All Eyes on Me

I'm in the scene that is niobien's final project for her directing class, and today we had a rehearsal where Carolyn did something that was fascinating to me. We ran the scene a few times, and then she suggested we go through it without the words, only the physicality, playing it more or less extreme as was needed to convey the story line. I thought this was a wonderful idea that could have a really specific effect on a scene. If you were blocking something that just didn't have the right kind of physical acting, or too much or too little, boiling it down to just that and running through could really help actors hone their performance.

It made me think of the process of the Mrs. Hawking reading, where at the auditions I observed a bunch of people speaking very stiffly-- apparently to many actors, the Victorians are restrained and bloodless to the point of boredom. I could easily see that desire to "act like a Victorian" bleeding over into the physical acting of a role and leading to stiffness there too. But with an exercise to make people only think about their physicality, you could encourage your actors to punch it up, make their movements more intense and meaningful.

I asked Carolyn if she got it from somewhere, but she came up with it all on her own. I'm quite impressed! Especially since I'm not normally a fan of acting exercises. Totally using the Daitch Technique next time I'm directing something where the physical acting isn't quite there. :-)

You may recall the knockoff Atonement dress that I bought myself for my birthday last year. As I recall, the eBay listing from which I got it said it was a commission that they were now reselling, so I think it was a custom fit. That original owner was petite but even less curvy than I am, and remarkably short-waisted, so I was never quite happy with the fit. I considered altering it, but the biggest problem for me seemed to unfixable, as the slightly-two-narrow hips liked to ride up on me and make the front all crinkly. Still, the dress has interesting bones, so I hated to just donate it or something.

It occurred to me then that I could work it to fit somebody else. That would give me practice altering fit, as well as make a nice present for somebody I like. I immediately thought of Carolyn, my favorite model, who is also more petite than me and might not have the same hip issue as I did, nor the problem with the zipper and the broad rib cage. I've been meaning to practice taking things in at the side anyway. So I asked her is she was interested, and she kindly obliged.

When she tried the dress on, shockingly it turned out to be a bit of a tight fit. She too is longer-waisted than the dress is designed for, and despite her much greater delicacy in the trunk than me, the zipper just barely closed and make it pretty tough for her to breathe. It didn't need taking in on the sides at all. But still, it looked pretty damn good on her, better than it ever looked on me, and could work if tweaked in some other ways. It was too long, and it definitely needed the straps shortened. It also occurred to me, because I never could get the damn thing zipped, to slide the zipper down a couple of inches. Carolyn said it was much more comfortable that way, and it fixed the creasing problem in the front. Now that is something I can work with!

So here's what I did. I opened up the top seams on the back of the dress. It's really sturdily and cleanly made, with a complete lining of another layer of the fashion fabric. You can see where the two layers are seamed together here.

I took my seam ripper and picked the two layers apart. I also removed the straps while I was in there, to resew them in place a good bit shorter than they were before. I also detached the zipper from the lining-- but not the outer fashion fabric, you'll notice. You can also see the slightly spongy interfacing they used to pad the bodice here.

Then I folded each of the two layers of dress material inward, along a straight line going from just inside where the strap attached and the point to which I had pulled the zipper down. That spot would be the new top of the zipper. I noticed that the way it was designed, the zipper had no stopper, the track just disappeared into the seam between the two fabric layers, so I decided to do the same thing. I folded in the zipper above that point in between just the same way. The I sewed the folded over parts of the two layers together, so that the stitches would not show on the outside.


I did the same thing on the other side. Here's the current state of the dress's back, finished and pressed.

As I went through the images I'm using for my graphic novel Lame Swans, one thing I'm particularly pleased with was how the costuming turned out. The visuals of a comic book are as much a part of the storytelling as anything else, so I wanted things to have the right look. I chose models who could conceivably look like ballet dancers. I tried to utilize settings that added to the verisimilitude. And I cared very much about finding costuming that suited the characters, contributed to the visual communication, and suited the overall aesthetic.

( More pictures and costuming process behind the cut... )

Had a photo shoot for Lame Swans yesterday, the third we've had so far. I was feeling pretty awful, and I really do not know what I'm doing with these photography jaunts, but fortunately everyone is patient and willing to help me out such that somehow we muddle through. I'm really happy with how the images look; now I just need to lay them out and edit them to my satisfaction to turn them into a comic book.

niobien has really been my muse for this project. Not only is she so pretty, she's a joy to take pictures of. Her face and carriage are so expressive. Also, because she has talent and experience in ballet, an art I've become very interested in recently, she was the perfect person to build this project around. Look at what a supermodel she is.


Gorgeous. I've been extremely lucky with all my models. They have tried hard, been patient with my muddling through, and best of all did a great job acting with their physicality and facial expressions alone.

There's something in my head, though, as I take and look at these pictures. Recently I have been exposed to a number of blogs and resources that highlight issues of objectification of women in comics. It's a thing that eats me, the frequency with which female characters are just incidentally presented in sexually objectifying ways, because of an often underlying, unconscious assumption that female characters are only interesting if they're sexy. My comic book has mostly female characters, so I have a strong desire to create an example of the medium that bucks that convention. When I ask them to pose, I try to let the acting of the moment and the shape of the dancing decide how they hold themselves. There is some concern, of course, for the aesthetics of that posing, but I try to make it about the image rather than the body of the model. Everyone I asked to participate is a good-looking person, and I think that adds to the charm of the visuals, but I want them to come off as pretty people, not pretty objects.

But on the other hand, the dance which is the motif I have chosen to tell my story is about a celebration of the capabilities of the physical. Showcasing the body as it performs ballet is the true visual richness of this graphic novel. I need to do it to achieve the right effect. But I find myself struggling to balance things like inclusion and focus on faces with inclusion and focus on bodies, especially given that the images have to fit in a specific layout. I don't want it to be like I wrote a story about ballet that doesn't actually show any ballet. It's an interesting challenge. I hope I'm up to it.

The Late Mrs. Chadwick had its debut performance yesterday, and I was so happy with how it went. We had a good audience who laughed a lot, and my cast and crew just did such a fabulous job. I even was lucky enough to have Gigi and newly-minted HTPers Ryan Kacani and Aaron Fisher in the audience to see it! It was also kind of cool to have something I wrote seen by people who don't know me, in hopes of increasing the exposure to my work.


I was so pleased with the actors. Lenny and Frances were pretty much the first people who came to mind when I wanted to cast the roles of stuffy, unfailingly polite Arthur Chadwick and Edwin Shrewsbury, and I was so delighted that they wanted to do it. They were hilarious, grasping the particular tone of the humor perfectly and creating characters from this fabulous combination of the mannered way they spoke and their understated reactions to the madness all around them. I just love working with these two, and as usual they did not disappoint.


The title character of Mrs. Chadwick I had to think about much more. She has no lines, but she is demanding all the same-- she has to be physical and loud, and the actress has to be utterly uninhibited. I thought about it for a while, and then I came to Sam LeVangie. I think she has a lot of raw talent, and I really admired the way she threw herself into things and gave them a try. Though I have many talented actor friends who I love casting, I don't always want to use the same people over and over again but instead have a large stable so I can always have the right person for the role. I've wanted to work with Sam for a while now, so I thought this might be the thing. To my pleasure she accepted the part, and she did a wonderful job, looking hauntingly lovely in her pale makeup and white gown as she fearlessly wailed, hurled stuff, and melodramatically flopped around the stage.


And of course, I couldn't have pulled it off without Bernie and Carolyn. They handled the technical aspects, advising me on how to set up the stage, what sort of props and activity were going to be practical, and engineering a sound system to play the necessary sound effects of Matilda's carnage around the house. I am incredibly grateful that they were kind enough to lend their expertise to get my piece off the ground.

As far as directing goes, this show presented an interesting challenge in that it has two very distinct types of humor in it. The first is the witty, wordy kind inherent in Chadwick and Shrewsbury's dialogue. It's a little sophisticated, a little complex, requires a little bit of absorbing in order to get. The second kind of humor is the broad, physical, silly comedy of Matilda Chadwick. She screams, she breaks stuff, she rolls around on the floor. In order for both types of humor to succeed, we had to be careful to not permit them to overlap too much, so the nuances could be appreciated as well as the broader stuff.  

While there were many fine aspects of this production, one of my favorites was the moustaches. I had the idea to use false moustaches early on, and very quickly fell in love with the notion. You know, normally I'm very sensitive to the comfort levels and preferences of my actors and am usually quite willing to change my plan if it makes them feel better about it, but in the case of these moustaches, if my actors had been strongly objected to them, as Ryan Kacani put it after the show, I "would have found new actors." ;-)

So that's my third produced piece of playwriting after To Think of Nothing and Merely Players. It's cool that I was able to use a piece I generated during 31 Plays in 31 Days. And this one was seen by a little more by the public than the others, though it was a small house for a small festival. I need to get more of my work out there, and this is a start. I'm trying to submit more places in hopes of increasing my chance for selection. If you're interested, we still have one more performance next Saturday at 8PM along with Nick's show that Jared is in, Stranger Than Slash Fiction. I know a friend of Jared's managed to buy tickets for it yesterday, so there may be some available still. Go to this website to purchase.

Also, if anyone finds themselves in a position to put on a play, I just want to put it out there that I would love it if you'd consider using one of my scripts. As much as I love directing my own work, I want productions to happen without me as well. So if you need a script, please talk to me and maybe I have something that you would be interested in using. It would be my honor and pleasure.