On Pins and Needles: Notes from the Costume Shop

COLORS OF THE SEASON
Guest post from costumer Deborah Austin

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go backstage, in the wings, and on the Mainstage at Asheville Community Theatre, but the holidays arrived in the costume shop in mid-October. ACT’s next show, Dashing Through the Snow, calls for an elf, an angel, Mrs. Santa Claus, and three characters from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. There is also a last-minute Christmas Eve wedding party of bride and bridesmaids and an innkeeper with an amazing wardrobe of holiday sweaters.

Set in the 1980s in a Christmas themed bed and breakfast in Tinsel, Texas, the opportunities for over-the-top outfits and hair styles are unlimited. The unit set is decked out with every imaginable Christmas ornament, wreath, and stocking in the traditional holiday shades of red and green.

I usually try to fashion a complementary color scheme to work with the set and lighting designers’ palettes, creating a picture of colors and textures woven together for each “look” of the show. (Not in Tinsel, Texas.) The goal of the costume crew has been to create the loudest, brightest collection of colors that scream “Tacky!” when set against the cardinal red and holly greens of the B&B reservation desk and living room. Think plum, lime green, orange, purple, pink, rust, and yellow. Oh yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … that is, Christmas in Tinsel, Texas!

Peter Pan ... Did you know?

After a phenomenal first weekend of Peter Pan performances on the ACT mainstage, we caught up again with director Jerry Crouch for some "little know facts" about Peter Pan. Jerry, as usual, delivered in fine form. So here they are, straight from the "walking encyclopedia of musical theatre's" mouth ....

Peter Pan ... Did you know?

1. James Barrie "invented" the name "Wendy." It was a mispronunciation by a little girl whose father was a dear friend of Barrie's.

2. Charlie Chaplin was Barrie's first choice for the 1924 silent film version of Peter Pan, which eventually starred Betty Bronson.

3. The first time Cathy Rigby toured in the live musical version of Peter Pan in the early '70s, her singing was dubbed by another singer because she had never sung professionally.

4. In 1965, George Cukor and Audrey Hepburn, director and star of 1964's My Fair Lady, almost did a movie version of the musical Peter Pan, which co-starred Sir Laurence Olivier as Captain Hook.

5. Mary Martin's teenage daughter, Heller Halliday, was originally slotted to play Wendy opposite her mother (as Peter), but director Jerome Robbins argued nobody wanted to be reminded that Mary was a 40-something mother playing an adolescent boy!