Senior Production of 'Blood Brothers' 2009

A scene from 'Blood Brothers'

In previous years, I had always signed up to act in the school play, however this year I wanted tolearn more about backstage and costumes. Therefore, during the first half-term of term 1, I signed up to work on costumes for the senior production ‘Blood Brothers’ every Monday after school. This activity ran into the second half term and I had to come in during some weekends.

OBJECTIVES

My aims for this activity were to demonstrate and enhance my creative skills, learn more about how costumes are assigned and gain a better understanding about the backstage aspect of a production.

WHAT I DID

Linnea (my friend) and I were told that we would be in charge of helping put together costumes for each character in the play, sorting through the costumes the drama department already had and hanging them on racks, making labels for each costume and on the night of the performance making sure everything was kept in its place. To find out what costume each character needed we sat down with them individually and asked some questions. We also asked them to draw what they wanted their costume to look like. To help us in assembling the costumes we researched what the fashion was in the time of the play and watch a version of the play preformed in England. The Final production was performed on two nights in early December and it was a huge success.

A costume I helped put together

CHALLENGES

We did encounter a few difficulties. There were piles of clothes to sort through that the drama department already had. They were all throw in different boxes and nothing was sorted or categorized in any way. Looking at it from a distance I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start, but then Linnea and I started planning and working out how we could sort through the clothes. Each week we addressed a different section of the dressing room and assigned racks to groups of clothes that were similar. Another issue arised the weekend before the play when we realized that some of the costumes the actors had brought from home not fit the time period of the play. We fixed this by searching through the newly organized costume racks for pieces that would work.

Two days prior to the first performance we were told that we would also be in charge of microphones. This was a shock as I thought I would only be helping with costumes and I was worried since I had never worked with microphones before. Thankfully one of the members of the technical crew offered to teach us how to manage the microphones. During the second performance of the play, the lead actress’ microphone stopped working. We tried to fix this problem by quickly swapping the batteries between scenes, however her microphone still wasn’t working. Finally we decided that we would use of the minor characters’ microphone as he did not really need it. This situation was very stressful, but I learnt that the best way to go about it is by staying cal and trying to come up with alternatives as quickly as possible.

WHAT I LEARNT

I have definitely learnt a lot from this activity. I learnt that it is best to work together with other people as they may have specialties that you can learn from. I have reached my aims because I learnt a lot about costume design and next time I am assigned to do this I will know what procedure to follow. I definitely gained a better understanding of backstage as I was introduced to the managing of microphones as well as costumes. I have also learnt that the backstage crew holds the whole play together, and that it is not only the people on stage who should be praised for the success of a production.

Article in the Regents Review: http://pattaya.regents-school.com/ptyregentsengine/_filesmgr/File/revues/RR%20Dec%20Jan%20Web.pdf