Sherlock Holmes and A Regrettable Engagement

Tonight we start rehearsing the sequel to Sherlock Holmes and A Most Irregular Tea Party. 


I am thrilled and excited to be jumping into some new material.  We've been working on the script for a while now, and the best thing to do at this point it to put it on it's feet.  We did the promotional photo shoot this last Saturday.  This post is mostly about the costuming for Sherlock 2.  Just to give you a little more insight on the process.

 

You'll notice a new face in the full cast photo.  Fourth from the right is Matthew Ecclestone joining the cast as Professor James Moriarty.  Matt and I have been friends for a long time, he also happens to be just and incredible actor.  He's worked all over the country, he's a stellar musician, and just a funny human being as well.  He fits right into the cast.

Now, I've said it before and I'll  say it again, when it comes to costuming I never give myself enough time.  I had three days this week to get everything prepped and ready to go.  Moriarty's vest was made for the shoot.  Here's a better shot of it.

 

That vest took me the better part of eight hours to make.  It's completely lined, and I love it. However, because of the rest of his costuming, you're barely able to see it.  So you'll have to take my work for it.  

The other headache of the week was Mrs. Hudson's new dress. 

That dress is comprised of five different types of fabric, three different types of trim.  That dress took me the better part of two days to make, logging 16 hours at the sewing machine a day. I think it looks great and I love it, but I need to start planning better before photo shoots.  I also made a new vest for Dr. John Watson (Max Hultquist), but I don't have a good shot of that yet, so you'll have to take my word for it.  It's incredible.

Sherlock wears the same costume for the photo shoot as he did for Sherlock Holmes and A Most Irregular Tea Party for the simple reason that putting him in his actual show costume would give away spoilers.

 

 He looks great though.  For Amanda Hull's costume we wanted her character to look a bit more "relaxed" than the first show, or at least as relaxed as Victorian society allows.

 

The skirt was pulled from my own costume stock, because I live in a world where owning a floor length velvet skirt with fur trim is completely normal.  Then Amanda found the blouse at Goodwill, my favorite store.  I should say both she and I found a ton of blouses at Goodwill and then picked the one we liked. It was kind of an exhausting process.  We put all that together with this great suede belt in a hunter green to give her costume a bit more color.  I also made her a hairpiece for the show, it's not as intensive as the I made for the last show, but if I get off my duff maybe I'll be able to put together an online tutorial for that.  She will also be getting a cape in the next few days that I have yet to make.  It'll just finish up her outfit and give it that last bit of polish.

I actually should get back to working on some costumes for the show.  So more on the show later, and we hope to see you all there!

 

Returning to Sherlock

We're back!

"Sherlock Holmes and a Most Irregular Tea Party" returns to the historic Brumder Mansion this week!!!  

The entire original cast is back in this remount of the show.  The show only closed last October, but we found that enough people either hadn't gotten the chance to see it the first time around or wanted to see it again we put the show into the fast track to bring it back.

Over the last week we've jumped back into rehearsals.  It was slightly surreal to walk into the basement and see the set put back together, all the props in place as if no time had past.  The other thing that the actors love about the remount it getting to hang out again.  As a director I probably shouldn't share this kind of thing as it makes me seem horribly unprofessional, but there are a good deal of our rehearsals where we have to break because I'm laughing too hard to keep going.  The group of people that I get to work with are so talented, lovely, and funny it's a joy to go to work.

We've added a few new things to keep the audience on their toes.  The script has gotten another polish, the costumes are being slightly revamped, we're making sure everything is in proper working order.  Right now we just need an audience to make it complete.  

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND A MOST IRREGULAR TEA PARTY (Tickets and Information)

Last October we sold out very quickly so grab your tickets early.

Also I'd like to take this post to make the official announcement that in April just following "Sherlock Holmes and A Most Irregular Tea Party"  there will be a sequel to the show.  "Sherlock Holmes and A Regrettable Engagement"  is being prepped to go by our talented cast.  We're also going to see some new faces.  Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson will have to face off against their most famous and dangerous adversary...

More on that later! Hope to see you all soon.

Rapunzel: Part 1

Once upon a time...

There was a woman that lived in a small shack all by herself.  She was a simple woman, who practiced the art of healing with herbs and potions.  She wanted nothing more than to help people, but because her strange ways and solitary life people shunned her.  Over time she grew twisted and filled with anger, and became nothing more than The Witch the towns people thought she was.  The Witch turned her back on the people who so hated her.

The only thing she wanted in her small life was someone to love her, without question and without the influence of the outside world.  The Witch knew of a baker and his wife that we're about to have a child.  She waited until the child had been born and was sure of the baby's heath, then the witch stole the baby in the night.

The Witch built a tall tower with her magic and locked the baby girl away, keeping her hidden from the outside world.  The Witch named the little girl, Rapunzel.

 

Rapunzel grew up into a lovely young woman.  The Witch taught her all kinds of things, how to sing and sew. How to heal with flowers and herbs.  Rapunzel even learned to read the stars to reveal things to come.  Rapunzel loved her mother and she loved her life, but she couldn't help but feel as though she was missing something.  There had to be more to life than her small tower.  However, when she asked about the wide world The Witch would tell Rapunzel horrible stories of robbers and knaves and how she should forget about the world because in her tower she was safe.

When Rapunzel was old enough The Witch would leave her alone during the day, and come home at night with supplies.  The only way in or out of the tower was to climb Rapunzel long chestnut hair.  So that was how things were, Rapunzel would watch The Witch leave every morning.  Then in the evening The Witch would stand at the base of the tower and yell, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!" Then the two would eat their dinner and go to sleep. This was just they way things were.  One very ordinary night while The Witch was sleeping, Rapunzel looked out her tower window and read the stars.  Something new was coming.  Something exciting.

This brings us to The Prince.

 

The Prince was restless.  He never wanted to be royal, he never wanted anything except to be treated like a normal person.  The Prince would often spend his days walking in the woods far, far past the borders of his kingdom alone where he could think.  Then on a very ordinary day following a very ordinary night he stumbled upon something that would change his life forever.  He heard singing. Sad lonely singing, but more beautiful than any voice he'd ever heard before.  The Prince followed the singing and found a tower he had never seen before. And he had shown up just at the point in the evening when The Witch was returning home for the night.  He heard The Witch yell, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!  

Then The Prince saw the longest, richest chestnut hair he'd ever seen fall out of the window and pull The Witch into the tower.  He decided to wait the night and see if perhaps he could discover what was in that tower...

The View from a Tower...

Right, so I had a goal at one point to keep the posts coming much more often... If you follow my blog at all you probably realize that really hasn't happened.  My apologies, life gets going and you well you know.

Anyway, guess what?  There is to be a photo shoot.  A good old-fashioned Grimm Fairy Tale photo shoot and it's soon.  Tomorrow in fact.  What are we doing?  I thought it was time to tackle Rapunzel.

http://www.lornafreytag.com/rapunzel/

I'm very excited about this.  First off we have a new face to Reconstructing Grimm who will be playing the "Prince" role.  Not going to announce it though.

I just finished the dress for this shoot as well, and I really like it.  I realized that one of the things I'd never created was a ballgown.  Beauty and the Beast had  gown, but I'd never made a proper fairytale ball gown and I desperately wanted to.  I also wanted it to look sort of homespun at the same time.  I spent maybe two weeks hitting goodwill every few days and buying up curtain panels that were complimentary to each other and then all of today piecing them together to make the Rapunzel dress. 

I'll explain in better detail when I have a photo to reference, but I also wanted the gown to look as the Rapunzel in my version had no real concept of the world outside, so it's got influences from all different time periods.

The initial idea, was to make the skirt out of wire so it looked like a bird cage, but that would be, heavy/extremely hard to move in so I scrapped that idea for something a bit more practical. 

There was something else that was amazing about today.  I forgot how much I loved just putting together the small things together, like the dress and figuring out how to do the hair.  Sherlock Holmes and A Most Irregular Tea Party was great, I loved every minute of it, but doing that show put me out of commission for Grimm for the better part of seven to nine months.  I forgot how this whole thing started, it was just Perry and I goofing off having fun, and at some point with all the other work, and my drive to make this something bigger with the gallery shows and the video blog, and the magazine submissions I lost sight of that.

I love this series, and I love that my strange little hobby is something that other people enjoy watching and keeping up with.

This is going to be a lot of fun for me, and I think all of you at home will enjoy it as well. Until the next post! Good night dear readers and thank you.

UPDATE! Having a little fun

So Sherlock Holmes and a Most Irregular Tea Party went off with out a hitch.  We all had a blast... and we're coming back!  Next March Sherlock Holmes will be back for a second run at the Brumder.  Over the next few months I'll be polishing the script some more, adding a few new surprises, and tweaking the end just a bit.

Now that the hectic pace of the show is over I had a few weeks just to relax and think about what I would like to do in the show's hiatus and figure out the next few projects for Reconstructing Grimm. 

First off this Saturday Perry and I are planning a shoot. It's going to be very simple, just me one other model and Perry.  No video blog and no fairy tale theme.  We're trying something a little new.  You'll see the first couple of snap shots by Sunday.

I've also made decisions on several new projects for the New Year.  They're all in flux at the moment so I'm holding off to announce anything until those plans are more solid.

There's your update! Hope you like new shoot this week!

Sherlock: Costume Closet: The Other Woman

After about three days of super labor intensive sewing I had Amanda J Hull's costume done.  I stood by took a look at my work, was proud for a moment, then realized with crushing fear that I had yet to make my costume for the show.  So I hopped back to the sewing machine and started all over at square one.

I also didn't do a costume sketch for my pieces because there was simply no time.  I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what I wanted, so i figured I'd just start from there.  I had roughly two days til the photo shoot, no fabric, and no car.  It was like the early days of Grimm again.  I had labor day weekend off work, and by that Monday I had Amanda's costume done, so I woke up incredibly early and jumped on a bus to the closest Joann Fabrics, which is and hour and a half bus ride.  Then I spent an extra two hours in the store arguing with myself over fabric choices.  By the time I finally got home the day was half over and the clock was ticking, photo shoot was happening in 32 hours whether or not I was done.

I started with the jacket.  I knew I wanted a peplum like skirt to the jacket:  Here's what I came up with:

Roommate lovely calls this pose my "I will eat your soul face"  so sorry.  That jacket however almost killed me. I did use a pattern; it was McCalls  6442 if anyone wants to give this look a go.

 

Now, the problem was money again. Like I said this production didn't have a lot of it.  So I had to find fabrics that would look  more expensive than they were.   Not. Easy.  I ended up finding the fabric for the skirt on sale for $8 a yard.  Still kind of pricey so i only got 3 yards of it, then I bought a very cheap matching cotton fabric for the jacket.  then i used a bit of the skirt fabric on the lapel to tie the look together.  The other issue with that cotton fabric is that it is not stiff at all, I had to line the jacket twice to get the right weight.  Then when it was done I didn't love the look of the sleeves, so I added some pleats and button details.  I also put the black piping around the sleeve cuff and the bottom of the coat to give it more dimension.

After I had finished the jacket it was now 1am, I was exhausted I'd been up since 6am.  I had nothing left and the photo shoot was in 16 hours.  Roommate then started playing "There Can Be Miracles" from The Prince of Egypt yelling "Si Se Puede!!! Yes, it can be done!!!!!"  I started giggling and got back to work.  In about three hours I'd finished the skirt.

 I went to sleep until 9am that next morning then got started on my hat.  It was 7 hours til the photo shoot.  I wasn't going to have time to go through the same process that I had for Amanda's hat.  Then I remembered I hat a really cheap waste paper basket from the Dollar Tree.  The thing was basically made of chicken wire.  I cut the bottom off and covered it in the right fabric, ribbon and flowers with my trusty glue gun.  Then, because the whole thing was made of wire I bent it to fit my head and attached an elastic band.  It only took about two hours.

Finally done I felt really good about the whole look and picked up a really cheap belt at Rainbow to finish the look.

Now that's all in this post for costuming.  We just had our opening weekend and it couldn't have gone better.  The cast was amazing, the audiences were incredible and we still have three more weekends!

We got just an excellent review from Russ Bickerstaff: You can read it here:  Cleverly Precise Sherlock Holmes

We also launched our kickstarted campaign to offset some of the costs of the production, it you liked the show or even if you're still coming but want to support us stop over and donate anything you can:

Sherlock Holmes Kickstarter

Thanks for everything!  Hope to see you all at the show!

Sherlock: Costume Closet: Dr. John Watson

As promised here's the post on John Watson. Now I had thought that this costume was going to be the death of me before the production started, however it was actually probably one of the easiest costumes in the end.

I didn't even do a character sketch of what I wanted for John Watson, because I wasn't 100% sure of what I was really looking for.  Like I said in the last post, we cast all the guys in the show then had the first promotional photo shoot the next day... smart me.  So as a production team we sat down and the wonderful Tom Marks happened to have access to this massive storage space filled with costumes and props from an old theatre company that is no longer working.  We dug around in there and pulled a few things, and then Tom held up this suit:

 

I didn't even know I was looking for this, and yet it was perfect.  It was a nice study English tweed, three pieces, which to me always reads militaristic to reflect Watson's past in the army.   We paired it with a tux shirt to get the right look in the collar and Amanda Hull's boyfriend Cole had a deconstructed tie that we slapped on as an ascot. 

The one thing that was not ideal about this suit was the pants.  Everything else (The coat and vest) fit Max quite well, but the pants had been taken in for someone years ago and were taken in like six or seven inches in the waist. For the first photo shoot, I didn't have time to re-sew them so I just cut the seam down the back.  That's right ladies, Max's tush is hanging out the back of those pants in the picture above.  Mmmmmhhhmmmmmm, I know what sells tickets. 

Okay I did fix them for the show to protect his modesty, because while it is a very nice tush that would be fairly distracting.

Here's a shot with the pants fixed:

 

One of the other things you'll notice missing from this shot, and indeed the show is Watson's walking stick.  This is something we got rid of entirely.  In the books it does state that Dr. John Watson has a war injury, however Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is inconsistent about where that wound is placed.  There are some stories where it is in his leg, and some where the wound is placed in his shoulder.  Since the script was in flux, because I wrote it I asked Max where he would like the injury to be placed.  Max made the decision that to provide himself more mobility he opted for the wound to be placed in the shoulder. That's your fun Sherlock Holmes fact for the day.

I do feel a bit bad, I had promised Max a new cravat and something a bit more steampunky, along the lines of the ladies costumes but this just looked soooooooo perfect. Again. I said it in the last post and it should be repeated, if you find something that is pre-made that fits your idea this well DO NOT GET RID OF IT, there is not pride in that and you will just be causing yourself more headaches down the line trying to recreate it.

So that's it on John Watson.  Next costume closet we'll be taking a look at my costume for The Other Woman.  See you all soon.