"How do you do a quick change?" This was asked of me by a friend I've known for years recently. At first, I didn't know how to answer him. I've been taking people's clothes off and putting them back on them since college, it's second nature to me now. I don't think through the logistics of the transaction anymore. But how do we transform them from one scene to the next in just the space of a black out? Sometimes putting on complicated three piece suits with accessories, sometimes going from street urchin to focus of the scene in a matter of moments. The first step to a successful quick change is a quick rigged costume. We sew velcro into places where the fabric needs to tear apart quickly, or more preferably snaps. We use a lot of velcro and snaps. We change out the cufflinks on dress shirts with ones rigged with elastic. We also use elastic in place of shoe laces almost always, so they can slip their feet right out of a tennis shoe. Once you have t
This holiday season is different than any other I've ever had. My mother passed away in February and it's the first time I won't be bringing her apple pie, or at least talking to her about the pies I made for my friends while I was somewhere else. Her recipe has been passed down and is, hands down, the best apple pie in the world. It's also the first time I won't be hearing "Rackeye, rackeye, rackeye", her words that replaced everything else in her vocabulary after her stroke. My mother dabbled in writing herself. Somewhere on a hard drive I have pages and pages of blog posts from her Wordpress blog she maintained through the early 2000s, tucked into boxes I have the journals she wrote in intermittently, not a single one full until the end. In my storage unit I have an entire giant rubbermaid bin of unfinished quilting projects she was in progress on before she suffered her stroke in 2010. She left a lot of things unfinished and I feel a pressure to fini