February 25, 2011 – The Actorvist

I love when I talk to people that I am working with. And I don’t mean the usual “Hi, how are you?” kind of stuff. I was so lucky that I had the opportunity to chat with Teatro Vision’s Artistic Director Elisa Alvarado. I am currently working on editing the interview for a podcast, so YAY!!

During my talk with her, I feel like I learned more about why I want to open my own theatre company some day. I doubt that I would be lucky enough to have the same sort of eventful career that she got to have. I think in my head, what I picture is, as Elisa explained to me in the interview, more of a collective than a “company.” There’s something to be said about surrounding yourself with people that you truly enjoy working with and creating good times and experiences with. I hope you enjoy the interview when I get it posted.

The other thing that I love about doing these interviews is that it just inspires me to keep going, to keep working, to keep dreaming, to keep enjoying, and to keep protesting. To make sure that I should do everything I can to help companies that I believe in and to promote the artists that I admire and enjoy.

I’m talking about COSTUMES!

I am trying to figure out what I want my characters to look like and I have some ideas (when don’t I, right?) I have tried to find pictures, but I have only been able to come across three that are remotely similar to what I am picturing.

Great pic!! Whew! So the play takes place in New Mexico in the 1940’s. One of my characters, Andrew, is the older brother of the main character, Antonio Marez. I (hopefully) am early to mid 20’s. I have returned home from WWII. Before heading out for the military, I was raised on a farm. I am not entirely just a farmer boy anymore thanks to the war and being influenced be the world outside of the farm. So a bit farmer mixed with a hint of city is what I hope this character will look like.

The guy in the lighter colored hat would be my other choice for the character of Andrew. One of the other ideas is that I could use that look for my random vaquero or cowboy appearances. It’s not heavily country in look but still rugged.

For my “villian” look, I would like to try and find a look like any of the guys on the above pic, except for the obvious white guy. Although I am hoping that I can get it to look more dirty. The character is Juan Blas. That is supposed to be two characters, but they just combined all the lines and gave them to me. Yay! This guy really only hangs around with the true villain of the play because of the free beer. He’s got no real job, and there’s always dirt under his finger nails. And he’s got no real desire to wash them. I like the vintagey style, but I want it to be slightly ill fitting and uncordinated, kinda like he picked up these pieces from the trash and uses them.

Do you have any suggests, or even better, pictures that you can send me that would be closer to what I described? I want to get this type of info to the costume designer as soon as I can, so time is of the utmost importance. Thank you kindly for reading!!