The Sound of Music
The Sound of music is a work experience opportunity by a company 'Stage X' at the Alexandra Theatre. I spent 4 days working the on this project this included technical rehearsals, dress run, and the 4 shows. I worked on the costume, hair, and makeup team during the duration of the show and thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the process. As part of the costume team I was a dresser mainly doing quick changes and general costume maintenance. As part of the Hair and Makeup team as I wasn't too confidence in complex hair I stayed to mainly doing stage makeup on actors whom couldn't do it by themselves. The experience was amazing and working at the Alexandra was perfect.
The Sound of Music
Quick change sheets
Quick change sheets
On this show our Wardrobe Supervisor put together a quick change sheet for us to refer to during the show. This was for two reasons, firstly as we didn't know the showed it helped us figure the show out and follow a guide and secondly it helped us divide the changes between the the team so every change can be covered by someone. As I had experience in quick changes I was given Mr Von traps changes as these were rather quick and frequent. I also had to help the von trap children where nessercery. At the bottom of the page There was an aera for me to write what I needed to collect from the actors dressing room between acts.
Pre-Setting Costumes
Pre-Setting Costumes
Before and during a show we would have to pre set costumes for Quick changes. This was to make sure actors could get changed as quick as possible to get back on stage on time. This involves unzipping any zips unbuttoning shirts and laying out a dress or a skirt on the floor or on a chair with the idea the can just step in, pull it up, and zip. All most all the women in the show wore dresses which made quick changes easier but for the men many wore suits which came with a lot of little bits added like medals or ties making quick changes a little more lengthy. On stage left we had a whole quick change are with a curtain which gave us a little more room but on stage right it was limited to a couple of chairs resulting in layering quick changes on chairs during pre-set. When layering the costumes we would layer them in quick change order so the next change was on top of the pile.
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
Over all The sound of music was an amazing experience and I felt so happy to be chosen for it. All the quick changes were so much fun and even pushing myself to do stage makeup for every show even though I didn't know what I was doing was so exciting. Though I was perfect the whole time I did really enjoy it. there was a couple of times where I made a mistake but these were all able to be worked out In some way which I was grateful for.
One of these situations was during our second show when the actor asked to move one of his quick changes to stage left. Due to this there was a lack of communication on where the change was resulting in the actor going on stage without some of his costume. After this situation I had a talk with the actor as decided to try it on stage right which gave us enough time to do the change. This resolved the situation for the future show. Even when things went wrong like this they were always worked out and didn't ruin the experience for both crew and audience.
