"Pirates!"

Some friends of mine have a son, Christopher, that was in his school's honor choir featuring "Pirates" and I supplied his costume.

It was a great little musical, the kids were wonderful and sang beautifully!

24th Annual Black Heritage Celebration "It's A New Day"

This past February, I had the pleasure of creating costumes for Merced College's 2009 Black Heritage Celebration Play, "A Long Time Commin, It's A New Day".

We just got a new camera the same morning of the play and were trying to figure out all the gizmos on it so the pictures aren't that wonderful. I will be taking new photos, sans actors, of the costumes and posting them on my new website www.mjstagecrafts.com within the next month.


Below is a picture of the entire cast.



Of all the characters, my favorite was Harriet Tubman. Since I love to make historical clothing I took great pride and joy in creating her look, from the making the costume to supplying her props. Harriet is wearing a head scarf, a light calico bodice, wool skirt and cotton twill coat and a pair of 1860's ladies boots. Her props are a haversack and rifle. Boy did she look great!




The actors below were in the scene where Harriet brings runaway slaves through the underground railroad and into the arms of freedom,a merciful Quaker gentlemen. I supplied the Quaker hat and made his coat out of black wool. I made one of the slaves outfits, a tan and blue striped oversized men's shirt and a navy cotton skirt.




Next up is Melba Patillo under armed guard. Her costume is a silhouette of the 1950's. It was made in a pretty yellow calico print.

The final scene was of the Obama's election night victory so I recreated the look of Michelle and Malia's red dresses. Of all the costumes, Michelle's dress was the one that drew the most raves. I think I did a pretty darn good job!

"One True King"

The pictures below are of the stage sets for "One True King" at Christian Life Center

The next two photos show how the manger rotates around into King Herod's throne room.

This is Herod's throne room

Below are the Magi in their tower beholding the Star of Bethlehem.

The last photo is of Joseph's house where the Magi eventually meet Jesus.

2008 CLC Christmas Production, "One True King"

The first couple of photos are of the dressing and cast staging area at the church. We had a live feed to help with coordinating actors with scenes.

The Angels

Jesus and the Angels

The Cast of "One True King" (con'td)

The Magi and their servants.



King Herod and the Roman Guards



Gossiping Persian Women

Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus

The student tourists

These are the post-production photos of the 2008 CLC play. Again, lousy camera and lighting, but I'm learning.

The Build Shop at CLC

Once again, CLC was wonderful in providing us with a fairly large paint/build area in the church. This made transporting sets so much easier! For the new Magi Tower set, Greg pre-built the framework at his shop and then transported them over to the church for final texturizing and painting.

Below you can see the walls of the exisiting sets undergoing their flame-retardant coat. While I barely whimpered at the thought of having to repaint the sets back to their original state, many people that came in to visit practically cried at the thought. We also made sure to flame-retard the new stuff that was built.

So here is Joseph's house, now on rolling braces and undergoing the flame-retardant coat...

And here it is undergoing its transformation back to it's original paint scheme. You can see the original set and paint scheme in my very first blog entry.

There is definately a lot of different steps involved in making theatrical sets; research, sketches, plans, framing, texturing, paint, set-up and tear-down. Most people I talk to see the final product and exclaim how they would never be able to do something like that, but when you take a step back from the final product and look at the different layers/steps involved, I firmly believe that anybody can do it. And I have proof! While proclaiming that he was strictly a carpenter, Greg certainly learned that he could do all the artistic stuff too.

Building Costumes

While we are searching for a larger studio space in town, our living room transforms into the costume department. The space is large enough to handle the numerous sewing projects and machines for large productions. I keep the iron hot and two machines threaded and ready to go at all times.

The cutting table fits perfectly and the couches make great holding areas for different costumes. In this photo one couch holds sheer fabric for the angel wings and the love seat holds the satin used in the angel costumes.

As sewn projects were completed, they were placed in the family room to await transportation to the church and final fittings. The red clothing is part of the Roman soldiers costumes. Since they were going to be doing a choreographed fight scene, they wore Braccae (knee pants), for modesty's sake. The photo shows the unfinished waistbands awaiting their soldiers final fit.

Fully completed costumes were labeled and hung together with like colors to prevent accidental color exchange. The majority pieces of the Magian costumes were white so they were hung together, as well as the Magian servants and Jesus' costumes.

Once the costumes had their final fittings and the dress rehearsals and performances began, the costumes were finally hung together in complete character sets.

Artistic H.Q.

Welcome to Marlene's Artistic Headquarters!

This is basically the creative hub of my artistic endeavors. The space often expands or shrinks to fit whatever projects I am working on at the time. This picture shows most of the work being done for the 2008 CLC Christmas program. I have most everything I need here; my computer for the endless hours of research, my desk to hold all the research papers and historical and stagecraft books, the drawing table set up to create and hold sketches and architectural plans, and the inspiration boards from which I pull many ideas from.

You can see all the various visual aids I use when coming up with set and costume ideas. If you look closely you can see the original drawing I had for the Magi Tower, as well as costume ideas for the fighting Romans and angel costumes.

The photo below shows the different types of Persian religious towers I used as references for the Magi tower. You can also see that the sketchbook on the table holds ideas for royal and Magian headwear. While I ran out of time to create them for the 2008 play, I do have aspirations to create them in 2009 for my new stagecraft business, which then will be available for rent or purchase.

I tried to keep track of how many hours I spent each week on research and sketching, but lost count after 52 hours. However, I can say that research, sketches and plans were created over a 12 week period.

The Bad and the Good

The bad news; Ok, I admit it. I'm a horrible blogger. Simply horrible. I had every great intention to try post regular blog entries but I failed.


The good news is that I have been keeping busy! The CLC Christmas play was wonderful! It had some stressful moments, but in the end it all came together. Boy, if it wasn't for that last minute, nothing would get done. LOL


The bad news is that I have some photos, that unfortunately, aren't that great. My camera decided to take a downward spiral and so the shots are disappointing to me.


The good news is my honey bought me a new camera for Valentines Day! Yippee!

...So on my last blog entry I was working on revamping the Egyptian columns. Well as time and budget grew short the executive decision was made to put the columns on the back burner and to focus on adding to the main sets and costumes.

The big time cruncher for us was that we had to take all the previously made sets and fire retard them. Then we had to re-paint them! That was not one of the most joyeous experiences but it was an extremely necessary one. Fortunately, God blessed me with some great help this year, people offered to help with costumes, painting and texturizing sets, moving sets in and out of the auditorium... I'm going to try and remember everyone that pitched in, if I forget a name, please forgive me. Thanks to Sandy and her vision, Pam, Nancy, Diane, Jerry, Joseph, Shawn, Cameron, Keith, Greg, Terry, Jeremy, Joshua, Jordan...

Now,I have to give a special standing ovation to Mr. Greg Vivieros for doing such a spectacular job on building the sets for us this Christmas!!! If it was not for him, I would still be making the sets as I type this. Stand up and take a bow Greg!

Mr. Greg is the happy guy on the right; does he look tired to you too? LOL Jerry, our strongman and Santa Claus,is on the left.

Yes, this is the Magi Tower. Not the finished product I had in mind, but time was of the essence; we had to hurry and so the faux stones for set aside this one and the tower was painted instead. Boy, what that ever and adventure. Nonetheless, it was a spectacular hit!


This was a very large and extremely heavy set. Once put together, this baby wouldn't move in an earthquake. Ok, maybe it would shake a bit. It took 5 guys to move the lower front arch itself. These are pic's of the guys moving it through the foyer and then through the auditorium doorway.




The tower was placed in the far right aisle of the church auditorium. The top floor was for the Magi actors and the audience could move around underneath to their seats. It was pretty darn cool.

(Persian Note: I tried to stay historically correct with Persian architecture and the Magi, taking into account that some people believe the Magi were connected to the Zoroastrian religion, so the tower symbol and clothing reflect this.)

Now Keith Van Houten once again put his creative mind and talents to work and made metal swords for two of our fighting Roman Soldiers. The play had an awesome choreographed fight scene where 4 Roman soldiers battle against each other. (Two fought with swords and two with spears. One soldier protected King Herod.) It was a spectacular! And my oldest son, Jeremy was one of the sword fighters. I don't have a close-up picture of the swords, however Keith has them in safe-keeping so I will get a picture soon. I do have a picture of King Herod with the soldiers below.

Back Row from Left: Jay, Jack, Joshua and Cameron

Front Row from left: Shawn and Jeremy

Well, that's all I have time for today. I will be sure to post more Christmas play photos ASAP.

Set Design and Construction

I have again accepted the role of Set Designer for Christian Life Center's Christmas Play this year. I have done a crash course in Ancient Studies, mainly covering Roman and Egyptian influence in Israel, King Herod and Bethlehem. A lot of online research went into studying about the previous and also the Magi and Persian Empire. I bought few books that really help in studying the architecture of these areas:





Ancient Egypt, Art and Archaeology of the Land of the Pharoahs by Giorgio Agnese and Maurizio Re





Lost Cities from the Ancient World by Maria Teresa Buaitoli and Simone Rambaldi





Our plans are to reuse some of the sets from last time, like Joseph's House and the Inn, but will be repurposing the other sets to add to the stage.

The director, Sandy, and I are very excited as we plan on putting a Magi Tower over an aisle next to the seating area (if the Fire Marshal say's Okey Dokey) and turning the lobby into Bethlehem! We will be using market tents and a couple of other surpises.



A few years ago, I made a couple of Egyptian Columns that were used at a company event. I decided to repurpose them to use for the Christmas play this year. This picture is of one of the columns.

When I made them, I did a crash course in Heiroglyphics, so yes, the columns do say something! What does it say? LOL I can't remember all of it and which column said what, but my name was on one and it also said "Merced is very hot in the summer". LOL Seriously!

In this photo I have stripped the plaster strips off the base and top of the colums to reveal the wire framing, which I then removed.

I have now replastered the columns. I have created new bases and tops for the columns, which were plastered yesterday. I promise to post the completed pictures ASAP. I promise. Really, I promise.

These are painted pieces are to make a 4' x 4' x 2' wall. I forgot to take pictures of the framework. I have added foam, with some stone carving and have muddied the walls. I will be painting them today. Again, I promise to update with pictures soon!

I will also be helping out in the Costuming, making new patterns for new characters. I learned what type of clothing the Magi wore and it is very different from what is in the stock.

It's all very exciting, and because Sandy and I are so excited, I'm going to give you a little peek at the rendering for the Magi Tower. Enjoy!

Well, that's all for now. I have lot's of other plans to draw and an ancient wall to finish painting. Toodles!