Some more Producers pictures

Here are some more pictures from "The Producers". These were taken by my daughter, see more at www.chirpingmonkeys.blogspot.com The Production Team, Roger DeBris (Alan Agualar), choreographer (Tim Grummich), Carmen Ghia (Ryan Cooper) Costumer (Jim Merlo), set designer (Barry Luedloff.)
Franz Liebkind and his Birds (Robert Doyle) These birds scared my friend who is afraid of birds when I showed her the cage backstage, they were very real, and could actually salute to the furor on cue!
Max (Kent Coffel) and one of his favorite backers, HOLD ME TOUCH ME (Rosemary Wall)
Beautiful Girls wearing nothing but Pearls with Leo (Dominic Windsor)
Roger DeBris (Alan Agualar) wearing his Chrysler Building dress

What's the buzz? Tell me what's happenin'!

More comments about "The Producers", presented by the Hawthorne Players, July 30-Aug. 8,2010.

The big production that I spent the majority of my summer hours working on is over. I still have some costumes to clean and put away, but the majority of it is stored in our costume warehouse.

The latest buzz was the third of a series of wonderful reviews by local theatre critics. We have a local arts radio station that reviews all manner of theatre events, from the highly polished shows that come to the Fox Theatre, to local community theatre events. They reviewed our show in several different versions through their radio and internet programming.

The first review was sent to us through FaceBook, so I can't exactly find where or when it was posted. The various aspects of our production were highlighted, including costumes, regarded by this reviewer as OFTEN GLITZY. If only he knew how many yards of sequins I used to create that glitz! I should count that up some day!

One aspect that was really brought out was the set design. This was truly a professional level design, with the movement off and on the stage planned to the last nano-second! There were lots of flying set pieces and movement in and out of large wagons. One wagon was a huge file case, and it had doors through which came 6 dancing girls! That one was always interesting as it had to go in quickly, disappear for a dance number and then reappear! Genius!

When I first saw the sets that our designer Ken had created, I panicked--would those costumes I made show as professional of a level as the sets? After all, my first 8 shows that I costumed were for elementary school kids, and at times I felt like these costumes hadn't progressed much beyond that level. I was in a great deal of self-doubt until the entire thing was put together on stage during tech week. The costumes did show up OK, and I got plenty of compliments on them, but the sets were still the outstanding feature of this show. However, the sheer number of costumes was something that impressed many people, there were hundreds of them, all with multiple pieces to bring them together for complete ensembles. That was the biggest challenge for me!

The second review came in during the week off between shows, and it was glowing. You can see this by going to www.kdhx.com and checking current reviews, Hawthorne Players "The Producers". More compliments for the entire show. One recurring theme from local professional critics as well as "man on the street" kibitzers has been "Could a community theatre group actually do justice to this show?" It requires a great deal of technical support, which translates into dollars put into it. The reviewer said, "Yes, Yes, Yes!" as an answer to that question. This was a gamble for our theatre group, because they knew they would have to put big money into producing this show, and if there wasn't sufficient ticket sales, it could be a disaster. We had modest ticket sales the first weekend, and it got better and better as the shows progressed, to close to a sell out on the last Sunday show. (In a theatre that holds almost 600). But, I don't know if we broke even, even with that number of tickets sold.

The third excellent review came on Aug. 10, when "Two On The Aisle" was aired. This is a local internet based video show, done twice a month, in which 8-10 of the best local shows are critiqued and videos of portions of the shows are shown. These reviewers were extremely complementary, mentioning the costumes more than once.

The actors, Kent Coffel, who played Max, Dominic Windsor who played Leo, were always characterized as appropriately playing their parts to give the characters some real depth. This is a show in which stereotypes are played to the hilt, and our leads really did that with a great deal of personal interpretation, which made it just hilarious. Ryan Cooper is always outstanding, and his Carmen Ghia interpretation made every one howl with laughter, even down to the flick of his little finger! You had to see it to get the full impact of that comment, words just wouldn't do it justice! Alan Aguilar, who played Roger DeBris, was over the top, especially when he first appeared in his "Chrysler Building" dress. I was given credit for creating this, but I only created the canvas, my assistant costumer, Emily Stroble, created the details, and it is truly a work of art! Great job, Emily!

Set design, costume design, lighting design were always mentioned. Our poor sound designer got left out of the critiques. I guess you take sound for granted, unless you can't hear. That wasn't the case for this show, except when some cantankerous wireless mics decided to wield their quirky heads and not work properly.

Another consistent aspect of the positive reviews was for the orchestra. It was just great! The local junior high band teacher led this group, and there were many music educators and well-known local artists in that orchestra. It was just a pleasure to listen to them, lots of interaction between the orchestra leader and singers! He kept it moving along quickly, and provided hilarious musical interludes between scenes. Very good work!

If we can withstand the financial aspects of this, we do have the satisfaction of knowing that we produced an excellent, entertaining show, destined in the opinion of many of being award winning. I guess that made it all worth while, giving up that big piece of time and money to produce it. After all, as Max repeats over and over again in the show, "We Can DO IT!" That was a mantra I had to play over and over in my head to get to the finish line, and we did prove to all, WE DID IT!

German Icons on display

What better way to display those crazy German icons than to attach them to a beautiful girl? Here are how the headdresses looked on our showgirls.

Cutie J displays the German sausage, or "wurst" if you are truly speaking in German terms. I gave her the job of creating the sausage links, she had a ball doing that during one rehearsal. Making the head sausage was not quite so much fun!
Cutie S got to wear the pretzel icon. Our talented set designer made the pretzels for me using spray insulation foam to form the shape, then he carved them into good pretzel shapes and faux painted them. Yum, Yum!
Cutie R is the Valkarie. Perfect type casting, because she is heading off to college in a few weeks, majoring in music. She has a gorgeous voice, fitting for a Wagnerian character! We added the swastika Thursday, she needed some more "stuff" hanging off her cute body!

Cutie G gets the "piece de resistance", the beerstein! What could describe Germany more clearly than a big stein of beer,frothing over with foam? This one was fun to make, and was the first design that worked out well in the implementation. Whew! It proved to be top heavy, which made taking a bow at the end of the show somehwat of a challenge to keep it balanced on her head. Especially since she has a quick change right before the curtain call, and we had about 1 minute to secure it to her head.

These showgirls got big applause every time they walked on stage, and they were fun to create. I had wonderful "raw materials" to dress up, and they certainly were good sports about donning the entire costume.

Our set desiger also designed and built the hip tables for the pretzel and beer steins. He also carved and painted the beer steins. What a master of stage decorations and costuming he is! A master with styrofoam and his trusty carving knife! Thanks, K!

The Last Hurrah!

Don't turn me in as an unpatriotic American! This is not my new political preference, for sure. It is the last costume completed on the afternoon of opening night before "The Producers" go on stage for the first public performance!



The play within the play of "The Producers" is the supposedly worst play ever written, called "Springtime For Hitler". The producers realize they can make more money by putting a flop on stage than a hit, and try this carefully crafted scheme by finding the worst script, worst director, and worst cast for their venture. Things take a different turn when "Springtime For Hitler" turns out to be a critically acclaimed show!

The beautiful song "Springtime for Hitler" is sung by the German officer. It is quite a pretty song, if only the subject of the song wasn't such a despicable person! This jacket is what the German Officer tenor will be wearing, with his sparkly swastika armband. His beautiful $75 hat is the crowninng glory of this costume! (See June 22, 2010 post "Achtung!" to see the hat.) And he truly sings beautifully.

I knew that this costume job was going to be a challenge. About 3 days ago, the challenge was almost ready to break me! I definitely shed blood (how many pin pricks did I endure, with some evidence on several of the costumes), sweat (even though I am using new deodorant, I gave it quite a challenge because the day started about 5 in the morning, and often ended after 10 p.m. and I didn't smell that great!), and tears ( I shed many on Tuesday when the 4th attempt to do headdresses failed and fell on the floor!)

My frieds called me crazy, my daughter says "don't call me to do this again", my neighbors have had to look at a very shabby looking yard because I've done very little outside work this summer. One professional costumer said to me, "I'd never agree to costume that show!" I guess I now know why. But I do enjoy challenges, and this one was certainly a challenge. On Monday, I felt like it all looked like crap, but as the mood got better, the objectivity returned, and now I'm pretty pleased with the results.

My perennial bio for programs is "I like to dress talented people who enjoy looking good"/ And that is why I do this.

When I get some professional shots of the various scenes, I'll share them. But right now, it's raining cats and dogs, the sky is dark and I'm very tired, so the only thing to do in a case like this is to TAKE A NAP!

See www.hawtorneplayers.com for ticket information or call 314-921-5678 for tickets.

Girls In Pearls.

Leo Bloom, mild-mannered accountant, dreams the dream of getting out of his hum-drum world and doing something exciting in life. His friend, Max Bialystock, tries to convince him that the life of a Broadway producer is what Leo should try, lettig Leo break the chains of a boring life. Leo, timid and carrying a piece of his blue blankie from his youth as his security blanket, sits at his accounting desk and dreams of being a producer, and what he would experience.

Poppinng out of the background of the office furniture, 7 beautiful ladies dressed in pearls come to dance for Leo, so in his dreams, he IS A PRODUCER, and he sings, "I Want To Be A Producer" as they dance.

Here's how those costumes evolved.

Concept without much embellishment, modeled by darling CB! Lots of promise here, for both the costume and the actress!
Back view of bustle with roses
Close up of the pearls after they were applied to the top.
The finished look
This box was full of pearls. Originally, I had intended to put 20 strands on each garment. For various reasons, that didn't happen, these are the leftovers--I see a lot of pearl necklaces in my future of jewelry making.

Beading these garments takes anywhere from 6-10 hours to complete. There are 7 of them. I've spend days at the kitchen table, working with other little beaders, to complete them. I think the beads are sewn on securely, because my worst nightmare is that one of the strands breaks off and scatters pearls all over the place. NO, NO NIGHTMARE PLEASE, GOD OF COSTUMES, PLEASE BE WITH US ON THIS ONE!

They are almost complete, need to gather the remaining garments from other seamstresses today, and hopefully they'll look gorgeous on stage.

This is the WURST!

Iconic, stereotypical, expected...these are some words that come to mind when thinking about what was going through Mel Brooks wild and crazy mind when he wrote "The Producers". Basing his premise on a crazy notion of putting on a show featuring one of the most despicable men who ever lived (Adolf Hitler), Mel tries to show us a crazy stereotypical view of a world that we might not envision. The fun side of a dark side, that is how I would characterize this show.

Some of the iconic images are shown as showgirls parade in, Las Vegas style, to show parts of Germany, as they sing the theme song, "Springtime for Hitler". A beautiful song, about something we don't often think of as beautiful.

Here's one of the iconic images you might have about Germany--WURST! When I think of German food, of course, I think of sausages. Put that with beer, pretzels, and you have Mel Brooks crazy theme that lets us know about his chosen topic.

Funny thing, the showgirls wear these on their heads as they come in!

These were totally fun to make, just like stuffing real sausages! Made me want to get out the buns and mustard!
German engineering needed here to make this work, but I think I have something going here, with a little more work!

It will be a fun show, the cast was on stage for the first time last night, and things looked good so far. Sets are great, costumes are still needing some help, but maybe we'll make it. Only a week until opening night!

Onward!

We've been working at our projects, seeming to make slow progress toward finishing the costumes for "The Producers". I've had helpers during the last 3 days, and although certain projects aren't fully completed, we are a lot closer to being done than we were at the beginning of the week.

Monday--SB and her darling talented daughter C, came and worked. S and I have costumed together in the past year, and we do well together on the costume team. She helped me design the Prisoners of Love skirts, and took them all home to finish them. C did a cutting job beautifully, of course, and she was our model for the previous post photo of the prototype costumes.

Tuesday--not much done today on costumes, except to purchase some potential garments for the Streetwalkers. Try ons at practice, which was successful. Had to go to work twice, which was non-productive, both with costuming as well as getting any work done.

Wednesday--Seemed like the wheels were spinning in mud today, but ES came up and we worked on a officer uniform that is for a dazzling gay guy, it will be bedazzeld with sequins and other jewels, befitting of his character. Finished the pants, but not the shirt, and other than that, not much else got done. Wearing out!

Thursday--spent 5 hours in the morning cutting various sets of costumes. This is the task I hate the most, I could sew all night and day, but cutting requires thinking and it is difficult for me to make myself do it! Got one Prisoner of Love bodysuit done, plus a muslin for Roger DeBris' Chrysler building dress to try on at practice. Fitting went well, now I have a plan for tomorrow.

Friday--had a whole studio of artists working together today. Got up early to finish a body suit for the pearl sewer, finished hemming the bottoms of that set of costumes. Made Roger DeBris basic dress, which will be changed into something spectacular by another artist. Daughter SH came and started sewing pearls on the I Want To Be A Producer costumes, and she was doing a great job of getting them straight and sewed on very securely. I was impressed. ES showed her ability to draft a design and then make a pattern for her decoration of the Chrysler building dress, Very excellent work. And GW came, measured, cut, serged my Little Old Lady skirts, so we can put in the waistbands. Plus, she and I worked on completing a prototype of the main showgirls gold lycra bodysuits. I was very glad she was there, because it needed a great deal of altering to make it fit correctly. She was willing to strip down a half-dozen times to get it to fit correctly. It is almost OK, if I get a chance, I'll make another one for her. I think I have enough fabric.

MHS, my other darling daughter, brought her finished project to my house, 8 pearl chokers and darling cameos that she created for two numbers.

My friend Dr. J and I went to see our model CB in a production called "Lepers", a staged reading production. CB is only 13 but is already showing great promise as a strong character actress. SB, CB's very proud mama, costumed the show, AND finished my Prisoner's of Love skirts that she took home Monday, which I picked up last night after the show. Happy day, one part of one production number finished!

The theatre is a small space in a mall that has only one retail store left in it, but the arts community has convinced the owners to rent out the empty stores for studios for dance, acting, and various visual art forms. It also has one restaurant, which we ate at, and found the food to be very good! If all the places in this mall were open at once, it would be a very interesting space to visit. But I've been there several times, and you could only salivate over what was locked up in the closed storefronts. I would like to go back when some of the studios were open. If only I could figure out when that was.

Today, my friend SE is coming up from my Smalltown in Mid-Missouri, and she will be bringing some completed things that she has been working on at home, and we will work today on various projects, myself on bodysuits and show girl costumes, she on a uniform or two. Plus some finishing jobs that need to be done.

So, I guess projects are being worked toward completion, I still wish all my bodysuits were finished, wonder how many I can finish in two days? I want to be done with them by Monday. 7 Prisoners of Love, 5 I Want to Be a Producer tops, and 4 gold lycra body suits. I ought to be pretty good at making them after all that practice!

The grind goes on

These are the prototypes of the costumes I've designed for "The Producers". Each of these will be part of the big chorus numbers in the show.

Little Old Lady Land--14 costumes for this number. They dance in using walkers, and by the end of the number they are kicking up their heels big time!
German military outfit for women--men will be dressed similarly, but will wear black pants. This is the big number, "Springtime for Hitler"
I want to be a Producer--girls in pearls--7 of them the bodices will be covered with pearls.
Prisoners of Love--8 of them are dressed like this, the men are in prisoners costumes.

I haven't posted in a while because most every waking moment has been spent in the sewing room producing! I hope I don't run out of time, right now, it looks scary to think if I will possibly get finished in time!

Wish Me luck.

Achtung!

The big number in "The Producers" is Springtime For Hitler, requiring many military looking outfits. My desire for the show was to have everyone looking sharp wearing one of these caps, but at $75 each, that wasn't going to happen. So the next best thing was to make them.
Here are 12 of the 14 military hats I made, I even found the insignia online that matches the expensive hat.
Our original concept was to make paper insignia, and it didn't look too bad, but it would be LABOR INTENSIVE! This was cut on MonkeyGirl's Cricut machine, slightly modified from an American Eagle to a German one.
I about smashed the paper insignia trying to pin it on to the hat, really another way would have been better!


In "Springtime for Hitler", the big production number, a German tenor comes out and sings the song. Then the showgirls, chorus and finally Hitler enter. Hitler looks authentic, but his persona is quite different from the original furror! (Don't believe I've ever spelled that word before, is that how you spell it?)

The chorus is all dressed up in military garb, the girls in somewhat abbreviated version of a uniform! I'll show you pictures of that once I have a full working concept costume!

More to come!

Look at Costume Maniacs for insignia if you are trying to do something like this. www.costumemaniacs.com

Little Old Lady Land

Kiss me, bite me! No, I'm not really that bold, just a line from the show!
The Little Old Lady hat
Concept design for the costume

One of the biggest chorus numbers in this show is Little Old Lady Land. Almost every female in the show is part of this number. That makes a LOT OF LITTLE OLD LADIES!

The concept is that they come in using their walkers, but kick up their heels later in the number to show there's still some life in those old bodies somewhere! Of course, since this show focuses on stereotypes, and many little old ladies dress in a similar manner, each of these will be dressed exactly the same. That's a LOT OF LITTLE OLD LADIES costume pieces, each will wear a skirt, blouse, jacket, hat, gloves, brooch--which will be built by our costume team.

One wonderful person who is a college trained theatre production member (and a fine actress herself!) volunteered to make the skirts, which I am extremely grateful to her for volunteering to do. She is squeezing this project in between work, teaching classes at night and an out-of town trip, plus she will be our stage manager. I could just kiss her! But not bite her! Save that kind of talk for Max Bialystock!

Progress...slow, but still progress

With all the admonitions of experienced directors, costumers, and friends, saying things like "Are you Crazy, that is a huge show!" the daunting task of getting the costumes ready for "The Producers" has begun. Why am I not panicking?

I'm not sure. I do have a lot of raw materials, which in itself is a very time consuming part of the job. I think I have most of the materials I need to make costumes, and the patterns and designs in mind, but still have some purchased and rental garments I need to arrange for.

I designed my Little Old Ladies costumes to have a plain skirt, a boucle jacket, a jacquard design blouse, hat and gloves. Since there are 15 LOL's dancing with walkers, we had a pretty big fabric purchase to make them all--in this show, they are all dressed alike. I didn't know where I would find enough fabric to make all the outfits, but I did find some boucle that matched perfectly with some other fabrics I found that was so cheap, under $2 a yard. When you need lots of fabric, often you have to pay a premium price for it, but this was on the VALUE FABRIC table at various Hancock stores. Hooray for Hancock!

I did 5 skirts so far, really 6 because my prototype was made Sunday, and after I tried it on one of the dancers, it seemed too skimpy. So I enlarged it. It is an 8 gore skirt with 6 godets at the bottom to make it fuller for dancing. I think it will work out well.

The fabric for the skirts is from my special bag of tricks. When I need lots of cheap fabric, I look for sheets. I am famous for sheet skirts. They work so well for period shows, just sew a casing and a hem, and you have a great colorful skirt in about 15 minutes. These took about 30 minutes to do, but still very simple. I think they will work out well.

I had a few ounces of creativity left after the 5 skirts were made, and back spasms hadn't set in yet, so I made a prototype hat for the LOL's, I think it will work OK. It's a little circle of velveteen with a huge ugly flower attached. Should be very funny.

So 5 skirts and a hat for a night, if I can keep this up, I'll be OK. It is just keeping on track and making myself meet my short term goals that I need to focus on. I hope to get my 15 sheet skirts done by this Friday.

Wish me luck!

Hello, Stranger!

Hello, Blog. Long time no see! What have I been doing? Well, the list is long.

March 9 was the last post. Since that time I've:

Gone to three funerals--some folks were ready to go, others fought it until the end.

Visited a very much alive friend, who is very sick with cancer. But he is not feeling pain, just uncomfortable, and trying to make peace with what lies ahead. It was a great visit. He was such a help to us when my hubby was sick with cancer, he drove Ed to all of his radiation treatments. Every day for 6 weeks straight. It helped us, because then I could continue to work.

Each of the funerals I've gone to in the past month have reconnected me with old friends who lost loved ones. It's bad for their loss, but good for reconnecting with people you haven't seen in a long time.

Had more meetings with the production staff of "The Producers", our summer show that we are already working on. Wow, is this going to be a big job!

Had a date with my favorite guy--too bad it's a guy about to celebrate his 6th birthday, he'll be 6 on Wednesday! He was charming, witty, delightful as we purused the Lego aisle at Toys 'R Us, looking for just the right birthday gift. Then we went to lunch, then home for some good old Lego building. What a cutie he is!

Spring Break found us not enjoying spring one bit, as it was cold and rainy many of the days. One day it was pretty, but that was followed by a rainy, snowy, cold windy day.

Made TWO matching meals for my family on Sunday. One was for the ones who had a taste for great-grandma Lawler's Irish boiled dinner--corned beef and cabbage. The other was for the non-Irish traditionalists, pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes and gravy. Nice to have my kitchen table surrounded by family, and it wasn't even Christmas or Thanksgiving!

Found a new fabric store over in Illinois. There's something over there besides strip clubs, crooked politicians and.....NV! Great store in Wood River, IL. I'll be back!

Maybe, maybe, I have a potential paying sewing gig. A new Irish store opened in our fair city, and the owner is looking for someone who can sew custom garments. I've gotten 3 patterns for kilts, jackets and I'm reading through the booklet on how to make kilts. It's an undertaking, that's for sure, but the end result is better than making a costume to last two weekends for a show then get stuffed into a high priced closet. A kilt is a serious garment, destined to last a lifetime--providing you don't consume too many Irish potatoes and make your tummy grow! Serious money goes into them, also, and serious money comes back to the seamstress!

Saw "Crazy Heart" at the movies--Jeff Bridges was very, very good, and it was a very good story. The chair was uncomfortable, we were in the 3rd row, and my neck was sore. But the movie passed so quickly I didn't even squirm. Go see it, it is good! Also saw "Noises Off" by Clayton Community Theatre. I don't know how anyone survives all the physical humor of that show. It was very entertaining.

So, that is what has been keeping me busy lately. That, and I discovered Facebook games, the time waster of all time-wasters. Naughty. One member of my family actually tried to give it up, it was her addiction, and she was going into a 12 step program to quit. She has fallen off the wagon, sorry to say. But now we can be in competition once again to see who gets the most points in Bejeweled Blitz!

Hope to keep this blog updated with more Producers news.