A Couple Links and a Movie Review
The Utah Shakespeare Festival is said to be the only theatre company in the world that opens six plays in six days (technically, seven, if you count our Greenshow). We just hit our first round of dress rehearsals so things will be crazy for the next couple of weeks. In lieu of a project post or the usual fare, all i got here is some links and a movie review of a DVD i watched last night in prone exhaustion.
The folks at Steampunk Magazine requested to reprint my instructions for making a Lady Artisan's Apron in their most recent issue. The same issue features a how-to piece on turning a standard bicycle into a modified pennyfarthing ("pennyfakething") so those not into the steampunk subgenre of sci-fi or growing aesthetic still might find the publication of interest. Their site offers the magazine in print form for a small charge, or as a free .pdf download that you can then print out yourself.
Also, the Salt Lake Tribune has an article on the USF's upcoming world premiere of Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical, for which i am the crafts build leader. It's got a lot of info on how a world premiere musical comes about, and a fun photo of the actress portraying Maria Merelli looking like an angry drag queen.
...Which brings me to my movie review: Kinky Boots!
Kinky Boots is a film with a lot of themes--failing relationships, budding relationships, tolerance vs bigotry, loyalty vs greed, fine pairs of shoes, the dichotomy of strength and fragility, culture clash, and transvestites and drag queens. It is also a movie who basic premise is about the process and product of fine craftsmanship--in footwear, no less--which is why i mention it here.
The basic premise is thus: Charlie Price inherits the family shoe factory, which has for generations made top quality sensible brown brogues for men; he shortly discovers that the business is in big trouble financially and flounders for how to save it and the jobs of his 50 or so workers. When he intercedes in what he believes is three men assaulting a woman in an alley whose heel has broken off her shoe and discovers that the woman is in fact a drag queen named Lola, he believes he's found a way to save the factory: change the product. He and his workers re-engineer the structural components of women's footwear to accomodate men's weight and physique. There are, of course, a lot of interpersonal hijinx, ridiculous leather boots, nigh-unbelievable plot twists, and deep vibrato renditions of Nancy Sinatra, as you might imagine. There are also a number of brilliant montages within the shoe factory illustrating the mass-manufacture of finely-crafted men's, women's, and men-who-impersonate-divas' shoes!
Ultimately, it's a movie whose core premise is that of my own career: solving a sartorial engineering problem with ingenuity and craftsmanship. I figured i'd mention it here because it's rare you see elements of my profession and related fields in film at all (or, only on the DVD making-of extras)--if you haven't seen it, you might want to check it out. Besides, if you've ever been to a drag cabaret and seen the costumes that drag queens make for themselves, you know that they are often masters of the art of bricolage!
The folks at Steampunk Magazine requested to reprint my instructions for making a Lady Artisan's Apron in their most recent issue. The same issue features a how-to piece on turning a standard bicycle into a modified pennyfarthing ("pennyfakething") so those not into the steampunk subgenre of sci-fi or growing aesthetic still might find the publication of interest. Their site offers the magazine in print form for a small charge, or as a free .pdf download that you can then print out yourself.
Also, the Salt Lake Tribune has an article on the USF's upcoming world premiere of Lend Me a Tenor: The Musical, for which i am the crafts build leader. It's got a lot of info on how a world premiere musical comes about, and a fun photo of the actress portraying Maria Merelli looking like an angry drag queen.
...Which brings me to my movie review: Kinky Boots!
Kinky Boots is a film with a lot of themes--failing relationships, budding relationships, tolerance vs bigotry, loyalty vs greed, fine pairs of shoes, the dichotomy of strength and fragility, culture clash, and transvestites and drag queens. It is also a movie who basic premise is about the process and product of fine craftsmanship--in footwear, no less--which is why i mention it here.
The basic premise is thus: Charlie Price inherits the family shoe factory, which has for generations made top quality sensible brown brogues for men; he shortly discovers that the business is in big trouble financially and flounders for how to save it and the jobs of his 50 or so workers. When he intercedes in what he believes is three men assaulting a woman in an alley whose heel has broken off her shoe and discovers that the woman is in fact a drag queen named Lola, he believes he's found a way to save the factory: change the product. He and his workers re-engineer the structural components of women's footwear to accomodate men's weight and physique. There are, of course, a lot of interpersonal hijinx, ridiculous leather boots, nigh-unbelievable plot twists, and deep vibrato renditions of Nancy Sinatra, as you might imagine. There are also a number of brilliant montages within the shoe factory illustrating the mass-manufacture of finely-crafted men's, women's, and men-who-impersonate-divas' shoes!
Ultimately, it's a movie whose core premise is that of my own career: solving a sartorial engineering problem with ingenuity and craftsmanship. I figured i'd mention it here because it's rare you see elements of my profession and related fields in film at all (or, only on the DVD making-of extras)--if you haven't seen it, you might want to check it out. Besides, if you've ever been to a drag cabaret and seen the costumes that drag queens make for themselves, you know that they are often masters of the art of bricolage!