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Eight a.m. Five minutes, please. Have to get up and walk the dog. Five…minutes… please. No…have to get up and walk the dog. Five…Week four and I fall asleep in North Yorkshire and I’m waking up in London. Where is that letter from Fanny to Ralph…isn’t it letter #8 or maybe #9 or #10? I thought I put it on the prop table… or maybe I mailed it? Or maybe, it’s in someone’s coat pocket…they can’t do this scene without the letter…Am I looking for Noggs’ copy of the letter, or the one Allison brings onstage or is it Ralph’s? He reads one, too. Ray needs a letter, too!! Which letter ends up in his coat pocket? Who presets his coat…I have to find his dresser…Ralph. Ralph Nickleby. I will learn that name by heart. Ralph’s office is cold as fresh coal…Ralph’s office is the angular platform, it moves up and downstage with the effortless push of a button. Who is pushing the button? Stand by Button Pusher…Button Pusher…GO! Button Pusher, I hear a noise...it’s not the platform making that noise, is it? Do we need to stop? I form an “h” with my mouth, intending to finish the familiar stage manager’s refrain I’ve begun, “Hold…please!” No sound moves my tongue but I hear the whisper of a biting wind. I hear the falling snow and see a young, lost lad with a spoon. I listen harder, wonder where I am and keep looking at the boy, trying to pick up my cue…is it coming from backstage? No, it sounds like the melodic honking of geese making their way south, flying over Devon? Geese in Devon? Why am I in Devon…how did I get to Devon? No…it sounds like…like…Line? “I’ve never done...” “I’ve never done anything like this before!” I shout from the top of my lungs, standing center stage and staring out at the house…it’s empty…all around, it’s empty. I must be having one of those anxiety dreams...I’m not an actor, I think, I think to myself in the dream-theatre. But backstage, and I can hear it clearly, I hear a humming, many voices becoming one…one story, two parts, two directors, two rooms and one cast. All in London, damn ‘em. Eight o’nine a.m. and the geese are humming…wait a minute, geese don’t hum, they honk…as I begin to walk toward upstage center, trying to find the prop I misplaced, the humming begins to sound like a truck backing up but I know there are no trucks in Victorian London. What about geese? I turn towards stage right and I reach out to pick up a piece of paper that I think is the missing letter! I still have time to finish the preset…rehearsal doesn’t start until one o’clock! Who calls? Who calls so loud??? Instead, my hand slaps the alarm clock and then I’m staring with blurry eyes at the ceiling. It was a dream. I have to get up and walk the dog. It’s week four and it’s time to get up and go to the theatre. I have to prepare for rehearsal.
I shake the ague from my consciousness and try to focus on the sunlight that slices though my window. It reminds me of the afternoon sun in the rehearsal hall, the way it warms the floor and creeps from here to there as we move through the day. I’ve been dreaming about what I do. Sometimes, I am afforded an epiphany about the process. But, as my dream-self remarked, I’ve never done anything like this before. 25 years in theatre and never have I been so awed and humbled by a process or the people who are making it happen. There are many props to preset and much paperwork to update and meetings to attend and people to talk to and furniture to move and there is coffee to make. Lots of coffee. 25 actors drink a lot of coffee. I need a cup of coffee…I roll out of bed and dress, call the dog and we go outside and take in the morning breeze. It’s October, and the geese are flying south for the winter.
–Sarah Smiley, Stage Manager





















Before we get to Rachel Pollock's newest post - I need to make a correction to a previous post. Randy Handley's notes (as mentioned in the last photo of this post) are actually kept using the award-winning system he designed, CAPS (Computer Aided Paperwork System). Co Star is the system that catalogues the PlayMakers/DDA vintage costume collection. Sorry Randy!
And now on to Rachel...
Remember Miss LaCreevy's scalloped hat from back in September? If not, you can read the first part of the production process in this prior post.
When last we left off, we saw how the hat developed from designer Jan Chambers' costume rendering of the character of Miss LaCreevey, through research images and millinery magazine articles to a first mockup, made from cheap wire and craft lace. Essentially, the hat had left the page, but wasn't nearly ready for the stage yet!
We fit the mockup on the performer who will play Miss LaCreevey, DeDe Corvinus. We looked at the hat with the costume and talked about visual issues like the scale of the brim compared to the scale of the dress and how it looked on Ms Corvinus--adjustments were made in the shape of the cap and the height of the scalloped brim, so that the hat would be more in-tune with the aesthetic intent of Jan's design concept for the character. We also discussed fit and stability--was the crown too large or too small for Ms. Corvinus' head, and what would help stabilize it for the show? Once i had all these answers and adjustments to make, it was time to do the "real thing"!
The entire hat is built on a wire foundation, from a special kind of wire called millinery wire--18 gauge steel wrapped in cotton or rayon fiber. The joins are secured with a cotton-covered tie wire (florists use this too) and then cemented over with Super Glue for maximum stability.

Here's the base foundation clamped in a jeweler's support while the adhesive on the wire wrappings dries. While waiting, i also shaped the scalloped brim support in the same wire.

The finished base with the edges bound in silk bias, which will make a nicer finish for securing the fabric elements of the hat to the foundation.

Next, i attached the lace to the scalloped wire foundation, added some pleated ribbon edging, and whipped the whole brim onto the front of the base foundation.

This picture shows a second cap-shape mockup from muslin.
Jan wanted to change the shape of the crown after the first fitting, and i wanted us to look at it in inexpensive muslin to make certain it was correct before cutting into the silk taffeta of the final fabric. This shape was enthusiastically approved, so i forged ahead!

Here's a back view of the hat before the silk cap is installed. You can see the tulle ruffles attached to the frame to give the cap loft (or in layman's terms, "poofiness").
Then, i had only to attach the silk cap, put in a mesh support for pinning it to Ms. Corvinus' hair, line it, and voila! Thus a hat comes into being!
Just for fun, let's compare, page to stage...
Here's a closeup of Jan's design, showing Miss LaCreevey's sweet scalloped hat:

...and here's the finished product, ready for opening night:

Hope you have enjoyed reading about the production process of one of our many, many hats for this show, as much as i have enjoyed making it!
–Rachel Pollock, Costume Crafts Artisan







Stage Manager Chuck Bayang tries to keep it light.

As one might imagine, if one has been following us on our journey to bring this play to fruition, there are many idiosyncrasies to this process we’ve undertaken. So it seems a bit redundant to say something like “this is unlike any other production I’ve been a part of.” Not only redundant, it can’t begin to capture the excitement, fatigue, magic, fear, anxiety and joy that has infected all of us inside the rehearsal hall (and out). We are now entering our fourth week of rehearsals having staged more than 300 pages of play in roughly 9 days. We have been working 6 days a week from 1pm – 10:30pm. All of us, as members of the company, share our responsibilities in the rehearsal hall with our other selves (professor, graduate student, PRC staff), and the horizon has no relief in sight. And while the grueling schedule can take its toll, there is something incredible going on within the walls of the Center for Dramatic Art.
Each day when rehearsals begin, one of our awesome stage managers (Chuck and Sarah) announces the start of rehearsal with, “Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, it is one o’clock.” This is met with – and I kid you not – a rallying cry of 25 actors sounding like something more akin to a football team’s pre-game war cry before charging onto the field. And, while I won’t bore you with a tired sports analogy here, the parallels are many.
Joe and Tom have often called this production “an exercise in company” – taking on the thing that an organization isn’t sure it can handle, but challenging itself to take it on nonetheless. We are rehearsing in a way that is unconventional. We have two directors. Two rehearsal halls. We have been staging roughly 40 pages a day. We are in constant motion from room to room and scene to scene. We move at a lightening pace, and we don’t have time to spend rehearsing in the traditional, methodical fashion of a conventional process. This means that every moment that we’re not “on stage” we’re grabbing our scene partners to work notes given to us from one or both of the directors, and continuing that work on our own when we get home at night. This requires an incredible amount of focus, but more importantly it requires trust. The feeling in the room is not only enthusiastic but incredibly supportive. We rely on each other to make sure that everyone is on the same page (quite literally), and that we are approaching the work with the moment to moment presence that is required for work of this kind. We drop in and out of characters constantly, we switch in and out of dialects, we marvel in the work of our colleagues, and we celebrate the creativity of all involved.
One little anecdote – this past week we were doing our evening run of everything we had staged earlier in the day (we were, by this point, well into Part 2 of the play). The story is spending much of its time following Nicholas as his stories come to resolution. We were heading toward the final scene in Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire where the once enslaved boys have started taking over the school in something reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies. At the start of the scene the stage manager called out, “Thank you ladies and gentlemen – it’s 10:30,” announcing the end of our rehearsal day. And a collective groan of disappointment was shared by the entire company ‑ “Awwwwwwwwww!” – like children being told to turn off the TV and head to bed. Now that’s something you don’t find too often. I say again, something special is happening within these walls. And everyone is excited to share it with our community.
–Jeffrey Meanza, Cast Member








As PlayMakers' resident crafts artisan, in addition to all the millinery, another of my responsibilities is to function as the company dyer, assisting the costume designer in careful control of the color palette of the show by making adjustments in fabric hues.
Because we share space with the facilities for UNC's nationally-known Costume Production MFA program, I have access to a state-of-the-art theatrical dye shop which features a full range of four different classes of dyes and related auxilliary chemicals, two industrial dye vats with fume exhausts, a yardage steamer (called the "silver bullet," no relation to Coors!), and both dye mixing and spray boxes. I have worked in a lot of costume shops, from LORT theatres to Broadway to international opera and ballet, and I have to admit--the dyeshop facilities here really impressed me when I interviewed for the job. It's so rare for a regional theatre like PlayMakers to have these kinds of options when it comes to equipment and supplies for surface design of fabrics and costumes. (And, it's such an exciting luxury for me, to have these resources at my disposal when it comes to doing my job!)

Silver bullet--we can steam-set a whole bolt of dyed fabric in this!
The average PRC show involves around 25 custom dye jobs--from dyeing fabric yardage before it is made into costumes, to matching a trim or lining to a chosen fabric, to turning a finished garment a whole new color. (For the curious, the current record-holder for number of dye jobs for a single show is 2008's Pericles with 63! Second place goes to Glass Menagerie with 47, closely followed by Amadeus with 45 and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye with 43.) So far, Nickleby is right on track with 25 completed so far, and nearly a month to go til opening. If we had an office pool running on it, I'd bet on a total of 75 by the time we open, with a lot of those coming in after we start seeing things onstage. Sometimes a costume designer needs to see everything together with the set and props under the lights to realize that, hey, that guy's pants are really bright compared to everybody else up there...

Mixing tickets for Nickleby dye jobs in-progress
Here are some examples of the dye requests for Nicholas Nickleby which have been processed so far:
- a whole bolt of cotton fabric for men's period shirts tea-dyed off-white
- a yard of antique lace trim dyed leaf green for the Rich Daughter's bonnet decoration
- an industrial metal zipper for the back of a quick-change dress, dyed half one color and half another to better blend into different skirt and bodice fabrics
For each dye request, I keep accurate records on the precise process developed--what type of dye and auxilliaries used to dye what fiber fabric, how much and for whom, how quickly it's needed. Sometimes I have a week or two to turn it around (like in the case of the two-tone zipper, which will go into the costume toward the very end of its construction) and sometimes I only have a few hours (such as collar fabric that needs to be cut and sewn onto a shirt in time for a fitting that afternoon).
All this dyeing has to feed into my workload for making the hats and altering shoes and various other accessories as well--it's a time-management juggling feat, that's for sure!

Dyer Rachel Pollock works on the perfect shade of peach for Mrs. Mantalini's dress fabric