Life update and dressing-up wibble

[taimatsu]

Have just finished yummy pasta. Have more pasta ready to be tomorrow's lunch, which is Good. Have been preparing for Peter Pan play-reading this weekend, am playing flute in it. Have found midi of the only tune i haven't music for, but am unable to make it stick in head and might have to write it down, chiz.

Must decide on costume. Lost Boy would be easiest but I have too much GIRL BODY to be very convincing. Mrs Darling (my main part) would be nice, but is not really very possible. The play was first performed in 1908, so the evening dress she wears would be something like this *sigh*. I could throw something odd together out of assorted clothes, fabric and pins, if black velvet and long sleeves were acceptable, but they ain't. (Yes, I am a bit of a perfectionist, and would rather not wear something if I can't get it at least half-right.)

So, given my GIRL BITS I rather ought to be a female character, but that leaves me with Wendy (no nightie), the Indian heroine (someone else is being her and I'm not playing her anyway) and Tinkerbell (someone else's part, and anyway no WINGS and no time to make 'em.) So I might be left with being a lost boy or pirate despite my girlishness, or perhaps Nana if I buy a rug.

Then again, the site I referenced above has some patterns. I could conceivably make a period-ish skirt and find something for the top half... But I'd have to curl my hair...

I guess I'll go and look at my fabric stash and keep thinking. Ideas welcome.
(oh yes - see my nre LJ pic too!)

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Ummm...the female characters you mention above (with the exception of Nana) are about eleven, so girl bits are probably pretty superfluous anyway.

Go for a male part. Gender-reversal is a long-standing theatrical tradition :-)

[claire-smith.livejournal.com]

When is the play? I can have a look and see whether I have any Useful Patterns for you.

Thank you for the money for the t-shirt - I'm glad you liked it! Sorry I missed you this afternoon, I was frantically shelving in Short Loan. All the students seemed to have gone mad and shuffled everything in there today. Grrr.

Re:

[taimatsu]

It's on Saturday. I have tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday evenings to make whatever I decide to make :) If you have anything that'd be cool, but it'll have to be easy! The skirt pattern I have found looks pretty simple, with just cutting out big pieces and sewing straight seams to worry about (although god knows about the sizing).

http://www.marquise.de/en/1900/schnitte/s1900.shtml is the pattern page, and the dresses look too scary to make in the time I have. I am wondering if I can make an empire-line top thing and then a long straight dress thing with shoulder straps that might look like an empire-line dress when worn all at once. It's the fitted top that's the problem. I'll have to see if I can find an item of clothing to butcher. Do drop me a line if you have anything useful, please! :)

Lost Boys

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I'd not realised all the lost boys were male till now. I've not read the book, and I guess I just thought that films and stuff just made them male in the way that they make most characters male, unless there's a good reason. Go as a lost girl, I say. Or as a transgender lost boy, :).

Re: Lost Boys

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

"Lost Boys"...it's kinda there in the title.

And a lot of the theme of the Lost Boys is that they have no mother-figure or female presence in their lives. They're also permanently just on the cusp of "growing up", (major not-quite-sexual awakening subtext, although it's very cleanly done), which is one of the reasons why Wendy's arrival throws their My-First-Lord-Of-The-Flies dynamic off-kilter.

Re: Lost Boys

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Indeed it is, but it's not something I'd ever paid attention to. Perhaps I'd been underexposed. Like this thing about Eve giving the apple to Adam. The number of times I'd heard that story as a kid and teenager (methodist upbringing) and I'd never noticed if Adam tempted Eve with the apple or Eve Adam. Until I became exposed to it in art, and in modern texts, and stuff, where it's made very much a big thing of. I think I probably pay too little attention to these things.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

I can easily convert MIDI to notation and send you a PDF file of the score, if that would be of any use?

[imc.livejournal.com]

Cool - how do you do that?

[mhw.livejournal.com]

For nearly all my music work I use a wonderful bit of software called Harmony Assistant, which you can find at http://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm

What I do is to import the MIDI file into HA (it takes care of all the fiddly stuff like dynamics, grace notes, triplets and so on, by default, but you can control if if you please), which gives me a basic score. I then use the score tools to neaten it up, and then, when I'm happy with the layout, export it page by page as PostScript (.ps) files. Then it's just a matter of using Adobe Distiller and Acrobat to convert the pages into an EPS file, ready for printing and binding. I already had the Adobe tools, but there are freeware tools out there that will do the same.

I keep nudging the Guillon brothers (who are the authors of the Harmony and Melody tools) to write a 'dump the score as EPS' tool, but they have plenty of other things to work on, and I don't mind doing the step-by-step approach for smallish scores.

At fifteen Euros for Melody Assistant - Harmony Assistant without some of the bells and whistles, which to be honest I don't use much, and I really only paid for Harmony to give the team some more money :) - it's an amazing bargain, and Harmony itself's only 65 Euros.

The best toy they make, I think, is Virtual Singer (15 Euros). Put a score into Harmony or Melody, type in the lyrics, select the language and the type of voice... and it sings. I did a pretty splendid version of Tallis' Spem in Alium with it - software that can sing a 40-part motet, wow!

[imc.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting - but no Linux version. . .

Computerised singing of Spem in Alium - now that sounds bizarre. :-)

BTW, presumably this program can print the whole score at once, so you just need to get a PostScript printer driver - Adobe has a free one somewhere on their site.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Indeed there's no UN*X version - but it's so good that if I didn't dual-run Win98 and FreeBSD on the box already, I'd probably make a minimal Windows partition just to run HA. It might run under Wine, but I confess I've never tried that.

The singing's actually rather good, considering. I'm using it to gradually build up a performance of the complete works of John Dunstable, since there aren't many available on CD. SinA is a bit big to mail around the place, but I could mail you something smaller.

Oh - yes - I suppose I could do 'Print to file'! I hadn't actually thought of using that trick. I must give it a try. Thanks for suggesting it!

Re:

[taimatsu]

yesyesplease! That would be fantastic! It's the file attached to http://www.contemplator.com/child/margaret.html

You should be able to see my email address in my profile, or LJ email works.

Thank you very, very much.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, now I'm feeling guilty that people are stressing over it.

Are you near any decent charity shops? You might be able to find something Mrs Darlingish.

The Lost Boys wear clothes that don't fit very well. Perhaps you could make something biggish (out of fake fur?) that hides the girly bits.

Re:

[taimatsu]

Don't feel guilty! It's not unpleasant stressing, just an interesting thing to ponder between ordering stationery at work.

[emperor]

You could buy a nightie?

That said, I think Wendy's a bit young to have GIRL BODY, and a nightie would rather make the GIRL BITS more obvious. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, you understand ;)

Re:

[taimatsu]

I could *make* a nightie out of muslin. But the muslin I have is rather... transparent.

I am starting to think I might be Tinkerbell.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Egads! You must be a GURL!