Beginning Thoughts on “Mythology”

“Mythology” is all we have so far for the String Room Gallery experimental.  A title and a venue and a date.

“All myths have to do with transformation of consciousness.”

– Joseph Campbell

Mythologies of every culture are so prevalent in art and theatre.  Beowulf is an animated film with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie and Star Wars is studied by scholars as modern myth and Tolkien is reenacted like a Christian ritual. (Forgive me if I am factoid girl; I have been watching Joseph Campbell interviews.)  With this installation I am really struggling to keep it from being a Try & Tell; a children’s museum; interactive learning.  I am fighting an overly broad theme to focus individual ideas so that they really speak on something relevant.

• St. Christopher’s Cave

The first idea I am working on is using light to create a forced perspective shadow interaction, playing on the allegory of the cave by Plato.  One light will shine up on a toy-sized dragon figure (and if I can find one where the neck and jaw move, I will dance) creating a huge dragon shadow.  Anyone passing by will see their shadow (regular sized or smaller) from another light interacting with the dragon-shadow.

I think that a “maiden” actor and a toy sword would add to this play (although on further consideration, I realize the rendering is wrong: the “knight” should not have to cross through the dragon shadow to get to the maiden and the sword).  I also see the amusement and appropriateness of “keeping” the sword in the stone so passers by can pull the sword out and “kill” the dragon shadow with their own shadow.  I know that die-hard Arthurian scholars will see the mixing of metaphors, but it is the right time period; right mindset; right feeling.  In art, I can mix my metaphors if it makes a point.  (This is not a try & tell, this is not a try & tell) The point is that we take old legends, throw them all in a bag, mix them up, and rearrange them to create the mythology of our own lives.  The individuals who pull the sword from the stone and slay the dragon are creating their own personal mythology.

• Emancipation

In 1994, Luchezar Boyadjiev created an installation piece at Moderna Musseet called Neo-Golgotha.  It is now considered a post communism expression.  On a gallery wall, a business suit hangs as though on a crucifix complete with jacket and tie.  Below it, two other suits are neatly folded on display risers to the left and right like risers you would see at any store in any mall (which is, I think, I big part of the point).  It is an amazing piece with amazing subtleties to its message and meaning.  I am totally recycling the idea.

I knew I wanted to use Christian imagery in this installation somewhere.  I was raised Catholic, so the mythology is very familiar to me, and I am a religious explorer, so I know how common the themes of the Christ story are.  Understand, I do not use “common” to lessen the powerful effect of the mythology.  If it was symbolically weak, I wouldn’t use it.

The martyr figure of Abraham Lincoln – the modern mythology of America’s political heroes, particularly those who are martyred – has a beautiful symbolism and parallels in its secularism the faith-based martyr figures wonderfully.

Abraham Lincoln is as iconic – stretched and tall in a black suit and stove-pipe hat – as Christ walking across the water.  Like Jesus, he was an actual person who lived and, like Jesus, his legend began to change and grow and evolve nearly the moment he died.  Maybe before.

Now in the Jesus mythology, when he is hung on the cross he has a thief hung on either side of him.  One harasses him, like the passers by, challenging him to save himself if he is really the son of God.   The second thief rebukes the first thief and tells Jesus to remember him when he (Jesus) gets to Heaven.  He sides with him, knowing he is going to die either way.

The applicability of this “supporter on one side, dissenter on the other” idea is almost magical.  It certainly works with the Lincoln myth: the supporters who side with him (to the point of marching off to their deaths) are the Union soldiers and the dissenters are the Confederates (or as we in the North like to call them: rebel scum)

And that is the point:  they weren’t rebel scum.  They weren’t all bigots.  They weren’t all slave masters.  They didn’t necessarily all agree with slavery.   But after Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation, that was what the Confederates appeared to be fighting for, what they are cast as.  The fact that he was martyred by a confederate supporter only emphasizes the villainy of the group.

But the dice and the bullet (replacing the lance of the Jesus story) beg the question: who is actually at fault?  Who actually killed him?  Who is the villain if the villain is next to the hero on the crosses?

• Jenga

This piece question where man stands.  The idea is to create (and by “create” I do mean modify) a Jenga™ set that has different names and incarnations of gods on each block.  A few are inscribed: Man.

I am currently unsure whether I want audience interaction with this one, or if I just want it to sit there and make a statement.  The thought of the tower collapsing with 50 people crammed in the String Room Gallery is nauseating, but I think people will feel like gods if they play with it and the light bulb will go off…it would certainly lead to interesting conversation.

Either way, I am also unsure of where I want to put Man in the initial set up.  Whether I put him on the top (take him away and the rest remains unchanged) or at the bottom (take him away and the whole thing crumbles, the gods are built on man) or both.

Seems like a mighty big thing to be unsure about.

Mythology will be shown in the String Room Gallery at Wells College on March 12, 13, and 14, 2010.

Produced by: Wells College

Artists: Bobbie Kolpakas, Siouxsie Grady, Joe DeForest, Q, JK

W2 Theory of Learning Presentation

This presentation was given in a peer-forum at Wells College.  October 2009.

 

W2 Theory of Learning Presentation

Pyg – The Process of Actualization

There is, intrinsically, a theoretical and a practical side or period of time during any design process.  It is a truism that failing the extraordinary circumstances of having the entire artistic team start the journey together (meaning all actors, designers, technicians, and directors); the design process must include a transitional period.  The designer must shift from theoretical design in words and images to actual design with real actors with imperfect bodies and fabrics and patterns and shopping.   This is certainly true in all design branches, but is especially true in costume design which is so enmeshed with the actor and their portrayal of any given character.

There are three distinct issues that must be dealt with during this transition.

1. Physical shape

In my mind and what therefore comes out on paper, every female figure is my body type and every male figure is my fiancée, Jaymi’s, body type.  I have drawn and do draw us and sew for us and design clothing for us more than anybody else.  So, in this theoretical world with theoretical actors who might be any body type and haven’t even auditioned yet let alone be cast, they might as well be my body type as any other.  Now that we have the actors and their measurements, I need to look at what would look good on their person: how do I achieve the conceptual effect that brought me to the rendering.  As Jaymi and I are rather average body types, this is generally a matter of degrees and not a complete overhaul.    Moreover, for Pyg, there were three precast actors: our Eliza, Mrs. Higgins, and Alfred Doolittle.  I think that somewhere in my mind, I did know that and render more accordingly.

(As an aside, it would be really interesting to design for a pre-cast show and use that as an excuse to explore drawing different body types)

All that aside (told you it was an aside!) that is three characters out of nine primary characters and several secondary characters.  This brings me to:

1. Secondary Characters

I don’t have anything to go on for the secondary characters from the script.  I don’t even have a name for most of them.  In my mind, they are voices that don’t exist as more than a line or two until the actors are cast.  I don’t even know, currently, which ones are street folk and which are rich folk.  Because that is really what it comes to.  In adding the secondary characters, their purpose beyond conversation is to emphasis the archetypes established by the primary characters.  The story of the primaries is the story of the group told in microcosm.  The group existing, showing that there is a collective and not just a strange individual is the purpose of that first scene.  After that, in our Pyg, you only see secondary characters again at the ball and then in silhouette. To keep the secondaries from becoming shadows of the primaries, each needs their own story even though it is never told.  Well, it is told in the costumes, for those who wish to look and ponder the details.

1. Paintbrush to Needle

In my theoretical world, physics can sometimes do strange things.  I am not a master renderer; I am still a student of the human form, of fabrics, and of how the two go together. My renderings, therefore, sometimes show an idealized world where the physically impossible is shown to look quite effortless and even chic.   Moreover, I tend to think in colors and shapes, rather than patterns and cuts and the stage requires such details.  The final transition, therefore, is the reviewing of details.  With women’s clothing this is generally simple: I am a woman, I know women’s clothing.  (And I have found that the general style of 1910 and the general style of 1985 is very similar)  Men’s clothing, on the other hand, is deceptive.  The basic style of men’s clothing has not changed in nearly 150 years.  The big change then was the shift from trousers to slacks.  However, you can still take a good shot at dating a picture of a man based on his clothing to within 10 years.  Each era is distinctive, despite.  So, the challenge is to discover what make it distinctive and work those details into the ideas and costumes existing.

Pygmalion – The Halfway Point: Act 3

It has been “some months” and this is Eliza’s first public performance, as it were, at Mrs. Higgins’ at-home.

Mrs. Higgins is rather beyond being fashionable to impress and has entered that happy state of many older people who have gone through decades of fashion and revert to the costumes they found most comfortable and personally appealing.  Appropriately enough, I see Mrs. Higgins in the Aesthetic fashions of the late 1800’s.  Her furniture, as described, is the simplicity of the Arts and Crafts period: Grace and beauty being found in the natural form and color and texture and pattern of the wood rather than the manmade contrivings and artifice.  Similarly the aesthetic outfit is simplicity, the beauty being found in the way the fabric clings and folds to the form below it.

Mrs. Einsford-Hill, in foil, is clearly and uncomfortably decked in the latest fashion.  I feel that she enjoys fur; it is her comfort and her vanity.  She tries to temper the (to her) outrageous fashions by dressing in a neutral and slightly anachronistic.  Despite her discomfort, she is still a lovely woman and looks well in the fashion.

Clara, in contrast to her mother, is the absolute height of fashionable.  If she lived today, she would be the other secretary in Devil Wears Prada.  Where her mother is painfully uncomfortable in the fashion, Clara is quite at her ease with that self-consciousness of knowing you look great.  At this point she is still trying to maintain her mother’s social class and “snag a man”, her cloths are lovely and flaunty and totally out of place in this gracious boudoir.

Eliza is completely at home, however.  Her clothing is intended to connect her subtly with both Clara (same style and cut) and Mrs. Higgins (same colors as her home).  As it has been some months, she is rather over her nervousness about the finery she is garbed in.  Pickering is, doubtless, showering her with clothing and accessories in a gracious and non-imposing manner.  She, in return, is genuinely excited about each and every new outfit (she did, after all, have magazine ads and fashion sketches on her wall way back).   She is so used to treating her clothing well to preserve them that she is not the slightest bit uncomfortable or self-conscience.  While Clara should, based on the brilliance of her feathers, be the center of attention, the quiet grace and startling conversation of Eliza takes the center of attention.  While I would love to draw that attention to her with her costume, it would detract from the accomplishment of Eliza so it is all on the actress’ performance.

To the men: Freddy is casual and charming.  He might be at a garden party or a horse race and doesn’t look at all inappropriate for the situation.  He mirrors Eliza slightly in color (call in “love at first sight”).  He is comfortable, at his ease, charming and completely infuriating to his mother all effortlessly.
Henry, predictably, is slightly inappropriate to the situation.  Obviously he either tried because he wishes his mother’s aid and his mother’s approval or Mrs. Pearce did her job well today.  His coat is an evening cut, not a day cut and his pants are morning pants and not tan afternoon pants, but they don’t look horrible together.  More it becomes a question of “which of these things does not belong”.  But, as his mother is dressed in a fashion from three decades ago, perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Pickering is dressed appropriately appropriate without any effort or conceit.  He is dressed to match the décor (which he no doubt has seen) without any necessarily conscious thought.

Pygmalion will be performed at and by Wells College, Aurora, NY on October 30 and 31 and November 1.  For more information and tickets please call 315-364-3456.

Directed by: Siouxsie Grady

Scenic and Lighting Design by: Joe DeForest

Costume Design by: Roberta Kolpakas

© 2009, Roberta Kolpakas

Pygmalion – Thinking it Through: Act 2

My rendering for Act 2 of Pyg shows only Eliza in the robe; basically it shows only the scene with her father, Alfred Doolittle.  Eliza arrives, pleads her case, is bathed by Mrs. Pearce, and at the end of the act may be shown in various “mini-scenes” doing the various exercises intended to restructure her speech patterns.  So we are missing some information.  Let us start with what is not there, and move to what is.

Eliza’s outfit for going to Higgins’ home would be the same as what she wore the night before.  She probably has few outfits and, like many people with limited resources, over wear’s what she views as her “best” outfit.  She wouldn’t be wearing the coat and is wearing a different, “better” hat, so there is a visible change.   Following this “snap shot” of the act, she is wearing what Henry and Pickering buy for her, as they state in Act 3.  Since we see an example of their taste in clothing in the following act, such a thing seemed redundant to do an entire rendering for.

Onward to what is included in this rendering.

We are looking at the moment when Alfred Doolittle is pontificating and Eliza has just entered with Mrs. Pearce at her heels.   Pickering and Higgins have been working all morning and it is early afternoon.  Pickering is appropriate for company.  He may have been slightly more casual, with coat off earlier, but when Eliza entered he may have casually put his jacket back on or done so while she was in the shower.  Higgins, on the other hand, is working, damn it, and he will be comfortable woman or no.  He is coatless (it is probably thrown unceremoniously over a chair somewhere, with no thought of wrinkles) and sleeves rolled up and hair in disarray.    I believe he is aware that he is inappropriate for the situation and makes the conscience choice not to change, put on his jacket, smooth his hair in a state of visible independence from custom and personal arrogance.

Doolittle is similarly inappropriate for the locale.  He is visibly and obviously of a class to be doing menial tasks about the place, not conversing.  I rather think that he might not sit down so as not to get dirt on the upholstery.  But where Higgins is very painfully aware of his difference and defiant about it, Alfred is casually different to the point of being more at home than Henry is.  Where Henry would stare at the chair, scowling and petulantly stand instead, Alfred simply stands.   He is not proud of station, necessarily, but he is happy with it and is comfortable in his clothing.  He is not coming to beg but to capitulate and he is as at home in his lower class togs as Pickering is in his upper crust suits.
Mrs. Pearce is the foil to Henry.  Where he is self-consciously casual, she is self-consciously formal (perhaps in an effort to balance).  She is, as I have discussed before, painfully aware of how the Upper Class is supposed to behave and present themselves almost as though according to Hoyle and is determined to run the household along that mold.   She is above a housemaid and would not be in a uniform of any sort, but would be compelled to mirror the maid uniforms in style and color – not that Henry would notice or care.

Eliza is dressed in a kimono.  Japanesma was very prevalent during this period and Japanese goods were a sign of class and status.  No doubt Eliza is aware of this and dressing in that outfit, though no upper class woman would be seen in such a thing publicly, would make her feel bold and accomplished.  She has just taken a huge step in discarding her old life and lifestyle.  Such a change is quite easy with people who don’t know you at all; you can be whoever you want.  A change like that with people you know and have known is much more difficult.  This is Eliza’s first challenge and she manages it without any of her old boo-hooing or sympathy ploys.  She must dominate the room and with her color against so much neutral, I believe she will.

Pygmalion will be performed at and by Wells College, Aurora, NY on October 30 and 31 and November 1.  For more information and tickets please call 315-364-3456.

Directed by: Siouxsie Grady

Scenic and Lighting Design by: Joe DeForest

Costume Design by: Roberta Kolpakas

© 2009, Roberta Kolpakas

Wrapping Up: All Shook Up

More thoughts and renderings this weekend…

Well, that didn’t quite happen, did it?  It seems that as things move further and move faster, like a stone rolling down hill, the organizational structure that is built to keep everything together falls apart.  And necessarily think: that organizational structure is in some ways as limiting as it is helpful.

Regardless, allow me to sum up the past few weeks and leave this show in the past.

The archetype idea and the dull to bright concept were both successful and became intermingled with each other as rehearsals continued.  The dull to bright idea was so successful that during the first chorus scene the director, Jim Lortz, turned to me and asked: “The costumes do get brighter, right?”  In realistic theatre, which is more my milieu, the costumes tend towards neutrals with pops of color.  Like in real life a brown suit is dull, but a brown suit with a red belt, red shoes, and a red hat is stylish.  All Shook Up is not real life.

For the initial design, I looked at a lot of Norman Rockwell. For the final design for the chorus, I ended up looking at a lot of comic books from the time.  As World War II closed and the long Cold War began, the idea of individual men (almost exclusively) with super human powers using them for, a very black-and-white, good or evil was popular and intriguing.  The combination of mainly primary colors in those comics inspired the final look.

Essentially, I label this show a success.  Looking through the photographs now, after some hours and days have passed, I notice that the lead actors strikingly resemble the renderings I stopped really seeing a month ago.  The relationships on stage were definitely supplemented by the costumes.  The fact that all of these characters go through a “midlife crisis”, peaking ridiculousness at the beginning of the second act, worked well with the disgusting heat we were dealing with.  By the time everyone changed to their wedding regalia, their costumes were pretty limp and sad looking, basically perfect for the situation.

There are things I will do differently next time.  Things that could have gotten finished, things that could have started sooner, things that could have been better: there always are.  I am pleased with this design; I am pleased with this show.   I am so glad to have worked with the artistic staff once again and in this capacity.  I am so proud of the kids who worked hard to put together a semi-professional quality show in such a short time.

Thank you, all!

All Shook Up was performed August 15 and 16, 2pm and 7:30pm, at Watters Theatre in Binghamton
University.  The Summer Youth Musical Theatre Workshop is organized and sponsored in part by the
Binghamton University Continuing Education Department. For information about this program and others
offered by Continuing Ed, please visit their website at http://continuinged.binghamton.edu.

(c) 2009, Roberta Kolpakas

Pygmalion – Break it Down

Act 1, Scene 1 - character research

Act 1 – Scene 1

We are at St. Paul’s Church. 11:15 pm and raining.

Where is everyone coming from?

As already discussed, the Mrs. Eynsford-Hill family doesn’t have a hugely extravagant social life.  They can’t afford to go to the theatre or to anything other than private parties, which is evidentially where they are coming from now.  They are well dressed, but not to an extreme.   Their class-status, lower-upper-class barely saved from being upper-middle-class by virtue of not having to work…yet, is evident in their attire to themselves, but unnoticed by Henry (who doesn’t care) and Eliza (who is ignorant of such delineations).

Eliza is still “at work”, as it were.  She has been working all day and her clothing reflects that.  Even if they had been completely clean when the day began, she has been trodding around London since early morning.  She has been splashed by carts and taxis and cabs. She has gotten grit on her when she sat down.  She has had flowers brushing up against her skirt all day.  The detritus of city living and working.

Henry has probably been at the theatre or opera.  He expresses an interest in such event later in the play and certainly has enough money to spend his evenings as he chooses. As phonetics is his hobby and love as much as it is his work, he is probably quite pleased to have   Henry would have odd things about his person, like a notebook and pen, always.  He doesn’t particularly care what people think of him, so whatever is most convenient for him is his way.  Along the same vain, his clothing is a little “off” from what you would see a person wearing to go to the theatre.  He doesn’t bother with his appearance too much, although Mrs. Pearce makes an effort to keep him within societies bounds.  He would probably not change his slacks or his shirt, maybe not even his tie or waistcoat, but would put on his evening jacket and top hat laid out by Mrs. Pearce and be on his way.  Lending a reason that his shoes would be evidence that he isn’t a “copper’s nark” (an undercover agent, basically) instead of his entire appearance.

Pickering has just come in from India, to the extent that he is still staying at a hotel.  Probably a few weeks at most, probably less since he “came from India to meet [Higgins]” and the man isn’t exactly hard to find.   Most likely he is very recently arrived and is strolling around London to get his bearings.  He has been away for a long time and is probably not up on the fashions of London (although men’s clothes change much less quickly then women’s) and is dressed on the conservative side, appropriate to evening.  He seems naturally careful about such things: what is appropriate and what is not in any social situation.

Freddy is dressed well – again: men’s fashions don’t change very fast so he is in style in clothes from 2 years ago – but he has also been running all over London, in  the rain, looking for a cab.  He is a little worse for the wear, but not near as bad as Eliza.

Research is above, all from the period around 1910.  Credit must be given to Roger Vaughn and his website http://www.rogerco.freeserve.co.uk for the original cabinet card images. Below is my initial rendering for act 1, scene 1, based on the thoughts I have been discussing here.

Original Costume Rendering - Act 1 Scene 1

Pygmalion will be performed at and by Wells College, Aurora, NY on October 30 and 31 and November 1.  For more information and tickets please call 315-364-3456.

Directed by: Siouxsie Grady

Scenic and Lighting Design by: Joe DeForest

Costume Design by: Roberta Kolpakas

All Shook Up – Final leading part renderings and thoughts on major chorus costumes

There they are.  The last of the leads.  I use the industry term “leads” but what I mean is “archetypes”.  Essentially that is the relationship between the leading characters and the chorus characters is that the leads are archetypes that is mirrored in the chorus. I remember when I was a chorus member, many moons ago, thinking that the leading actors had it very easy: their story was already written.   I had to make the choices and decisions for my character that the playwright had made for theirs.

Based on the photos and measurements of the ensamble individuals for this show I have catagorized them into Adult, Teen, Bobby Sox Girls, and Kids.  Other then the kids, those types are represented by the leads and the lead character costumes are the basis for the relative and appropriate ensamble costumes.  The kids represent archtypical children stereotypes of the time.  I hope to find a coon-skin cap for the youngest boy for at least one scene.  Such differences and deliniations will hopefully provide the directors with some stage action ideas to augment their own.

We have a three odd-ball ensemble scenes, from a costuming perspective: the Jailhouse Rock, the Statue Scene, and the Blue Suede Shoes number.  I have some thoughts and ideas that I will sketch out and post this weekend, but nothing can truely be decided until there is a clearer layout of time with the actors. For instance, we might do some extensive makeup for the statues – but only if there is sufficent pre and post time for prep and removal.

More thoughts and renderings this weekend!

All Shook Up will be performed August 15 and 16, 2pm and 7:30pm, at Watters Theatre in Binghamton
University.  For ticket information please call 607-777-ARTS.

All essays and artwork on this site is the intellectual property of Roberta Kolpakas, who reserves
all rights.  Please contact for publication rights.

Pyg: Where dramaturgy meets costuming – some actual costume thoughts

Eliza seems to me the type of person to whom outward appearance is very important, though she doesn’t necessarily have the understanding of what makes a fine dress look fine.  It is like she has bits of knowledge, but not all the pieces to any one puzzle.  She understands, for example, that cleanliness is important, but has never experienced true cleanliness.  She keeps her clothes in good repair and as clean as she is able and makes sure they are clean when she goes to see Higgins initially.  I think that she is probably quite careful with her clothes so being effortlessly careful with her new, nicer and more expensive clothes would create a natural grace in her movements. Indeed, I would think that there would be some measure of comparison between her garments at the beginning (her lower class garb) and her garment at the end (which she chooses to wear rather than being dressed like a doll).  As though what she has attained is having transitioned from class to class without losing her sense of self.  After all, I think that is the real accomplishment for Eliza and part of the moral of the play.

Clara is suffering on the other side of the equation.  She is of a higher social class, but not with enough money to comfortably languish there.  Part of her station is to hire out work such as sewing (as Mr. Doolittle talks about extensively) but her mother (thus she) has barely enough money for a proper servant.  During the course of the book she is desperately seeking a congenial group by maintaining the appearance of the social class she believes herself to be part of.  Her slide down to a middle class lifestyle is not the least surprising or uncommon in that time: it was an era of intellectual revolution.  Her clothes would be not of the latest fashion, but perhaps with her own touches to appear to be the latest…to blend in, as it were.  She is unafraid to work for what she desires, though through the play she probably does so rather on the Down Low, to use common vernacular.

Freddy seems to me to be a foil for Alfred.  He, Freddy, is content to float along – and it seems to work for him!  He doesn’t seem to have any serious calling, he simply exists and is in that state quite congenial and amusing.  Alfred similarly exists.  He works, he drinks, he loves, he lives.  Though a different manner of living is thrust on both of them, it is thrust and not sought (unlike Eliza and Clara).  These two could be easily linked visually through costume and I think there is something of a casualness that suits them both.  Their clothing “works” not through any special effort, but through their complete unawareness that it could be otherwise.  For example, I can see the stark contrast between the garment Alfred wears in the beginning and his wedding garb, but in some way it is all the same to him and it ends up looking just the same because his behavior is.  Similarly with Freddy: I believe he is happy with what he is wearing (undoubtedly clothes his mother purchased) and would be similarly happy in nearly anything.  Garments are unimportant to him.

In direct contrast are Mrs. Eynsford-Hill and Mrs. Higgins.  Eynsford-Hill comes from a Victorian, upper-class background and upbringing: one that she struggles to maintain rather than releasing – mostly for her children’s sake, I think.  She, like Clara, is trying to stay in some modicum of style, but is probably unwilling to go to the depths of sewing her own clothes to be so.  Therefore, I would think her garments would be perhaps a year or more out of style with current touches here and there.   Conversely, Higgins is probably several years or more out of date and quite gracefully so.  I can imagine that she stopped keeping up when she found a style that suited her and public opinion may make what it may of it.  She, unlike Henry, manages quite well to be resolute without being rude.

Pickering is a gentleman with a gentleman’s habits and a gentleman’s grooming.  I think there is something of the military routine in him: the type who showers, shaves, dresses, and is presentable at the same time every day through long habit.  His manners are not so much refined as they are a point of habit that he sees no reason to change.  Eliza says that he treats all flower girls as though they were duchess’: he has learned one way to treat people and uses that for all people.  (When put that way it sounds rather simple, yet I believe it is perhaps the solution to all racism and sexism and etc. in America) His clothing is very much part of his behavioral pattern.  His clothing is all probably very much the same, without much flash or color.  His clothing is in perfect order in the morning and when he leaves the house.

Higgins on the other hand is a sort of absent-minded professor.  Eliza, as an informal part of the arrangement, takes on the role of his personal secretary.   While I doubt that Mrs. Pickering would let him leave the house looking truly disgraceful, he is probably the type to forget a tie or a hat or lose it and, unable to find it, simply go without in a huff. His appearance should, therefore, improve as Eliza starts caring for him, as it were.  To emphasis this, at his mother’s house in the last act, he should be quite poorly put together indeed.

There are several incidental characters that need some thought behind them, to fill in the spaces and gaps, but essentially that covers the personal journey’s of the main characters.  I do wish that we could include the preface and the “sequel”, as Shaw labels it, in some form.  Perhaps read or elecuted by someone in their proper place or at the beginning and end of the program.

Research pictures coming soon!

Pygmalion will be performed at and by Wells College, Aurora, NY  on October 30 and 31 and November 1.  For more information and tickets please call 315-364-3456.

Directed by: Siouxsie Grady

Scenic and Lighting Design by : Joe DeForest

Costume Design by: Roberta Kolpakas

This essay is written by Roberta Kolpakas, who retains all rights to this work.
If you would like publication rights, please contact at RKolpakas@gmail.com.

Musings on Fireworks

This is the first July I have spent in Ithaca, NY. We watched the fireworks from our South Hill front yard, the alarm clock at full-volume radio in the window (as our “state-of-the-art” circa 2007 stereo system is incapable of projecting outside the living room), beers and snacks forgotten on the grass. I was reminded of childhood excursions to “see the fireworks.” We made the trip from Binghamton to Endicott yearly, like a holy pilgrimage. We drove to the school: fighting traffic for, at minimum, 2 miles before parking at what we hoped was as close as we could get. Considering the traffic, one didn’t want to push one’s luck too far and end up backtracking fighting the traffic all the time. We would unload our necessities – again carefully judging the balance between what we want to carry all the way to the school and all the way back with what we will desperately want once we are there – and we would begin the long trek to the viewing spot. I recall that as children we relied on blankets and homemade popcorn in Ziploc bags, but as we grew older my parents saw the need for folding camp chairs that we were, with seeming irony, big enough to carry. As we walked, joining a stream of people migrating to this yearly celebrating ground, I remember waving to people on their own lawns and thinking how lucky those people are to be able to just step outside and watch the fireworks.

Perhaps it is a result of my childhood pilgrimages, as though the modern Pilgrim’s Progress in a secular American way, but fireworks always seemed to me a very meditative thing. I am sure that Li Tian, the man credited with the creation of fireworks 1,000 years ago would be pleased with that comment, as he was a Buddhist monk. Fireworks served as a creative force in Chinese culture, used at weddings and deaths, used at births and New Year celebrations for their beauty and for their noise to ward off evil spirits, until the Crusades took the technology back to the West. By 1560, fireworks had been applied to weapons technology.

Ithaca, NY – with the strange mix of art and business that exists here – had a similarly strange balance in its firework show: luring you into a lulling state with rhythmically timed blasts, then jolting you into new thoughts with a barrage or a BOOM! At the very end, seemingly in celebration of the Buddhist roots of this art form and the area that allows us to flourish and be, was a cluster of silver cascades suspended with a chorus of static. A fiery representation of the falls and gorges that create our unique geography in a way that would have made Gandalf proud to be an Ithacan.

That serene image seemed into direct contrast to the banging, blasting, booming barrage that preceded it. Lights like a moving strobe and torrents of shots engulfing our senses for so long one wanted to scream in the face of it. Wondering if any vets are among the tailgating crowd in the parking lot next door or the cars streaming past. I have never been to war, and I was having flashbacks. Considering the sad abundance in our country of former soldiers suffering from what I still like to call Shell Shock – the (comparably) modern, American meaning of fireworks came into my head with a vengeance.

Fireworks were, at its inception, a sign of victory. A sign of battle waged – through peaceful means when possible and violent means when necessary – and battles won. The people who settled this country did not have an easy life. Necessity drove them from the comfort provided in England: grocers and butchers and dressmakers and pubs. It drove them to embark with little backing from companies looking to export and import to a virtual wilderness where many of the natives were hostile, due to the behavior of earlier colonists, where the winters killed and starvation was not uncommon. As they carved out a life for themselves, created comforts that they had once struggled to buy, grew food that they had once purchased from another man they realized, individually and collectively, that they did not need a government (then the monarchical government of England) to collect taxes to take care of them. They were self-sufficient. They were independent. The Declaration of Independence did not create America’s independence: it told the world what the founding fathers already knew to be true.

As the lights of the fireworks illuminate me, I realize that we are not far from a Revolutionary War battlefield. I remember driving by it time and again between Elmira and Corning, where the speed limit is a snails 55 rather than the standard Route 17 sixty five miles per hour. I have never stopped, but know it is there. It seems so commonplace, a concept we have always known – from elementary school on up: America fought England to be independent and won. But in that day and time, England was the world’s superpower and we were just a bunch of idealists and farmers and kids with hunting guns and no boots. We financially broke and rich in belief, which is the only way to win such a war. A few dozen miles away, men and boys huddled and feared for their lives and continued on and returned fire in the face of cannons and gunshots echoing in these fireworks 235 years later to be able to live in a land where they could do as they pleased without fear of reprisal, without interference, without unnecessary taxes and unwanted restrictions. To celebrate their victory, they used their gunpowder to shoot off fireworks.

We are celebrating our Independence Day and should be reflecting on what we have become. Have we sustained a state where we can live, individually, as we choose without fear of reprisal? Can we exist peacefully without government interference in our daily lives? Nothing can stay the same, nothing ever has. Evolution is as Darwinian with governments as it is with organisms, so we must, as part of our Independence Day, consider what we are and what we want to be as the United States of America. Most importantly we must consider, as a people, what we are willing to endure and what work we are willing to do to make the United States of America a land of freedom and of liberty and of independence. And if you choose to celebrate this Fourth of July with fireworks, make sure you have the proper government certifications and permits.

This essay is written by Roberta Kolpakas, who retains all rights to this work.
If you would like publication rights, please contact at RKolpakas@gmail.com.