Puppets and head explosions
It’s the first day of dress rehearsals for The Magic Flute, and the dressers’ team are gathered in the Running Wardrobe head-quarters painfully early. For some of us, it feels like it’s only been a few hours since we were putting away last night’s show, but that’s how it goes at this time of the season, when the pace is gunning at full-steam.
I am handed a slim stack of stapled notes with my name pencilled on the front. This is my show plot, which details the movements and costume changes throughout the performance of my assigned artists, and is timed to the second. Changes usually happen either in the dressing rooms or in the side-of-stage quick-change booths. ‘Out of black trousers and patent shoes, into blue trousers and lace-up boots. VV quick!!’ On separate sheets we have meticulously comprehensive lists of all costume items, right down to socks, bras, show pants, watches, earrings, and pocket handkerchiefs. It will our job at the beginning of each evening to comb through the items on the dressing room rails and the bit bags, which contain all the odds and sods, and it will be our responsibility to hunt down anything that might be missing. Usually, missing things will have turned up in someone else’s dressing room, or if they got lost on stage, there’s a chance that Stage Management will have them. Often, singers accidentally go home in their show socks and forget to return them. Replacements will be procured, but not without a disapproving frown.
I collect a plastic basket filled with freshly folded towels, and I head to the under-stage dressing rooms to meet my charges for this show — four puppeteers who turn out to be bright and beaming young men. I’ve heard rumours that they have worked with Cirque du Soleil and on Warhorse, but there’s not much time for chitchat today — I’ll ask them another time. Often, I find that singers can rely on dressers to shepherd them through the costume plot, but these guys are sharp as pins, and they pore over my notes with me to get clear in their heads about when and where they are meant to be wearing what.
The atmosphere backstage is shimmering with a low level buzz of anticipation. Performers begin to emerge, transformed, from their dressing rooms and everyone is looking as though they have just stepped right out of a fabulous Edwardian children’s book illustration. The costumes are amazing. Stunning elements of fantasy have been woven through the historical references with smile-sparking wit and imagination. Tailors and seamstresses are clustered in the corridors, tape measures draped around their necks, frowning with concentration as they scrutinise their exquisite handiwork.
‘Holy moly,’ says wig-technician Dee as she examines the men’s chorus chef hats — giant creations with internal wiring and a battery pack so that they can be illuminated via remote control. ‘I think this one’s going to be a corker!’
There are some errors on my plot, instructing me to set incorrect items of costume in the Opposite-Prompt quick-change cage, and also some hats are missing. But wardrobe-assistant Leah barks questions into her headset, and we soon get everything all straightened out. My agenda is to keep everything in my little corner of control as calm and as zen as possible, and so far this plan seems to be working.
After Act 1 has been rehearsed, all dressers are called to the Running Wardrobe headquarters for notes with the costume supervisor, Caroline, who is part of the designer/director Barbe & Doucet’s team. This has never happened before — the exacting standards that Barbe & Doucet have set are unprecedented. With her salmon pink cardigan, necklace of rose quartz beads and softly spoken voice, Caroline has the demeanour of a gentle primary school teacher and yet the severity of her silver bob and the unbending line of her eyebrow suggests that not even the tiniest detail could hope to slip past her attention. She runs through each member of the cast, addressing the appropriate dresser in turn, and drills through the list of notes she has written into a hard-backed notebook with an expensive looking fountain pen. The men’s chorus dressers get a detailed demonstration on how to fit the neck-ties correctly — the knots must be just so. Fortunately, I already answers ready for her queries about the missing puppeteer hats and ill-fitting belts.
At lunch time, I’m happy to wander into the furthest reaches of the gardens and disappear amid a cacophony of cricket song. I lie back on the warm, glossy grass and allow the sunshine to melt across my eyelids, gently sponging away any stress from the morning.
In the afternoon, i find the Circle Level kitchen is stinking of instant coffee, and both the kettles are rattling furiously as everybody gears up for Act 2. The men’s chorus materialise from their dressing room and congregate in the corridor while waiting for their hats to be fitted. I notice that Mike is wearing knee pads underneath his gigantic, teepee-shaped pastry chef’s costume. Then I remember that he’s drawn the short straw yet again — he will be playing a dwarf, and will be performing on his knees. He gives me a sardonic eye roll and gestures at the costume. ‘Inspiration for one of your paintings perhaps, Pearl?’
I head up to the Promt-side wings in preparation for a quick change, and discover a fifteen-foot high suitcase is being wheeled onto the stage. The crew are clearly struggling with the weight of it, and they almost squish stage manager Claire into her Prompt Corner desk, but nothing, it seems, can distract her from calmly continuing with her announcements into her little microphone; ‘Electrics, this is your call for the pyro head explosion, thank you.’
Two of the puppeteers are getting strapped into harnesses which are attached to gigantic, robot puppets that look about as tall as houses. Their massive heads are wobbling around somewhere near the rigging. I pull the puppeteers’ jackets on over the harnesses, before crouching down to help them into boots that are attached via rods to the puppets’ feet. Each puppet is flanked by three other operators — one for each of the arms and one for the head, using long poles. I step back as the huge figures turn around, and begin to carefully manoeuvre towards the stage, dwarfing everyone around them.
In about ten minutes’ time, when they come back off stage, I will have thirty seconds to get one of the puppeteers out of his jacket, harness, and puppet boots, and then into a black cloak, black gloves and black shoes. Standing in the darkness of the wings, I roll each glove down, ready to shove onto his hands, and tuck them inside-out into my pockets. Then I drape the cloak over my shoulders so that I can easily whip it off and wrap it around him. I stand ready and waiting while my colleagues hover nearby, poised to catch the other puppeteers like shadowy football goalies. It’s going to be intense, and big scene changes will be going on around us at the same time, so we’ll need to have our wits about us to keep from getting mown down.
Sure enough, a few moments later, the puppets lumber off the stage and stride back into the wings just as huge pieces of scenery start to rumble by. ‘Mind your backs! Stand back! Stand back!’
I find myself clambering in between giant puppet legs to help Jack out of his boots and harness. As the puppet is wheeled away, I rip the gloves from my pockets, jam them onto his hands, and then pull the cloak off my back so that he can dive straight into the sleeves. I’m thankful that Rachael has dropped down to the floor to help him with his shoes while I scoot around behind to snap together the cloak’s magnetic fastenings down Jack’s back.
‘These are gonna need elastics!’ Rachael yells over her shoulder as she struggles with the shoelaces, and Leah duly scribbles notes. Done — we are done! And the puppeteers, now magically invisible in their cloaks, glide back to the stage.
The day eases to a close and as we are rehanging and sorting costumes, Dee calls to me, ‘You always look so calm, Pearl!’
‘Ah,’ I reply, ‘it’s all just an act!’
