If All The World's a Stage, Why Am I stuck in the Dress Rehearsal

For those of you who have never worked in theater, let me first of all say, "I'm sorry". There is nothing quiet like an entertaiment family. And we truly are a family. Wardrobe / Costuming is mom to everyone. We always knew when some one needed to have a shoulder to cry on or a confidential friend to talk to.

Creative Costuming, those responsible for making the stuff, always seemed to a little out of touch with reality. They could make the most beautiful garment. . . on a dress form, but put it on a living, breathing, sweating person and it would fall apart. Silks looked awesome, but when they were washed, they would bleed like a rainbow. Belle, from the Beauty and the Beast Show, her ball gown was at least thirty, forty pounds. I could never get the thing off the ground to hang it up.

The Technicians are always the dads, (male / female it didn't matter). The techs are the keepers of all things safety, all things flammable and all things that when used wrong or carelessly can injure and or maime someone.

When you hear the words "Pyro coming through..." you Move. The holidays around 2005 or 2004, (i'm keeping it intentionally vague for privacy sake) there was a holiday show that, it was said, the techs wanted the last show of the season to go off with a little extra flair, so they added extra pyro. The performers were not told this and several members of the cast were injured with minor burnes. Some costume pieces melted. I saw one of guys a short time later and he didn't have any eyebrows. They had been singed off.

Then we have our precious children 'The Cast'. I loved my cast . . . most of them. There will always be those individuals that have been seared in my mind that if maiming was legal . . . . sorry, let's move on. I always have a philosophy 'when in rome do as the romans'. Each stage has it's own ambience, it's own culture, it's own unwritten rules of order. Any show with equity dancers, tends to be a bit high maintenance. 'My gloves are not in the right place. OH, I can't go on. My life is ruined.' (disclaimer, for those dancers who will get upset when you read this, go out to the stage, check your preset, then come back and finish reading my blog.)

My favorite stage will always be the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, or as we call it, EPIC. The testostrone runs thick at that show. Predominately a male cast, teaching the boys to pick up after themself usually takes some unorthodox methods. When shoes, hats, etc. would get left laying around the greenroom, the offender would find his items in the freezer the next day frozen in a block of ice. My managers would always freak out when they heard that, but they were always to afraid too step foot in the Epic trailer, so they never knew about the other stuff we'd did. One of they boys newest games (before I left) was throwing hangers at the clothes rack and trying to see if it would stay there. The words "Hanger In Flight !" Usually meant "DUCK".

Parade performers and puppteers always seemed the be the children of the children. You had your old school performers that were awesome. They looked at a new costume and figured out how to make it work. Then some where along the way we aquired a new set of darlings that worked harder at getting out of doing the parade than they ever did in the parade. To watch a puppeet show like Playhouse Disney or Lion King from under the stage is pretty darn cool. From sliding on their knees from one side of stage to other at Playhouse Disney in order to make thier next enterance to learning to see in the dark at Voyage of the Little Mermaid, the puppeteers are usually pretty intense about their jobs.

Then there are the musicians, streetmosphere, face painters, convention performers, Epcot Cultural performers, the horse people, and . . . we'll get to them later.