After a nice, long Christmas holiday I returned back to Rome.
Over the holiday I spent 8 days in Shoreditch, London which was great, it's a cool area
for fashion and independent brands and it gave me a real desire to move there
after my degree and hopefully start up my own independent trade (or at least
find work in London to fund myself to do so!)
Since
being back preparations are under-way for Hedda Gabler. The
director made the decision to adapt the play to a modern setting. This
means unfortunately the costumes will not be as exciting as I'd have liked (I
am a fan of period clothing!) but I do still have the
responsibility of sourcing the clothes and modifying garments appropriately. I
will be using my knowledge of making fascinators that I learnt in my first year
as I have to create one for one of the characters. I enjoying the construction aspect of making head pieces, they are almost comparable to sculpture, something I have enjoyed previously.
Alongside designing and organising the costumes I am responsible for
sourcing and making the stage props needed for the show. I am currently working
on a pop-art style portrait (to fit with the modern era) of the General to be the main centrepiece of the stage set. This painting is an incredibly important part of the set, as it is referred to often in the script. This is a perfect opportunity for me to show off my painting skills, something I have always enjoyed since GCSE.
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| The vital prop - One of generals pistols.. |
I
have also began working on some of my own art work in my spare time. I think
this is down to the fact that I have been getting really inspired recently,
mostly by nature. I will use the inspiration gained out here in my final
project - I have been getting lots of ideas for what it is I want to do.
Promotional work is something I have been continuing to do for the company which means
creating the posters, sending the promotional emails and over Christmas I also
created a new Twitter page. As I am not an avid social
networker this has been good for me to begin to understand what people want to
see and what makes a page popular. This is a skill I will also utilise in my
third year for promoting myself as in independent designer. I plan to elaborate
on the branding project we did in third year and mainly focus on visual
merchandising. I want to create something that can be viewed as installation
art but that would also be used in visual merchandising. I do not know fully
how the third year brief works however I am aware we have a certain amount of
free reign with it - so these are just some ideas I am considering.
You can visit The English Theatre of Rome's twitter here: @rometheatre
Last
week I joined Gaby at her after school theatre class she teaches. They are a
group of students from a nearby university and will be performing a
musical in April. I will be working as the costume designer for this too.
Meeting large groups of people is incredibly beneficial to my communication skills - in fact,
the whole internship has been fantastic for that.
I
have met a lot of very talented and different personalities whilst out here and
I enjoy liaising with different people. Everyone has different talents and
connections and I now appreciate how important this is within the design
world.
