We, as wardrobe, arrived at just before one o'clock and after checking that our names were on the list, were told to just sit and watch as the technicians attempted to sew one of the curtains that had already been hung up with a sewing machine on wheels. We offered to help, but the head tech just told us to sit and chuckle at them, so we did.

We then went over to the wardrobe area to meet the head of wardrobe, Tony Ray Hicks, and were put to work. Two of my classmates and I were put on shoes, which required cleaning them, re-barging any of the soles that had come loose, polishing the blacks and re-painting the coloured shoes that needed it with acryllic paint. To our amusement, the wig guy was playing Madonna down the hall and singing along. We joined in, albeit quietly so our supervisor didn't see us goofing around (we were still working, don't worry!). The lights were turned off on us at one point, and it took a while to get them turned back on. "And the stage manager said, let there be light, and there was light, and it was good," said my classmate. :)

An interesting thing to note, off stage, all of the actors are referred to by number, not by character name. This really helped to keep everything organized backstage, though I can't tell you the names of some of the actors I got to dress because of this. They aren't numbered in the program.

Once the shoes were finished, we were given our crew assignments. The six pages of instructions seemed rather intimidating, but once we walked through it, it wasn't too bad. Plus we got to keep our pages with us backstage and the wardrobe supervisor was backstage cuing us. The wardrobe assistant, Lisa, showed us around the set and backstage, which had finished going up while we were working downstairs. All of the quick change costumes were kept in "gondolas" on either of the wings and labelled with the actor's number and the initial of the type of costume (for example, I was dressing 16S, which was a siamese, and 10 P, which was a pirate, etc.). All of the pieces that went on top of the basics (which is what it sounds like, the basic body suit, arm and leg warmers, split-soled jazz shoes (custom coloured) and a wig) had an inside liner that snapped inside the costume. This is for easy laundering after the show, as one can't stick sequined fabric or vinyl in a washing machine. And trust me, the costumes were soaked with sweat when the actors were done with them.

Once we were finished walking through our changes, analyzing our assigned costumes for how they opened and closed and felt comfortable with everything, we got to take our hour dinner break. When we came back, the actors were all there and getting into makeup, as well as warming up their voices. We were told to go and do our act one presets, which involved placing specific costumes on specific chairs in a very specific way, down to which direction the shoes were facing in relation to the stage. I was on stage right the whole night and was responsible for quick changing the Gumbie cat, a beetle, Bustopher Jones, a pirate, a siamese, and got the Deuteronomy cape thrown at me when Macavity is revealed.

The fringed costume for the Gumbie cat was very heavy, and the poor actress had an even heavier, gigantic coat which held it's shape with several steel hoops. It took three of us to get her into it. Shows how much the actors are all in great physical shape. The same was for Bustopher's coat, which was accompanied by a grey foam fat suit. The beetles were very cool, black liquid vinyl vests with great plastic wings that released when they pulled a cord to reveal beautifully colourful and sparkly wings, and huge bug head hats with buggy glasses. My pirate had a great plastic hook on one arm and the big bold letters on my sheet, it said "DO NOT DROP HOOK ON FLOOR". And the siamese were covered in gold sequins and blue cat eyes, with hats that reminded me of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from The King and I.

At the half hour call, those that were assigned to dressing rooms took care of that, however I was not and got to hang around backstage and watch the actors come up and stretch, have their makeup looked over and wigs put on. As the house was being let in, I wasn't nervous, but very excited.

Once the show had began, we had about 20 minutes before anyone needed to be changed, so we stood behind the row of chairs and just listened, and saw what we could from back in the wings. The show itself was excellent, from what I could hear. The dancers were so in sync with eachother that when the whole ensemble moved back and forth, the stage would move with them. It felt like standing on a moving bus. It was intense. My only real issue was that the woman playing Grizabella, though she had a beautiful voice, sounded much too young. But still, everything sounded just wonderful from backstage. Oddly enough, though, you couldn't hear a lot of what was going on on the stage from the back. Well, on my wing, anyway. There was a microphone on stage left where extra voices sang into during the chorus parts, and extra taps were done during the beetle number. It was a good thing the mic wasn't on my side of the stage, though. I was surprised at the amount of talking that went on on my side, from both the actors and the crew.

The actors I was working with were all very nice, thanking me for helping them, and letting me know what I needed to do, and what they would do themselves. A lot of them were fairly proficient with their costumes. I mostly just fastened them in. My pirate was particularly cute, telling me that their stage carpenter was narcoleptic and hissing at his fellow pirate when he got whacked in the head.

The show went by rather quickly, even though it was at least two and a half hours long. We didn't have a lot of instances where we were standing around doing nothing. It is just as choreographed backstage as it is on, and everyone has specific jobs to do and they aren't allowed to concern themselves with anyone else's tasks. This was a welcome change to my past running crew jobs at school, where I had nothing to do but wait incase a button fell off.

Once the show was over and the actors had gone, and laundry had been sorted correctly, we started to strike the costumes. When our wardrobe duties had ended, we said goodbye to Tony Ray and Lisa and went to help the techs strike the rest of the show. It took three hours and a lot of heavy lifting (one particular piece weighed 1700 pounds, and that is not an exaggeration) into the five semi trucks that were there. Us as wardrobe girls got a lot of praise from the show crew as we were sometimes still working and moving things while the "big strong men" were sitting around.

At one point, toward the end of the night when we started to get a bit loopy from exhaustion, the head of the crew lit up a cigarette inside. Smoking in public places has been illegal in Red Deer for a year now, and so my classmates started calling him "Stinky Man". We all had a good laugh about it, and he joked that he would sign our paycheques as "Stinky Man" and they would bounce.

When the last of the crates were loaded, we were given our cheques and souvenir showbills and went home. It was 1:30 the next morning. We waved goodbye to "Stinky Man", picked up our things and went home. We were all buzzing from what we hoped would be an experience we would be able to repeat again in the future.

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