Where tricks are the trade

By LINDA HERRICK.

There's a line in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar which says, "There are no tricks in plain and simple faith" - but there is trickery aplenty in a production of the great tragedy opening at Unitec Theatre this week.

Caesar may carry the weight of the Roman Empire on his shoulders, but for Reena Lambert and Ma'a Brian Sagala, the second-year acting students sharing the lead role (two casts alternate between nights), their ornate armour is less of a burden than it looks.

"It looks like metal; it's a trick, really," says costume technology tutor Erin O'Neill.

"We press the armour out of light foam, which is about 1cm thick, put a shellac finish on it, paint it with PVC, patina it with a metallic wax and then buff it. It's one of those things where you have to learn the tricks. People get quite surprised and think it's very heavy but when you pick it up it's really light."

O'Neill, who worked on wardrobe for the Hercules and Xena television series and has been in the industry for a couple of decades, did not make all the production's 31 pieces of armour herself. Students - in their second year of studying for Unitec's performance technology diploma - attended her workshops, and then they all got stuck in.

"Because I worked on Hercules and Xena for seven years right from the beginning, I know it all - about leather and armour and that sort of thing. I have worked with that look so I knew that here was an opportunity to teach the students how to use a particular medium which would give them that effect very quickly," says O'Neill.

"A lot of armour needed to be made for this show so I did a workshop with some costume-props girls I'd worked with before. We hired them for four days and the students all learned how to make them."

But if Caesar is clad in mere foam, won't it weaken way before the daggers start plunging in? More trickery. "We lace them up with elastic cord so we can get it very tight," explains O'Neill. "It stops the costumes from bending, which would give the whole game away."

O'Neill says the techniques used to make the Caesar armour can be taken on board for future productions, and can also form part of a technical CV for the graduates when they emerge from the two-year diploma course.

"We call what we are doing with the armour 'costume-props'; it crosses over, using techniques prop-makers use. We're not using sewing machines, we're using glue, paints, all the sorts of things you'd normally find in a workshop, riveting and hammering.

"I set up a special room because this sort of work requires a totally different environment as well. It's messier, smelly; you have to wear masks and protect yourself. If you're using a lot of Ados [glue], you have to cover your eyes because of the fumes."

O'Neill says when she entered the profession, doing an apprenticeship at the Mercury Theatre before going to London to work at the National Theatre, "you couldn't do anything here in New Zealand, there were no courses like this one.

"If I could do it again, I'd do it here at Unitec. We bring in lots of people from outside who are working in the industry to give classes, so it is always relevant and the students are making contacts. We try to give them as much work experience [as possible] so they see the reality of the job - the job is glamorous but the work is not.

"For the course here, they work on nine productions a year so that means the place works like a functioning theatre. It gets you there very quickly."

O'Neill says the Unitec graduates will go out into a busy film and television industry that needs them badly right now.

"They can go into the industry armed with a lot of knowledge. At the moment I know of four films going on in Auckland and they are desperately trying to crew them all. Once you get into the industry you can make yourself valuable enough to be pretty much employed quite a bit of the year.

"The Tom Cruise film here [The Last Samurai, in Taranaki] has a huge wardrobe; there are going to be lots of people employed. It will be quite easy for a new person to get in there."

* Julius Caesar, directed by Murray Hutchinson, Unitec Theatre, June 6-20.