Costumes!

We are in dress rehearsals! We open Tuesday, which is hard to believe, because it's already Sunday. The kids and Maria started working with costumes a few days ago, because we have so many costumes and several quick changes and shoe changes to boot (pun intended).

My costume changes are just fine. I only have one costume that I truly dislike, and that's the party dress. I probably won't have a photo of it online because it's one of the faster changes, so I hang around backstage immediately after changing to get ready to go onstage, instead of being able to get my camera and shoot a photo.

We all have Chinese dressers who don't speak English, which is very interesting. The costume racks are set up behind the stage in the back walkway, with a chair numbered for each cast member. Since I play a kid, but I'm not a real kid, my chair and costumes were placed near the kids, but sort of segregated to give me a bit more privacy. Well, I don't think my dresser realizes that I'm not a kid -- on the first day, she saw that my changes weren't near the rest of the kids, so she carefully moved my things to be with them. Now I get to change right near our 11 and 12-yr-old boys! Oy... But the changes are so fast, and everyone is focused on her own costume change, so no one stands around gaping, thankfully. My dresser also wants me to walk around naked. We all have bathrobes that we can wear backstage before changing. After the show during our first run-through, my robe was in my dressing room, and our changing area was backstage. I started to walk to my dressing room to get the robe, then bring it back and change out of costume and into the robe, and the dresser grabbed me and said things to me in Chinese, and the gist of it was: she wanted me to change backstage and then walk in my underwear down the hall to the dressing room where my robe was! I kept trying to mime what I wanted to do, pointing to someone else's robe and toward the dressing room, and she didn't get it and kept gesturing for me to take off my clothes right then! Finally I just smiled and walked away, then came back with my robe, and she got the picture. Now I make sure my robe is IN the changing area!

On the first day with costumes, I came to the costume area, and my dresser had my sailor dress laid out for me. But I play a postulant (nun) in the opening scene before I am a kid! So I pulled out my postulant costume and showed her, with a lot of miming, that it was my first costume. Also, since this was before the show started and we had plenty of time, I wanted to change in the dressing room, not in the backstage hallway where all the dressers, crew, and random other people were standing around. So I tried to mime that, but she didn't understand. (Some of the other nuns had made that point, because they were changing, with the help of their dressers, in the dressing room.) The head dresser/costumer came over to translate, and I explained what I wanted to say, and he told my dresser, who nodded. I took my nun costume and started walking to the dressing room, but she didn't follow me. So I did the change myself, which is quite fine, but I think my dresser didn't realize she was allowed to come to the dressing room. Or something. It's all a bit confusing.

From then on, the costume changes are backstage. I change into the sailor dress, take off black socks, and attempt to make my hair look nice (after it has been smashed under the tight nun veil). Then we change into nightgowns and slippers for the bedroom scene. Then into the "curtains" outfit, which is my favorite of all my costumes -- and I only wear it for about 2 minutes of the show! So tragic. Then we have our first real quick change back into sailor suits. My quick change always goes well because I can help with it, and have my dress undone and ready to take off, but the dresser, who would be most helpful just holding up the next costume for me to step into, insists on helping me out of my current costume, so I get to spend a bit of time backstage in my underwear while she prepares my next costume for me to get into. Not my ideal way of changing, really ...

After that we get into the dreaded party dresses. I really hate this costume - it looks like an unattractive pink sack. Because our Brigitta is a lot bigger/taller than the previous tour's Brigitta, she is wearing a lot of the previous Louisa costumes, and I am bumped up to a lot of the previous understudy costumes (and the understudy was an average-sized adult, apparently, because the costumes are all quite roomy and long). Fortunately, we don't do much in the party except "So Long, Farewell," and then I can take the sack off.

We have intermission, and some of us attempt to use the squat toilets backstage while in costume. That is dramatic! The toilets (and the whole back corridor) smell like rotting pickles, so it's always an experience trying to use them and not touch ANYTHING in the bathroom, with our hands or our costumes. Yuck. Last week I was wearing long jeans, and I noticed at the end of rehearsal as we walked home that the cuffs were wet -- but it hadn't been raining and wasn't wet on the ground anywhere ... except the bathroom. Disgusting! Now I roll up my pants if I have to go in there. Squat toilets are NOT hygienic.

For Act II, I wear a cute flowered playclothes dress that is one of the most complicated costumes I have ever put on. It opens in the front, and has a hook at the waist, then 2 snaps underneath ... then it zips up with a zipper that opens at the bottom (like on a jacket), then has a few more snaps on top of that, then some snaps up the skirt, then an apron snaps around the waist in 2 places. I am lucky I don't have the really crazy quick change after the wedding into this costume, because I would never be onstage in time.

The wedding is next, and although we complain of looking like a creme puff, I quite like the wedding dresses. They are a dream dress-up dress, puffy and shiny green and ruffly. After the wedding, 3 girls have an extremely quick change - maybe 20-30 seconds - back into the playclothes, but I am fortunately not one of them. I have a bit more time before my entrance, thankfully. Notice that on many of these changes, we are also changing shoes!

The last costume change is from the playclothes into the festival outfit. For some reason, the costumers and dressers think that this is a quick change, but it's only quick for Liesl and Maria. The rest of us do our "quick" change in a special, designated location, then just hang around backstage waiting for our entrance -- because we have plenty of time. Then Liesl and Maria run off for a truly quick change just before we all enter. During one of the dress rehearsals, Maria ran onstage, and we heard her say her line, "Immediately? I'm afraid that will be impossible" and then she SCREAMED! With laughter. Turns out she had run onstage with her festival costume completely unzipped in front! A bit of a wardrobe malfunction, as they say. She was a bit pink-faced for the rest of the rehearsal, and we were all giggling in that scene. Yesterday, she nearly went onstage unzipped again, but this time we were paying attention and whispered "ZIPPER!!!" as she was entering, so she took care of it. Very funny stuff!

At the end, we put on enormous, unattractive wool jackets and canvas backpacks for our trek across the mountains.

That is my costume story. The other, non-kid costumes in the show are GREAT, but we don't spend a lot of time looking at them because we spend all of our offstage time changing and waiting for our entrances. The dresses that the adults wear in the party scene are GORGEOUS, as are the wigs. I'll probably steal some photos from other people to post on here, since I don't have a lot of time to take them myself.