Costumes! Costumes! Everywhere!

Hi LCT Blog-o-sphere!  My name is Eric Abele and I'm the new Resident Designer/Costume Director at Lexington Children's Theatre.  Many of you may remember that I served several years in the Education Department here, teaching young people from ages four to sixteen.  But, now I'm down on the second floor, loving every minute of being a full-time production artist at my favorite theatre.

Working diligently with my current costume intern, Joscelyne Oktabetz (soon to be costume journeyman), we have spent the past few weeks reorganizing and re-imagining the costume shop.  We couldn't be happier with the results!  Hopefully from the photo, any of you familiar with our shop will see some new uses of our space.

The costume shop is busy with wonderful artists working hard to accomplish the design, production, maintenance, and storage for LCT's eleven show season, as well as our Education Programming.  Right now, I have five shows bubbling through my head, all in very different stages of the process.

1. Snow White: We're well in to full production mode!  Our new draper, Theresa Bush has been cranking out patterns and cutting fabric, while our wonderful stitchers, Marilyn Cook and Jamie Carter have been sewing them together.  We have our first round of fittings June 7th!

2. Willy Wonka: The design is completed, but we can't move forward without a cast! (although we have made a mock-up for Violet as a blueberry).  Casting is June 5 and 6, so you'd better call and make your audition appointment today  If you'd like a sneak peek at those designs, you can look at my online portfolio.

3. River Rat and Cat: Our fall tour designs are due this Friday!  The director, Larry Snipes, and I have agreed on the "looks" of the characters, so it's a matter of coloring the final sketches and looking at them in conjunction with Jerome Wills's scenic design to make sure it all works together with Larry's vision.

4. If you Give a Mouse a Cookie: Since this design is by Joscelyne, my job is to estimate the cost of production, mentor her in sourcing fabric and materials, and supervise the costume production from start to finish.  It will be the first time I have to make a pair of pants to fit a mom wearing stilts!

5. Isaac Murphy/NeverEnding Story:  I lumped these guys together because they're on the same level.  We're still talking with the directors about the initial ideas regarding the design.  Who are these people?  What are these plays about?  What story are we trying to tell?  What inspires us?  Who knows where we'll be by the time those shows are in final form?

So, that's what's going on in the costume shop.  Feel free to poke around my website if you would like to see sketches from other LCT shows I've done this year: http://www.ericabele.com/.

See you at the theatre!
Eric

Summer has started at LCT

My name is Lesley Farmer and I am the managing director for Lexington Children's Theatre. Today, my job is starting a blog. I am excited as this marks a new territory for LCT yet to be explored so I am going to kick it off with what is exciting today. Everyday brings something new for LCT so I hope to stay on top of it as much as possible and tell all of you what I see and why the work all of my co-workers do is so vital to Lexington and the field of Youth Theatre. I personally never knew that Children's Theatre was my dream job. But working here has made me realize that this is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. So, since I am excited everyday to be here in this job, I am going to share with everyone why I think LCT is amazing and why everyday what we do in our building shapes the lives of young people across the country.

To start it off...

It's an amazing morning as all of our summer interns have arrived and this morning we started orientation. Getting to know games are always a great way for us to get to know our new interns and we can hardly believe all of the states that were represented from our new staff. Nebraska, Arizona, Massachusetts and Tennessee just to name a few. 18 interns in total! Many people who are new and many returning faces. All of whom are here to work tirelessly over the summer to run our theatre camps and our summer productions, Snow White and Willy Wonka.
Plus we introduced our new core staff members which both started as interns themselves. Eric Abele, our new Costume Designer, started as an Education/Performance Interns here in 2003. He has worked on stage, in our education department and helped us start our Shooting Star Youtheatre program. Tiffany Dupont was our Arts Administration Intern in 2008 and now she returns as our Marketing and Sales Associate.

The rest of this week will be spent helping our interns get used to LCT and find their way around Lexington. If you happen to see one of them please make sure to say hi and welcome them!

Have a great day!