of years previously my Guild (Weavers Spinners & Dyers) held a special exhibition as part of the Dorset Arts and Crafts Association annual show, which was entitled Dorset Coast and Country – or something like that. We had a whole room to ourselves and we filled it with exhibits depicting the county. The Dorset coast is actually part of the Jurassic Coast – a World Heritage Site – and runs from Orcombe Point in Exmouth, Devon, extending east for 95 miles to Old Harry Rock, near Swanage in Dorset. Therefore we had to include some exhibits around this. I made a giant ammonite in needle felt and it was formed on a base of foam pipe insulation.
So I knew that if I could find some grey foam I could make the troll’s costume out of that with felted embellishments. Now I wonder where I got the foam from – silly question, as a needle felter I had been collecting foam in various sizes and thicknesses for ages. Anyway, I put together a rocky costume, complete with some “moss” and embroidered lichen. I made up my face to be more flat planes than chubby me and this is the result.
Terry Pratchett himself actually came to our Saturday night performance and obviously enjoyed it – he gave us a standing ovation.
I got to wear the costume at the Haunting of Wardour Castle that year and actually managed to frighten some of the punters when a chunk of the grotto turned round and glared at them!
Watch out for Act 2 Scene 2 sometime soon, when I might actually get as far as telling you about the Wicked Queen in the title image.