The King Stag

As you may know I was recently in a production of the play "the King Stag" at my school. We've been working on the play since September, and I must say it is nice to finally put it on. The play was in the "comedia del arte" style which involves makes and being very over the top. This might seem easy, but I can say one thing for sure, it uses up a ton of energy. "The King Stag" is the story of king Deramo and his search to find a wife, on the way dealing with the plots of prime minister Tataglia. I played Truffaldino the court bird catcher in love with Smeraldina, the obnoxious country girl, who doesn't necessarily love him back (yes i played a guy, again).
Every year I do a blog post after the play, and I thought that this year I'd show you all that went on before the play (tec week) rather than just the finished product.
Day 1 and 2:
Throughout all of the rehearsals we had been practicing in the Eurhythmy room. On the first day of tec week, I finally got to see the place where we'd be doing the show, the new gym.

Day 3:
Happy Birthday Eve! How are you celebrating? By staying at school till 9 pm! Yay.... Again, we had lots of standing around. I got to see my make-up for the first time! It was really bright and fun, it took quite a long time to apply though.

Day 4:
We had our first "dress rehearsal." I put it in quotations because we didn't actually get through the whole play, just the first half and only some of us were in costume and makeup. My voice was acting a little weird, almost as though it was going to disappear. We got to see My's makeup for the first time, doesn't she look lovely?

Day 5:
I wake up to find, I've lost my voice. It's opening night and I've lost my voice. What awful timing. My and I painting all the last minute masks and props and got into costume and makeup. Kim (our assistant director) and I decided that she would "dub" my voice for that nights show and hopefully I would get it back by the next day. The show went well, with only a few mess-ups. It was hard to move my mouth at the right time that Kim was speaking. She did a great job, after all she had never read the part before and didn't mess up once.

Day 6:
My voice began to come back, by the time of the first show on Saturday I was able to talk again my voice was just several octaves lower. I suppose it was perfect since my character was a guy. It was so nice to be able to actually say my lines again!

After the first show we all went to California Pizza Kitchen, which has become a tradition. We weren't aloud to take our make-up off between shows since it takes so long to put on, thus people who walked by us, most have thought we were part of the circus or something.
The Saturday night show was definitely the best out of the four. We had an amazing crowd and so much energy. backstage we were all running around like mad people.


Day 7:
Our final show. It went well, not the best, but still good! We were all exhausted, sleeping backstage until our scene. My had a fever and most people were coming down with colds. After the show we had to "strike the set" which is always a little sad and lots of work.

In all it was a fun experience, although lots of work. It was nice working with some talented actors like Julian who play Tartaglia. Although the play wasn't one I necessary wanted to do, I still really liked my part. Even though it was no where as big a production as Pippin, it was still stressful and a ton of work. I don't feel that anyone in the play was ever to keen on the play itself. And to be honest I think that's the difference between a good and amazing play. The love for the play.
All I can say is, I'm rather happy it is over. Yes I will miss it a bit, but not that much. It was fun, and I'll smile looking back at it.
I wonder what we'll do next year.

Pictures by Andrew Neuhart, Martina Turner and Ms. Meyer.

Green Lips

Last Thursday, Mary and I went over to My's house. After talking, eating, and more talking, we decided it would be fun to dress up in fun outfits and do a photo-shoot. We radded My's closet and found things we liked, or that others liked for us. My chose a vintage flowery dress for me. Mary tried on pretty much everything in the closet before finding something she liked, and even then she was constantly changing it. My went through several dressed before settling on a wine-read beaded dress. Next we put on wild shades of lip stick and eye shadow, then we headed outside. It was very fun and we got lots of good pictures! We all had our own style, Mary was the hippie, My the London lady, and I was the fun, flowery, colorful girl.

Cuts, Bruises, Gashes Oh My!

I have been fascinated with the art of stage makeup for a while now. In other words, I love creating fake injuries. It started out with a simple cut, then once I perfected that I moved onto bruises. I create these wounds using a little watercolor set I have. I've made skinned knees, gashes and burns. One day I was watching a special feature on Lost Season 2 that talked about the makeup they did for the TV show. The segment showed how they applied this white pasty stuff so that they could paint the inside of the wound and it looked like it was deep. It made me curious as to what other substances I could use. That's when I noticed a bottle of glue on my desk. I started doing what looked like gashes. I used glue, which made the skin look stretched, my usual paint, for the gash part, and olive oil, which I put on the gash once I finished painting. The oil makes it look wet. It was very fun experimenting and trying new things.

Yesterday my friend Ventana came over and she decided she wanted a cut on her leg. I made a gash on her leg and one on mine, once her mom arrived we explained that we were trying to skateboard down the hill together on one board and fell off. To make a long story short, she only realized it wasn't real when we all burst out laughing. When Ventana went home she told the same story to her dad, who also thought it was real.

I decided that I wanted to do something a little bigger. So, I painted a long knife-like wound on my upper leg. I applied glue, olive oil and more glue. Then I thought, well why not make a glue piece of skin separately and put it over the whole thing. So thats what I did. On a sheet of palette paper I made my piece of skin and let it dry. My mom suggested I try using matte medium so I made a piece out of that to. Once they were dry I tried both "on" and realized the matte medium worked better. I asked Greg if he could mix some paint to look like my skin tone then I painted the white matte medium over the top. After much retouching I decided I had done all I could for the day. It turned out good, but next time I have to smooth out some bumps in the matte medium a little and the skin color was a little off. It still turned out pretty cool. I'm looking forward to experimenting a lot more in the future and maybe one day I'll be on some DVD explaining how I did the makeup in a movie.