Thesis Thoughts

My blog this month is a little later because I have been gearing up for my year end portfolio review and part one of my thesis jury. 

This semester as part of my thesis I had an internship with the designer Mio Guberinic which I have mentioned before here.  As part of my internship I worked with Mio on a production of Into the Woods ​at Princeton University. It was a lot of fun to assist on a musical, which I have never done before. It was also nice to take a break from my university and help on a production in a totally different academic setting.

I did a lot of paperwork for the show, so now I am a wiz at Google/Sheets and similar programs like Excel. Now at the Rutgers costume shop I am call on for any computer paperwork question which is fun. I oddly find Excel spread sheets beautiful and rather satisfying when making conditional formatting, etc. One of our professors joked I should teach a master class on "How to Use Excel in the Costume Shop".

In addition to the paperwork I also worked closely with the wigs; mainly Rapunzel's wig. I also styled the Witch and one of the Step Sisters as well. It was a lot of fun to get back to wig designing since I have been away from it for a few months. Rapunzel's wig was quite the challenge as it is so iconic (the length at least). The wig also needs to be "cut" twice on stage in different ways which was my main task to fix. I ended up creating a pull away piece that was just loosely braided into the longer section of braid for the first "cut", and created an attachment at the nape of the wig that was easily unclasped for the second "cut". I'm making it seem simple, but the task was pretty daunting in the beginning. I was given many small sections of loose hair to create the iconic Rapunzel braid. After two test runs of 15.5 ft braid, we had it ready. 

With a braid as long as Rapunzel's I had to drape her around the dressing room while braiding her as not to get each strand tangled with the other.

Rapunzel losing some of her hair to the Baker's Wife. Production shot courtesy of Larry Levanti

This is just a snapshot of what I have been up to and why my posts are so infrequent. I have had a great time working on this production and hope to work with Mio and the lovely people in Princeton again in the future. 

Now back to my thesis prep.