The Return....OF KYLE!!!!! AGGG!!!

Hey friends! Sorry I've been away for so long...its been way busy at work and with gearing up for the Summer...

Anyway, speaking of Summer, that's the subject of my post today. I'm going back to Great River Shakespeare Festival (www.grsf.org if you're interested) where I'll be assistant designing the costumes for Othello, designed by Devon Painter, and the "Design Coordinator" for a musical called The Daly News. Its basically a re-mount of a production done a few years ago, but we are re-imagining a few things. Its a really lovely show with three actors that play lots of characters. Things move really fast so the characters need to be easily identifiable and quick to get on and off. It lots and lots of hats and coats. I'm only rendering things that are different from the original production.

Martin is the patriarch of the Daly family (he's played by the playwright, Jon Daly, who also happens to be his Grandson) whose children have all shipped out to fight in World War II. Every week he compiles all the letters that he gets from them and adds news from the home front into a news letter called "The Daly News" and sends it out to his kids to keep the family in touch.

The base costume for all the actors is a shirt and pants. In the past production he wore a cardigan and spectacles, which he's wearing here, but I'm getting new ones rather than renting them. There were issues with the fit of the cardigan in the past production, so I'm buying two sizes and seeing which fits Jon the best.

Shatzie is Martin's wife. An apron has always been used for this character, but was far too full and frilly in the past production. I found a really lovely apron in my research online and planned on building it. AND THEN I found the pattern in stock at work...I was so happy. We'll have to scale the pattern up to actually fit a man, but its a start!

I have a few more sketches to do...I'll post more as I get them done. I'm using markers for the first time in years so I'm doing lots of playing...its hard to get may hand used to the markers after being so used to a paint brush, but the markers go so much faster and considering that I leave for Winona in exactly one week, I need all the speed I can get!!