Tomorrow is the first day of school.
Tomorrow I have rehearsal.
First I made sure I knew what My Kid intends to wear on the First Day of School and that it is something that is clean and exists in the apartment.
Then, I ransacked my closet looking for something for me to wear as a clown in the studio tomorrow. The clothes we wear in Clowns Ex Machina are not dropped in our laps during tech week by some costumer we haven’s seen since having our measurements taken right after being cast (as is the case in traditional theatre). We develop our own costumes in the course of the rehearsal process and at the moment I have none.
It is a source of stress.
We are re-working Clown Axioms which had its first incarnation at the undergroundzero festival last summer. I came in at the end of the process at the end of the studio time and the beginning of tech. I was assigned to wear all black and move across the stage during transitions.
As a result, while the other women are trying to remember what they did in their pieces, I am starting that process from scratch.
I have no idea what to wear. We’re riffing off of fairy tales and gothic romances and so on the first day of rehearsal I put together a skirt and corset affair. But, several of the other women are already wearing that sort of thing so it’s a no go. For the second rehearsal I wore a cotton Indian tunic, pants and sari outfit, given to me by friends from India. I wore it to a workshop this winter and enjoyed the color and ease of movement. But, when I brought it in for this particular show, Kendall said it didn’t work because it’s from a different time and place than the others.
So, I am back to square one.
I have returned to the pictures we were given as inspiration. In among the wenches in corsets and full skirts, there are also fluttery gowns and flowing hair. So I have found something else to try. It’s fluttery but it’s dark, grey and black instead of virginal white. We’ll see.