Mix and match at the Malthouse

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 18

Mix and match at the Malthouse

By

LEE MATTHEWS

For . toe keen dressmaker, walking into the Canterbury Children’s Theatre’s wardrobe is like walking into a dream. Materials of every colour and texture riot together on shelves, laces and braids for every occasion peep from, cartons, and boxes of beads I longed to poke through beckon. Hats, hatpins,

puppets and animal heads perch in convenient corners — and this is only the production side! Through another door are racks of outfits, clothes for every occasion and more. Ball gowns stand next to magician’s robes, small boy’s pyjamas beside the shapeless bundles of cloth that convert to animals. The theatre’s secretary, Ann Worthington, estim-

ates the wardrobe has about 3000 garments. These can be mixed and matched into hundreds of the theatre in 1952. But until the theatre moved to its permanent headquarters at the Malthouse on Colombo Street in 1965, the wardrobe had been combinations to outfit scores of people. The wardrobe, one of the more extensive in the South Island, began with

stored in packing cases in people’s garages and in odd corners in factories.

Unpacking the wardrobe was one of the theatre’s first tasks, said the present wardrobe mistress, Peggy Grant “People didn’t wash costumes then, and the heartbreak of unpacking some of those cases. Rain had leaked on some and things were rotting and ruined and the smell...

"We salvaged a surprising amount, but some things had to go,” she said.

These days, things are better managed. Every piece in the theatre's wardrobe is catalogued and most pieces can be hired by people wanting fancy dress costumes or ball outfits.

The biggest part of wardrobe work is obviously creating new costumes for shows. This is when Peggy Grant and her team of assistants begin clashing scissors and revving sewing machines. Step one is to discuss the show with the director.

“My dream is to know who is going to wear what before we start,” she says. “But that’s not possible because the casting usually hasn’t been done at that stage.” The budget comes next. “It’s never as much as we’d like,” she comments wishfully. Ideas are thrown around by the production team, sketches made and the director eventually agrees to the designs submitted.

Then comes a phenomenon called shopping, where harassed people

dart all over town looking for just the exact shade of red and generally driving shop-assistants into slow declines.

Cutting, fitting and sewing follow and “you start to feel as if you are getting somewhere,” she said.

Sewing days resound to die snap of elastic, the ping of safety pins and that scratchy noise peculiar to velcro fastening — “my three best friends,” says Peggy Grant. Being a wardrobe mistress requires copious use of imagination and improvisation — the ability to create bits of costumes from obscure materials like wallpaper and bottle tops, and the imagination to see this is possible in the first place. The ability to work hard in a chaotic environment also helps, she says.

"For instance, the show Hans Christian Andersen (in 1982) required 2090 pieces of costume. We had a lot, but a lot had to be made.” Animal costumes could be quite thought provoking to work out “You can make quite a respectable badger from black net and white pipecleaners but other things make us think a bit.”

The key to costumes like these was fantasy. “The more fantastic they are the easier it is for children to accept them,” she said.

Peggy Grant says she is “just a home dressmaker,” without any professional training.

She attributes the wardrobe’s success to the enthusiasm and talent of all the people involved.