Dressing the Dead

For Arsenic, that is. On Monday I got to make a dummy, who plays two distinct dead bodies. The official stage manager and I have to switch his costume in about half a page of dialogue, actually. It's strange that the only quick-change in our show belongs to a corpse.

He was made by putting a fat suit and blankets into a pair of coveralls, then pinning a wig-head to the top. Surprisingly simple, honestly. I'm enjoying the job very much. We open in a little more than a week (next thursday), and as we approach that deadline, the pace increases, which suits me fine.

R.I.P. Eartha Kitt

This takes on a certain poignancy, since I just posted her singing Santa Baby two days ago, and now find out that yesterday she passed away. Older, wiser heads than I have spoken about her life & times (much of which I did not know), so I'll just leave you with a clip of her singing one of my favourite of her songs, "I Want To Be Evil"

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

My favourite Christmas song. Really a classic of the genre, I feel. Happy holidays, y'all!

And a bonus, my other favourite Christmas song, Eartha Kitt singing "Santa Baby"

Barbara Cook=Magic

Well, the title about sums it up. I finally managed to get my hot little hands on Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder today, and it pretty much blew my mind. I expect I'll be more coherent on the subject after I've relistened to it a few times (and will, ideally, post again with favourite tracks and such), but in the meantime I'm just totally bedazzled. She has such a warm, expressive, beautiful voice, and is still incredibly sound technically, neither of which is a mean feat at her age. And, of course, she's a genius with song selection.

She truly is a living legend. She should get a theatre named after her when she dies. Or even before.

Opportunity knocks!

So, it's looking like I'm going to get to be an assistant stage manager on a January production of [i]Arsenic and Old Lace[/i] at the CentreStage theatre company in Kentville, quite close to where I live. Needless to say, I'm too excited for words. I'll be sure to keep y'all updated, and yes, I actually mean it.

In other, unrelated news, three items:

I sang "Send In The Clowns" for a recital for the students of my vocal teacher, and was profusely complimented.

I performed a monologue for my drama class, and, sadly, floundered.

Today's my birthday! I have obtained no fewer than11 plays! [i]To wit:[/i] Shaw's [i]Plays Pleasant[/i], [i]Plays Unpleasant[/i] (four and three plays respectively) and [i]Major Barbara[/i], Ibsen's [i]Hedda Gabler[/i], [i]She Stoops To Conquer[/i] (the author has slipped my mind at the moment), and [i]The Importance of Being Earnest[/i]. I'll have opinions once I've, y'know, read them.

EDIT: The coding on this is not what I'm used to, and due to my staggering sloth, I'm not about to go back and tweak each of those tags individually. You'll have to imagine that anything in [i][/i] is in italics, yes?