Hercules rehearsal {day 1}

It begins! All of our company members (for the children's show, that is) have arrived, and we begin rehearsals today. We'll have a full day ahead of us -- starting with building Rachel's base mask for Athena. Throughout the day, we'll be working a lot on our lines. This is the first time we have gotten to hear the script aloud, and I have to say that I am really looking forward to seeing this up on its feet this Wednesday.

Before then, though, we have monsters to finish, battles to choreograph, and lines to polish. The Nemean Lion is coming along -- he looks absolutely amazing, and so much cooler than I could possibly have envisioned.

Aaron has been working at adding more color and shading to the lion today. Yellow and gold have been added to the reddish-brown base. Patrick painted the eyeballs today, as well.

Tomorrow we'll be adding his raffia mane and perhaps some bristly whiskers. We've got some foam cones (from the floral arrangement section of A.C. Moore) that Aaron has trimmed down for his nasty, big, pointy teeth.

Here's Aaron working on the shoulders. They're constructed from drum heads, with straps for me to wear around my own shoulders. The raffia gives the suggestion of bulk, and will hang down to cover my hands. You'll get to see a sneak peek of us working the lion in tomorrow's post!

Somehow I have a feeling that the Nemean Lion will be my favorite of all the monsters. I wuv him!

Don't miss this production -- we open on Wednesday morning at the Boathouse Theater in Schroon Lake village. The house opens at 10:30 a.m. and the show starts at 11:00 a.m. Reserve your tickets in advance at adkshakes.ticketleap.com!

The Nemean Lion is born

Things are coming up so rapidly! One of our company members, Aaron, arrived on Thursday evening, and the rest of our group arrives later on today. I'm so excited and nervous to have the season starting up for reals.

As I type, I just completed our Orientation Meeting for Part One of the Kingship Cycle. I cannot wait to get to work with these folks -- what an amazing group of actors. These shows are going to be epic (in multiple ways).

I'm also listening to the pleasant buzz of the Dremel tool as Aaron sculpts foam for our Hercules monsters. This is so exciting, people! Our Nemean Lion began as little more than a huge sheet of foam. Patrick and I cut some chunks from it a few nights ago, and he began sculpting the beast's eye. The design is based on the Chinese lions (which I had always assumed were dragons), and it is turning out to be absolutely stunning. This guy is fierce! Check out this sneak preview:

We will be adding raffia for a mane, and we're starting to construct his shoulders and legs today. This is one awesome monster.

Also on our list is the Lernean Hydra, the man-eating mare of Diomedes, and the Stymphalian birds. It's coming together! I can't wait to share this production with our audience on Wednesday.

Hercules Masks {Day 6}

Yesterday I shared this image of my inspiration for Charon. Alas Poor Yorick is not an easy model, however, for someone building large features on a mask for the first time. Actually, last year was my first experience building a mask from start to finish with my Mustard-seed mask for A Midsummer Night's Dream. I really love that mask -- but what I did was mostly just paint and add really cool feathers to it, no building up up features with other items.

What I love about the Charon base mask in this photo is actually how smooth it is. There's not much feature on it, so I think it looks a little creepy. I definitely wanted to keep the creep factor as I built, but I wanted him to end up looking more skull-like.

Using cotton balls pulled out into thinner strands, I built out larger eye sockets, working them into large circles. I don't think he looks terribly skull-like yet, but he does have this really bizarre and cool alien helm look to him. You can also see where I built out some cheekbones for him. I also added quite a bit of mass to his browline, which is harder to see in this image.

Hera is also coming along. The next step for her was adding a crown. I was a little nervous about this step as I wasn't certain the plaster strips would be sturdy enough to hold up the mosaic tiles standing on end. Worked on the first try, though - yea! I'll be painting over the plaster strips and finishing the mask with more of the red mosaic tiles and beading. Then all she'll need is some drilled holes in the temples and elastic to be fully completed. Can't wait!

A close-up of the crown

Oh, speaking of Mustard-seed ... here's a photo from last year's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring the finished product!

Ross Hamman as Cobweb and me as Mustard-seed

Claim token: HJUY3E3DQ9KT

Hercules Masks {Day 5}

Well, technically today is Day 5 and I haven't done anything on masks yet today. These pictures are from work over the last several days. You got a nice look at the base masks for Charon and Hera, and I've been working mostly on Hera since then. She got a nice base coat of red mixed in with silver, which turned out a really nice mauve shade. I used dark brown to emphasize her very crooked, fierce brows. To the brows I've also added a line of dark red glass beads, which are highlighted by clear glass beads. She is also getting an "eyeliner" of clear and gold glass beads.

Here you can see the "eyeliner" as well as the lining around the edge of orderly red glass beads. 

Here's a nice close up of the broken mosaic tiles on the left side of the mask. I've decided that Hera's left (sinister!) side will be made up of the smashed tiles and the beads filling in. On the right side will be the unbroken tiles arranged in a much more orderly fashion.

Here's a close-up of the mosaic tiles laid in straight and unbroken. I need to drill holes in the temples for the elastic to go through before laying the rest of the tiles. I'm also hoping if I score some of the tiles I might be able to break them straight across and have some smaller rectangular pieces to lay alongside the eye.

This is a view of the mask so far. I'll be adding more tiles to the forehead, as well as laying in a golden crown with some other mosaic tiles. I love seeing this mask come together, and I can't wait to see the finished product!

Stay tuned for more updates and photos of the Zeus mask, and the progress on Hades and Charon. Here is my inspiration for the Charon mask. Let's see if I'm up to the job!

Hercules Masks {Day 1}

Here is Day One of making base masks for Zeus, Hades, Hera, and Charon! We set up outside so we could make a mess with our plaster strips. First we coated our faces with the Vaseline so we wouldn't be pulling up eyebrows. Then we got to work laying wet strips of plaster on each other's faces. I think the neighbors must have thought we were pretty strange.

No pictures of the actual process, since it was too messy and no plaster-fingers are coming near my camera. But you can see the finished base maks of Hera:

And Charon, the ferry-man who sails dead souls over the Lethe River and into the underworld. I like this guy. I think he's going to be a little creepy and unsettling when finished:

Mask-making for Hercules continues today! Yesterday, we spent time down in Albany shopping for foam for the Nemean Lion puppet as well as buying a ton of mask-making supplies at A.C. Moore. We made off with a good haul -- mosaic tiles, new paints, feathers, and glass beads.

I painted a base of a sort of mauve shade onto Hera last night and began to add glass beads and broken red mosaic tiles. She's this great raised eyebrow to make for a pretty fierce expression. More pictures tomorrow of the continued process. I think I'm going to like this one!

The Twelve Labors of Hercules

The time is nigh! We here at the Adirondack Shakespeare Company are gearing up for this summer's original children's show, The Twelve Labors of Hercules, penned by Jessica Hackett.

Jessica is no stranger to ADK Shakes. For the past year, she has worked for us as a social media marketing guru. For the 2012 summer season, she will also be serving as the company's Assistant Stage Manager. Jessica is currently working towards a Master's Degree in English at St. John's University, where she is heavily involved as an actress, playwright and occasional director in the university's official theatre group. When we approached Jessica about writing our children's show script this summer, we encouraged her to take inspiration from one of our heroes of children's work, Jim Henson. At Christmastime, we watched Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas and suggested Henson's The Storyteller series in particular. The script is everything we hoped it would be!


The characters of Octavius and Agrippa are quite compelling, and the journey of their friendship is going to be great fun to watch as it unfolds! This play has it all: friendship, struggle, adventure, and (perhaps best of all) monsters!


Today we are starting work on the masks and puppetry for the show -- which will include masks for the Greek deities (Hera, Zeus, Athena, Hades, Persephone -- this play represents!). We are especially excited to get to work on the Hydra and the Nemean Lion puppets. I'll share the process as we go, and I can't wait to see how they turn out.


In the meantime, you can reserve tickets for the performances which begin July 11 and run through August 15. Check out our ticketing website (provided by Ticket Leap): adkshakes.ticketleap.com. We have full-length performances in Schroon Lake, Indian Lake, North Creek, Lake Placid, and Ticonderoga. And we are also performing scenes from the show throughout the day at public parks in Saratoga Springs, Lake Placid, and Bolton Landing on the beautiful Lake George waterfront. For more details visit our Ticket Leap site or visit our website to view the full schedule here.

Good Master Mustardseed

I love masks! I just knew from the beginning that I wanted Mustardseed (the fairy I'm playing in A Midsummer Night's Dream) to have a mask. And I had this vision of wanting points at the bottom. So I drew all over my face with an eyeliner pencil to mark the points at the bottom, and Patrick went to work covering my face with plaster strips.

He did a great job with the points! He also really liked the look of the points around the eyehole. It swoops up and points above my eyebrow, which ended up giving it a pretty fierce look once it dried.

I didn't get pictures of the next steps, but I worked on adding some expression to the mask once it had dried. I cut a circular cotton swab in half to accentuate the cheeks, and I used some pipe-cleaners for brows. They too got a layer of plaster and dried before traveling up north wrapped in a big swath of bubble-wrap.

We made it safely! In Lake Placid, I got a box of mixed acrylics. I knew I wanted a neutral base of brown to go with all the feathers I had bought at Michael's. For some reason, I was really inspired by the feather picks.

After the neutral base, I accentuated the "expression" with a little green. I love green. Can you tell that I am not an artist? I'm not too worried because most of it will be covered in ....

FEATHERS!

Now to drill the holes and add the elastic to keep it on my head during the performances! I think Good Master Mustardseed is looking pretty fierce.

Bottom Mask - Part 1

Yesterday, Patrick (ADK Shakes's Exec. Director) and I began work on the Ass Head Mask (or Bottom Mask) for this summer's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Over the last week, we purchased a whole bunch of materials: a giant block of clay, alginate, plaster of paris, plaster strips, wooden popsicle sticks, straws, raffia. Pretty hot grab-bag. The first step of the process was to take a mold of actor Tom Morin's face, who is playing Bottom this summer. Once the mold is set, we will fill it up with plaster of paris to make a positive plaster cast of Tom's face on which to build a clay version of the mask perfectly fitted for Tom. There are several steps after that as well, but I'll get to those in later posts.

Step One: Set up our living room to look like the operating room in Brazil.

Our garbage bag drop-cloths are economical.

Ready for surgery.

We also used garbage bags as smocks, since all we could find at the local A.C. Moore were child-sized smocks. Tom arrived while I was being fitted in my garbage bag. I felt like we may have frightened him.

Patrick measures the alginate while Bob Dylan plays in the background.

Our first batch of alginate hardened way too quickly. The package called for a 1:1 ratio of room temperature water and alginate powder. With 80-degree water, we should have 8 minutes before the alginate set -- but we had not even two minutes before it was completely hardened into rubber. So that batch went into the waste basket. Next time, more water and coooolder. The second batch turned out much better!

Tom being an incredibly good sport.

After we got the alginate on, Patrick began covering Tom's face with plaster strips. These act as a support structure for the alginate mold, which is pretty rubbery and mobile. We need to work pretty quickly to get all the strips on. The weight of the plaster will also help us get a better mold of Tom's face. Also, (having been through this process once myself) I'm sure Tom wants to escape from the alginate-and-plaster-craziness as soon as possible!

 Here's a look at the completed plastering:

Pretty creepy!

Poor Tom lost one of his breathing straws as the alginate dripped down his face! He had another minute or so to set while Patrick and I washed hands, preparing to remove the entire piece from Tom's face. Of course, I had to capture the moment of truth on camera:

After washing up and pulling pieces of alginate out of his hair, Tom graciously stayed to chat with us for awhile. We had a relaxing evening of Chinese food, Peter Pan, and peeking at the mold after Tom left. Next weekend, we will pour the Plaster of Paris into the mold and have a perfect replica of Tom's face to begin the clay model of the Ass Head!