The spring play has begun. Well, the cast list is out, and this week I will pull peasant skirts and blouses from the enormous storehouse of costumes waiting breathlessly to be released. The script is Beauty and the Beast, which depicts a mansion full of candlesticks and dressers and teapots, all aching for freedom. Beauty is the only one able to give it to them. Love is the means for liberation.
The trajectory of costuming a high school play first ramps up in the basement of the theater, as I paw through racks and racks of clothes hunting for the right shade of pink, the soft version of blue that the directors have in mind. Next I will chase down the students with a tape measure and scribble down waist sizes. Not that most outfits are finicky. Elastic comes in handy for accommodating body shapes.
Seventy souls will be on stage, and need to look the part. The twenty stage crew members, lighting team, make up and hair artists can wear whatever suits them. But those three score and ten actors and actresses who will spend the next four months dancing and memorizing their parts deserve to be beautiful. Or scary.
It seems probable that the story will do its magic on me as well.
"Finding you can change, learning you were wrong..."
It is a sentiment that invites self reflection. Before the last rose petal falls, the Beast hopes that Beauty will find it in her heart to love him. It's a tale as old as time.
