Felting and Fiber Studio

This is a further Scene from my theme of costume and prop making for my local Amdram group, SNADS. The first one can be found here https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2021/08/23/theatre-textiles-part-1/  followed by https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2023/04/17/theatre-textiles-act-2-scene-1/

The next production for which I can remember making a costume was Sleeping Beauty in 2015.  I was asked to make the costume and do the makeup for Baskerville, the blood hound.  (You didn’t know that there was a dog in Sleeping Beauty did you? – How else did anyone find her inside all those brambles?)

After looking up some reference pictures (including one of Sir Clement Freud and his pet) I decided that the face would be part mask and part makeup.

The costume was in the main made from an old poly-cotton sheet which was a sort of mid brown colour with the odd dark brown markings in acrylic paint, and included a hood from which the long ears hung either side of the face. The mask was wet and needle felt, which covered the actor’s forehead, cheeks and nose, leaving large eyeholes.  This so that there was room for the eye makeup which revealed dropped lower eyelids.  The forehead had bloodhound-like skin folds, and the muzzle had my usual needle felted nose painted with Artist’s Gesso and then with black enamel.  The actor’s chin was visible beneath the mask so was made up to match it.

The next panto we did was Alice in Wonderland and I got roped into making bits for various animal costumes.  Unfortunately I don’t have any progress pictures and most of  the pictures I do have have been extracted from the DVD we had made of the show, so they are not of the best.  Hopefully they will give you a flavour of the costumes.

First there was the Cheshire Cat.  As with Baskerville, the cat’s body was made from an old cotton sheet, this time “dyed” ginger-ish with acrylic paint and with stripes added roughly following tabby cat images from Mr. Google (what would we do without him).

The head and mask were also made from the same fabric and from felt.  The only photos I have of the Cat are of it inside a “tree”.  They aren’t very clear because the hole in the tree is faced with gauze so that you could only see through it when what was behind it was lit from that side.  This was so that the cat could slowly disappear as the light faded, leaving only a grin visible.

Next there was the March Hare whose ears I had made from felt and attached to a felted hood; and the actor also used the muzzle with two front teeth that I made for her, also in felt.  Unfortunately it looks as if whoever did her makeup didn’t match the face colour to the mask so the Hare looks a bit odd.  This could be because the actor had a couple of other, bigger, parts in the panto, so her makeup needed to fit all three parts as far as possible.  I had made the mask so that it could be removed with the hood and that adds to the odd look I think.

The next and most testing task was the Hookah-smoking caterpillar and the subsequent butterfly which emerged from it. The script called for the actual metamorphosis to happen on stage, which was really going to pose a bit of a problem.  If this was going to work it would be necessary for the caterpillar costume to be worn over that of the butterfly.

In the story, the caterpillar sits on top of a large toadstool.   Usually depicted as a fly agaric mushroom – the one having a red cap with white spots.  This in fact is my scenery-making friend’s signature image and there are always some of these mushrooms somewhere about the stage in all our pantos (did you spot them at the bottom of the Cheshire Cat’s tree?)  Before the mushroom was made I asked that the back be cut away to enable the actor to be able to stand up against and behind its (chunky) stem.   I had decided that the caterpillar costume would be mainly affixed to the top of the mushroom and the head and “torso” would fit over that part of the actor which appeared above the mushroom.  The costume would have to be open down the back so that the butterfly could immerge from the caterpillar by stepping down and backwards.  I would need to make the butterfly costume first so that I would be able to fit the head and torso of the caterpillar costume over it with sufficient “ease” to enable her to get out of the caterpillar without assistance.

Again Mr Google helped me with reference pictures of a swallowtail butterfly, which I had chosen because of the lovely shape of its wings, and it’s caterpillar.

I wanted the costumes to be as naturalistic as possible, which meant finding a way of making enormous butterfly eyes, remembering that the actor would need to be able to see through them.  I was sure that I had seen some half globes in clear plastic covering a large sweet, and after lots of buying and tasting (!) I found some, though I cannot now remember what the sweets were.  I made a mask which held these over the actor’s eyes and side of her head and which also covered the top and back of her head but left her nose and mouth free.  From the images on the DVD, it seems that I covered the globes in some way since it is not possible to see the actor’s eyes through them.  I can’t now remember what it was I used, but it must have been transparent at close quarters because the actor was able to dance around the stage without falling over the “little butterflies” which were dancing with her.

I made up the lower part of the face and I seem to remember making “mouth parts” and a version of the curled tube the butterfly uses to suck up nectar. These were attached to the mask between the bottom of the eyes.

The butterfly’s wings, were painted white organza which had wire along the top edge.  I couldn’t add wire in the usual way the whole way round the edge of the wings because they would have to be squashed and held behind the actor’s back whilst she was still a caterpillar.  So we clad the actor’s arms and hands in black and she used her hands and arms to open and “flap” the wings.  This meant that the verisimilitude of the butterfly costume ended there – only one pair of legs instead of three.  I could have made some “pretend” legs to attach to the actor’s chest, but they would be likely to get hooked up inside the caterpillar costume and make metamorphosis difficult!

I made the caterpillar costume out of various bits of cotton fabric which I painted, and because the butterfly mask was quite large, the caterpillar had to be very large too.  The head of the real caterpillar is as wide as it’s body, which made that a bit easier.   I made it to fit right over the butterfly head and shoulders, with the actor’s black covered arms poking through as the first of the caterpillar’s six legs.  This was so that she could use the mouthpiece to smoke from the hookah which was sitting on a little green hump beside the mushroom.

Our next panto was Ali Baba.  I didn’t have to make any of the costumes for this.  I played the front half of Kamil, the clever camel, and when I wasn’t doing that, made up one of a trio of revolting looking gossipy women.

This was followed by “A Right Pantomime”, written by two of our members – “a comic conflation of almost every pantomime story you can think of.…”  I played one of Snow White’s dwarves (I can’t remember how many we were, but I don’t think there were seven of us) but wasn’t involved with more than helping with scenery.

I will end this Scene here, and yes I know that we still haven’t reached the Panto in which the Wicked Queen in the title image appears, but maybe next time.