Combat Audition

So somehow I got talked into going to combat auditions for TRF. It will be fun, they said. It's not that hard, they said. I forgot that I happen to be a little bit uncoordinated lol. But no it really was fun. I may have been a little ( a lot) hopeless at it in the beginning, but once you started to figure it out it was really quite fun. No, I'm not the best in the world, but it reassures me it isn't as hard as I thought. Maybe that dance class I have to take this fall won't be that hard either....well we can all dream right lol. I found out about a week later that that I will be doing the Kata (a dance with swords) and unarmed combat this year. I'm not completely hopeless! Lol. This should be lots of fun, and I can't wait to start rehearsals this Saturday. Hopefully, I'll remember to come home and blog about it.

Yay! Orientation is here!

So I am a little behind in adding to my blog. I have been crazy busy this last few weeks, and it's only getting more hectic as time for school to start rolls around, but I thought I would take today to add a couple of entries to my blog. We had orientation a few weeks ago and it was so much fun! We had orientation in the morning and new character workshop in the afternoon. Orientation was...well orientation. It's got your what you can do and what you can't do all thrown into 4 crazy hours, and I'm sure it's not enough to cover it all. They hammered in our head what I already knew from Civil War reenacting drink tons of water. If you don't you will dehydrate...been there, done that. Sooo not fun. They also had a costuming session where we talked about all the pretty costumes we get to where. As an amateur seamstress I spend the whole time ohhing and awwing lol. For the most part the orientation part of the day was uneventful.

The new character workshop was more fun. Mainly because I found out who (if nothing changes) I'll be playing this year out at TRF. I will be the Lady (or Mistress, I haven't quite decided which title to go with yet) Jane Seymour.Yep, this year in England it's a bunch of Boleyn's.....and me. That might influence me to change characters if possible, maybe not. Who knows yet. We did several improve exercises to help get everyone out of their shell, and then at the end we did greeting, parting, and reverences. That was intimidating. A greeting, parting, and reverence and is basically a nice big speech about yourself...mine is...in progress. I'm trying to figure out how to make a quiet, demure character noticeable. But there was clearly something there, if she caught the eye of Henry VIII. Any comment of advice you want to make would be very helpful!

My New Dress

Last year, my sister and I attended the Texas Renaissance Festival, and one of our favorite things to do is participate in the dances. But the big hooped dresses don't accommodate themselves into dance all that easy. And they are sometimes a hassle to put on. It can take up to an hour to get into one of the big dresses. So we decided to create a dress that was smaller and easier to move in, but still looked like in belonged to the nobility. Thus was born the new dress.

As you can see the dress is very different from the other ones I have made before. It is a lot simpler and smaller. You can tell that better on the picture below.

The dress as you can see has a plainer line. The body to the skirt is achieved by the use of two petticoats, instead of hoops.

Here are some closer up shots of the bodice so you can see the trim and detail work done there.

Here you can see the details on the sleeve match those on the bodice.

Here are some close up shots of the hand crafted jewelry, I constructed to go along with the dress.

I also created a bag to hang from my waist. This will hold what I need while working at the Faire. The bag is pinned to the dress, not the belt.

This dress was created with a transitional English Hood, instead of a French Hood that I normally make. I really love this option with this dress. The transitional also has a caul on the back, instead of a veil like normal. Below are some other pictures of the dress.

The Emerald Green Anne Boleyn Dress

Inspiration Dress

Wow, after a lot of work, the Anne Boleyn dress is finally remodeled. And It went from something that I wasn't crazy about wearing to one of my favorite dresses. The Anne Boleyn dress is the first thing I ever sewed, and because of that there was a lot of trial and error in the dress. After all, everyone makes mistakes when they are learning. When I went to make my first noble dress, my favorite person at the time was Anne Boleyn. Who couldn't help but admire the feisty women who became the mother of Queen Elizabeth. I knew right away, I wanted to follow her lead. About this time The Other Boleyn Girl movie had come out, and I was very inspired by Natalie Portman's green dress.

Anne Boleyn

So because of this, my first dress was made with a beautiful Emerald Green Brocade. After buying the fabric I did hours of painstaking research, reading about other people's experience with Tudor dresses. I wanted this dress to be perfect. But as with first dresses that isn't always the case. A dress like this requires many layers to get it to look just right. When I wear one of my noble dresses, I am wearing: tights (helps with chafing and cold weather), drawers (not all that historically accurate, but your legs get cold anytime there is a breeze), a smock, corset, modesty petticoat, farthingale (or hoops), and my bum roll. That's before we get into the layers of the dress. Therefore it can be very intimidating for the first time costumer. But I tackled it with a since of excitement, but the result was not what I really desired after the thrill of finishing the dress wore off. This is what the dress looked like when I deemed it finished.

 

I'll admit, it's not terrible. But as I looked around at the other dresses I saw, I was disappointed in it. So I threw it in my costume trunk, and created my Katheryn Howard dress. That one I was much more pleased in, and so this dress became something for my sister to wear when she came to the faire with me. But as time went on I realized the potential this dress held, and decided to remake it. The first thing to go was that horrible gold trim. It was cheap, and it looked cheap and I didn't like it at all. So I went along ripping it off, and what an improvement it made. We added a small gold trim around the neck line and a gold broach, and the difference was obvious.

You can see the difference it made. The Brown dress is my Katheryn Howard Dress, for a sneak peak of what's to come.

And that was all the work it got for a while, we moved and only after I got cast in the Renaissance Faire did I pull it back out to make a few more modifications on it. Here is the end result.

I would say a big improvement. The first thing I did was remove the hanging sleeves. They always looked like they were trying to hard, because I had the ratios off when making them. I replaced them with the original sleeves I had put on the dress for a while until I finished the hanging sleeves. I then took away the low neck smock and added the high neck one. I have started to prefer the high style over the low. It looks more elegant and modest, and keeps one from getting sun burnt quite as much.

I added in a few pearls to decorate the gold trim around the neckline. I reused the same necklaces as before. The pendent on the choker came off the clearance rack at Kohls, and I restrung it on a band of pearls. The long necklace was one my great-grandmother picked up at a yard sale and gave me. But this time instead of tucking it into the bodice, I let it hang over the pendent to add some design to the simple bodice.

The only new piece of jewelery that was made for the dress was the belt. The old one was plain and to small. I didn't really care for it, so I added this one that I like much better.

The cross at the bottom was recycled from the old belt.

The French Hood also got redone. I was having a major problem with my hoods staying stiff. They were collapsing, even when I used wire and several layers or heavy canvas. Then I decided to add a layer of poster board in between two layers of canvas. That worked great and the new hoods are holding their shape wonderfully. The beads and veil were reused from the old hood, and the fabric was saved from the old sleeves that came off.

I was also able to find this pleated ribbon at Hobby Lobby which resembles the pleated band we see peeping out from underneath hoods. I think this really helps add authenticity to the outfit. Overall, I am very satisfied how the dress turned out. I can't wait to wear it, and my sister has gone from complaining about wearing it to begging to wear it. Below I will attach a few more photos.

The Call and the Contract

FYI, Five weeks can be a very long time. A very, very long time. I was checking my mail box with dread for weeks, just knowing I was going to get one of those: Sorry, thanks for coming but we don't want you letters. And then, came the phone call. I was surprised when I was offered not only a role, but a role as a lady in the English court like I wanted. That made me super excited! I pretty much squealed like a little girl, called everyone I know and plastered it on Facebook.

My contract came in the mail two days later. Another squeal. My mother is in Missouri for the week, but she comes back tomorrow and when she comes back and reads it over then I'm mailing it back off. Until now, it's a summer full of fixing my four dresses (blogs to come), Philipa Gregory books, and some Tudor dvds!

The Audition

As any actor knows going to an audition is a nerve racking experience. You are constantly thinking about what they are looking for, how to make yourself stand out, and to remember to break out of your comfort zone because no one wants an actor who won't try experimental things. Least to say there are usually a lot of butterflies in your stomach. This was no exception for me. I decided I was going to go to the audition about two days before it was held. So I called and made my appointment and was asked to memorize a monologue that was about two minutes and of the period. So I go around trying to find one. Naturally I pick my favorite Shakespeare play (Taming of the Shrew) and settled for Kate's monologue at the end. But I had never memorized Shakespeare before and I was slightly nervous about doing so. I have a good memory and got it down.

The day of the audition arrived and I drove the hour to the faire grounds from my dorm room. The whole way I was nervously repeating my monologue sure I over and over again. I arrived and filled out my paper work, asking to be considered for a lady in the English Court where all my historical role models lived. And then began the worst audition of my life. You think I am exaggerating, but I promise you I'm not. I've been through my share of auditions both good and bad and this is my worst one to date.

The audition started with several improve games. Not my strongest suit. I tend to try to over think improves instead of going in the moment. I can think on my feet...when I'm not trying too. We played some that were about making big actions, some that were about making a big name for yourself, and others that were much in the model of "Yes, and.." After that we did our monologues. And after all the stressing myself out over it. I completely blanked. I NEVER do that, EVER. But this time I did. Of course, as soon as I got back to my seat the end came back to me...thanks a lot mind. It only got worse from there...Then came the accents. We stood on stage and had to improve in about 10 or so different accents. I would defiantly not call accents a strong point of mine. I can do....British decently sometimes...and by the last couple accents I'm pretty sure they all sounded the same. Like a German, Scottish, British, Spanish mix of an accent. After that he thanked us for our audition, and told us it would be 4 to 5 weeks before we heard anything, and I left knowing I had just blown my chance to get in for this year.

Below is a peak at my audition. Well, I don't actually preform in the video, but I am there. I'm in the background in the red.

About Me

So I recently received the call that I will be working my first Renaissance Festival this year with the Texas Renaissance Faire. After getting the call I searched the web for what that first year will be like, and I couldn't find any results so I decided I will create a blog for future cast members to use as an example. I figured I would do a post on how I got started in the Renaissance Faire world.

My Freshman year of High School I had just moved to a new school near Joplin, Mo after a several years of living in the Boot hill where there is absolutely nothing to do. I was taking French, and my French teacher told me about a trip to the Renaissance Festival the foreign language classes were sponsoring. I jumped on it. I had read several great books in Jr High about the time period (Nine Days a Queen, Doomed Queen Anne, Beware Princess Elizabeth, Mary, Bloody Mary, Girl in a Cage you get my drift...all great historical fictions for middle school students) So I embarked on my first trip to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. I feel in love. It was like my books had come to life everywhere I looked there were people from history, Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci. We took a tour of the festival and our cast member tour guide joked about how we all must have gotten attacked by thieves on our way there because we were all in our underwear. It was at that moment I decided I had to have a costume next year.

Over the course of the next year I met two friends who were either crazy like me, or easily influenced, not sure which, but I convinced them that we should go the the ren fest dressed like peasants the next year. So we went around and begged people to create these costumes for us. I asked my Grandmother who hates to sew, and it was a good thing she loved me. These costumes were just plain awful. The sewing was fine, but we didn't know what we were doing and picked the wrong fabrics, patterns, and colors, but did we have fun. We thought we were on top of the world. We even had a story going on about how we were the daughters of a Duke with his mistress. But we had fun.

But I was not content being a peasant, so I went back to my Grandmother and asked her to help me create a noble gown. She absolutely refused. So I called my other grandmother who lived in Houston, TX and asked for her help. She agreed. I thought she was going to make the gown for me, little did I know I was wrong. I got down there with my fabric and my hours of painstaking research and she showed me how to do it. The dress was about half way done when I left to go back to Missouri, and I spent hours that summer putting in seems and ripping them back out. But I was proud of the Emerald Green Anne Boleyn inspired dress. Unfortunately, because it was the first thing I ever made there were lots of little mistakes in it, and things didn't work out the way I thought the would. But it has been a staple in my Renaissance wardrobe. It is currently going through it's fourth remodel. I will try to do a blog on it. I wore this dress to my third trip to the Kansas City Renaissance Faire. That year I also organized the Debate and Theatre departments sponsored field trip to the Oklahoma Renaissance Faire. We took a group of about 12 the first year and all of us dressed up. It was beyond fun. We were all theatre students and so we had a running story going on as we ran all over the faire. My friend Jayson pretended he was a duke, and I his beautiful sister who had fallen in love with a musician of ours who was really a thief trying to marry me to steal my inheritance before running off with this maid he love...you get the drift...but man it was so much fun. We also got teased about being part of the festival, which I thought was the bomb.And I made up my mind right then and there that one day I would be part of the renaissance festival.

That's when I started on my biggest sewing project to date. My Katheryn Howard Dress. This dress is my baby. I finished it my senior year in time to wear it to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival where it won first price in the costume contest. I adore this dress. I make sure to wear it at least once a year, and no one looks breathes, or touches this dress but me. There are thousands of beads hand sewn on it, fur sleeves, well you understand. I'll do a blog on it later.

We moved to Texas last year, and my sister (who has become my ren fest buddy) attended the Texas Renaissance Festival. It was so much bigger than the Festivals we had attended in the past, and we feel in love. We came back a second time within the season, something we don't usually have time to do because our parents aren't crazy about the whole Renaissance Faire thing...They think we are kinda strange. We both joked about going to auditions, but we doubted we actually would. When auditions rolled around in May, I decided to go give it a try. I am a theatre student at Sam Houston University, and am always looking for a chance to improve my audition skills (I happen to suck at them.) And well..the rest we will explore together as this adventure continues.

A recent picture of me.