What you will need for this project
Background: When I worked at UAF we were blessed years ago with a donation of a box of old white 50’s tuxedos, and were annoyed when a coolant leak in costume storage stained them all with beige splotches. It proved a blessing in disguise, since it made it “OK” for us to paint and dye them. See all the pictures below, and then do this:
Continue reading Costume Class Project: Suit Conversions With PaintTheatrical costume design is primarily (although not exclusively) concerned with supporting the actor in his/her interpretation of character.
Step 1: Read the monologue play On the Harm of Tobacco (aka “Smoking is Bad for You”) by Anton Chekhov and ask yourself the following actor-type questions about the man who makes this speech:
If this man were a car, what kind of car would he be?
If this man was an animal, which would he be?
What do you think he has in his pockets?
If he were a woman in the present time (!), how would she dress?
If he could choose to kill himself, or kill his wife, which would he do?
Continue reading Costume Class Project: Focusing on the Actor – Rendering for “On The Harm of Tobacco”So, I was kind of impressed with the quality of this velour witch hat from the 99c Only Store, and thought I’d try to convert it to some other sort of hat, partly because I’ve had luck with having my Costume Class Students turning a bunch of black feather covered witch hats into a series of c.1900 “Edward Gorey” style mourning hats as a class project inspired by having those fairly fancy looking witch hats get dumped by a store in November to less than $1 each. I checked to see if the hat was in fact adult sized in the head…
Continue reading Turning a $1.29 Halloween Witch Hat into a Dickens Era BonnetWhat Follows Is An Article I wrote for College Monthly in 1992 on how to cheaply and effectively travel to a new place. It describes specific things to do to make travel easy and breathtakingly inexpensive.
Three winters ago I left California and got a temporary teaching job at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where the sun peeks over the Southern horizon a few degrees azimuth for a few hours each day, and seeing the ice-fog and sub-zero temperatures, thinks better of staying too long. During Christmas break all alone, for reasons which are probably obvious, I started to fantasize about travel to warmer and more populated portions of the globe. My favorite fantasy was that the following summer I could go to Paris for the 1789-1989 Bicentennial, an event near and dear to my history-lover’s heart.
Photographing Your Costumes for Your Portfolio, Onstage and in the Studio (Copy of my handout I produced for my lecture at Costume College 2004 for printing out.) — Tara Maginnis
Continue reading Photographing Your Costumes for Your Portfolio, Onstage and in the Studio (With Photos)(Note this was written in 1995 and so does not have information about digital photography) See also: Photographing Costumes For Your Portfolio On Stage And In the Studio
TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS OF STAGE PRODUCTIONS
Most theatre designers, technicians and students need to know how to photograph stage shows in order to get pictures they can later use in their portfolios. It is not necessary to transform yourself into an expert photographer to take good stage photographs. It is only necessary to understand a few basics as they relate to the needs of theatre movement and lighting. It is quite usual for an “expert” photographer, who knows all about F-stops, and aperture and flash to take lousy stage photos because he knows nothing about the needs of theatre.
THE PHOTO NEEDS OF THE THEATRE
First, what are those needs? Well, obviously, it is quite undesirable in rehearsals and performances to use a flash. It can blind the actors temporarily, which is distracting and dangerous, and it completely destroys the effect of stage lighting. Flash is very good for photo-call close ups in black and white for the newspaper, but is annoying in performances, and useless for pictures for the scenic and lighting designers. (see figs 1-3.)
Continue reading Taking Photographs of Stage Productions(This article originally appeared in Theatre Design and Technology in 1994.)
CostumeCraftsAt30Below (PDF)
The best way to avoid damage from toxic materials in the work place is not to buy gloves that you never wear, nor to use respirators that never get their filters changed, nor to complain about the lack of proper spray booth that “the administration” will never pay to install anyway. The best away is to avoid using toxic products in the first place. You can prevent problems by getting into to habit of buying and using alternative non toxic products and by refusing to use dangerous materials when safe ones are available.
Continue reading Costume Crafts AT 50 Below: The Fairbanks Non-Toxic Crafts CookbookResearch Heresy: As a high school student it was my ambition to become a librarian. As a result, my first paying job, as well as years of volunteer jobs and classes, were spent in libraries, working, studying their systems, and hiding out. This put me at a singular advantage all through college and grad school, and I was generally regarded by students and faculty alike as a sort of guru of library research. I could, and did, do major graduate research papers on obscure subjects in 3-7 days, start to finish, and get highest marks. So it was no great surprise to me when the faculty asked me to do a seminar on research for the assembled faculty and students in the department’s weekly lecture series. The faculty sat down expecting I’d give a serious harangue to my fellow students encouraging them to stick their noses to the grindstone of the library, and the students braced to snooze through yet another “scholarly paper”. I seemed to shock everybody, pleasantly or unpleasantly as the case may be, by actually explaining how I did my research. You see, because I understood the system, I understood how to “cheat” the system. So I explained that one could get information out of the library in bulk, in less time, without so much “nose to the grindstone.” I was, I’m afraid, even flip about it. And I admitted that the recent research paper I wrote that was considered by the faculty to be “of publishable quality” on French Revolutionary Festivals, was in fact the product of one weekend’s cramming. Well, the students didn’t fall asleep, and my advisers were looking not at all happy with me, but, I thought: “I have a mission here—I must lead the righteous to the path of better grades, no matter what the cost!” So I did. And here is my lecture (with some new tricks I’ve learned since):
Continue reading Research Heresy
