The Sound of Music

I’ve been busy. Very, very busy. For the last two months (+) I have been sewing my ass off for last week’s opening of “The Sound of Music” at the Historic Iao Theater in Wailuku. I do a lot of costume design at the Iao Theater for Mau OnStage, but this is my biggest show by far.

Normally – because I have a full-time job and I don’t have the costuming experience of my colleagues – I get the smaller shows that tend to have more “pulled” costumes (costumes that are pulled from stock or purchased off-the-rack). The big-spring-musicals usually involve a lot of sewing, so for the 4+ years that I have been a costume designer they have always been given to someone else.

Well, this year apparently “they” didn’t want this show so I got it – it’s not like I was asking for it, I’ll pretty much do any show they give me. I knew going in that it was going to be tough and that I would need a lot of help, but I was confident that my persistence and “make it work” attitude would carry me through – plus I was planning on getting an assistant.

An assistant was found – she had previous experience and possible had a complete set of curtain costume for the children – but things didn’t work out entirely. And it took a month for them to not work out, so by the time I realized it, it was too late to get another one. I did have help from a lot of people, but I had been planning on having my assistant make a lot of the children’s clothes and now that I didn’t have one, I was going to have to do that myself.

So, I ended up making a lot more of the costumes than I had anticipated. But I learned a lot about dressmaking in the process. I am very proud of what I made and I think everyone was surprised at what I was able to accomplish. I will go into specifics about what I did for the show in other blogs, otherwise this one could end up being quite lengthy, but I do have a lot to say about what I did and what I learned in this process.