Day 9, June 29, 2013 Saturday
A quiz for you...what do Justin Bieber, Ontario Pork Congress and Shakespeare have in common.....?? If you guessed Stratford, Ontario you would be right, however I would never have strung those 3 things together even in my wildest dreams!
Last night was an incredible performance of the Shakespeare play “Measure for Measure” and today we tour the prop house of the Stratford Festival. It was incredible. This warehouse is huge. Along with the isles and isles of hard props
(chairs, tables, trunks, framed pictures, mirrors bed frames etc.) it also contains 55,000 costumes!
We are told that back in the day, when the Stratford festival first started, it cost $150,000.00 to run the season. It now costs them $60,000,000.00, yes, that is Sixty Million. After we take in the tour we know why. The costumes are hand stitched, no zippers or velcro or tozzels or hook and eyes - the actors need to be able to do a costume change in 7 seconds. In most of the older costumes they used upholstery material because it matched the period material better and had the richness of colour and texture, however made the costumes very heavy. They now use more modern fabrics which can be dyed and lighting can be used to get the same features long ago fabric had. Depending on the era, and the director, and to stay true to a certain certain period of time, if the women had 5 layers to their skirts...well they made 5 layers for their skirts for the play. The cost to make costumes can run up to $5,000.00 per costume, which is mostly the man hours because they are hand stitched, except for the hems.
The tour was fascinating, wished we had more time to see everything. At the end we got to try on some old/falling apart costumes. This was fun.
(Phil doing his best Henry the 8th)
(Lucas being the best nobleman)
Phil and I take a drive over to St. Marys, which is a little picturesque town on a river. It’s called stone town, because most of their buildings are old and made of stone. We took a 15 minute walk and crossed 3 bridges, all different styles. The castle looking building was the opera house, which has since been converted to apartments.
Southern Ontario has been quite a surprise to me in it's beauty and all things old looking. As one Ontarian said " people get as far as London Ontario, and think that is it, nothing out there but country, however this area is dotted with beautiful rolling hills, farms and the quaintest towns and counties I have ever seen. Picture west coast without the mountains and saskatchewan without the dryness. Anyway, we've thoroughly enjoyed our trip thus far, and we know we will be back!
Tonight we are headed out to see Romeo & Juliet so we are all looking forward to it, and have a greater appreciation and understanding of what all goes on behind the scenes that make the plays work like a seamless and beautiful thing.
Lucas’ Statement: In professional theatre it takes 1 hour of choreography to do one second of a fight scene. If the fight scene takes 22 seconds they practice it for 22 hours.
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