Working On Mapping Brent 2019

Six shows performed across ten days, six get ins, six techs, six dresses, sixteen performances and six get outs. It’s been an intense two weeks! Since February I have been preparing and working on Kiln Theatre’s annual festival created by their youth theatre groups across Brent. This is my second year working on it and I have to say that yet again, despite the long days and intense hours, I had a blast!

The process started with production meetings, as usual, for all six shows. I met the three designers who I would be working with for the next few months to create the costumes for the young people’s shows. Each show had such a different feel and a different vibe, from a futuristic dystopia to a modern day school to an imaginary world filled with sweets, among other things. The designers were Verity Quinn, Kaajel Patel and Lucy Sierra. It was really exciting to be working with three designers I had not worked with previously and delved into their concepts and work alongside them to create their vision for each piece.

I worked as the costume supervisor, so it was my job to make each of the designer’s visions for each project happen. This involved researching and understanding the initial vision and then working from their sketches and ideas to find the right pieces through a combination of online, high street and charity shopping, as well as altering certain items to give them a unique edge. The development process spanned across the whole of March with measuring all of the young people, shopping and fittings scattered throughout.

The first show of the festival was Contact by Eno Mfon, performed at Brent Community Hub, Stonebridge. This was a dystopian piece about trying to find the balance between immersing yourself in social media and completely cutting it out from your life. It was an exciting piece and I enjoyed how it felt like the young people’s perspectives were shining through the text. It did not feel like a piece written by someone who felt kids spent too much time on their phones, but instead a look at how we can better incorporate this ever developing technology into our lives without allowing the pressures of social media and being liked and verified etc. to consume us. This was designed by Verity and she did an amazing job of creating the abstract world of the internet. It was so interesting to try and find the pieces for the not quite real world of online. The designs were almost modern day but just pushed a little further and heightened. It brought a couple of particular challenges in the design that were bringing to items together to create one new look, this included a hoodie/shirt combo as well as attaching skirts to a hoodie and to a coat to give them a futuristic feel. I loved these new challenges and creating these alternative looks and was really happy with how they turned out. I feel like the costumes really transformed the young people and took them out of their comfort zone, immersing them in this new abstract world.

But before Contact had finished their final performance, the get in for the next show of the festival was already beginning, this was The UK’s Baddest Kids: The TV Show, devised by the young people, performed at St. Catherine’s Church, Neasden. I was excited by this piece as it was one of the pieces that the young people had devised from scratch. They could create anything they wanted, all they knew was they were performing in the church. They created, along with their director Gail Babb, an imaginary reality TV show where the worst behaved children from across the country are brought together to spend one night in a church by themselves, and if they stay for the whole night then they win a cash prize. However, there is a twist, three of them are actors who are pretending to be bad and if any of the real “bad” kids leaves before the morning then the actors win the cash prize. This was such a fun piece, and Lucy wanted to ensure the kids were all vibrant to stand out from the background of the stone church. One particular challenge for this piece was that it was important for a dance off scene that all of their jackets had hoods, but I was struggling to find a patterned tracksuit jacket (which was a requirement for the design of one of the characters) that also had a hood. I eventually had to solve this by buying a hoodless track jacket with a great pattern and then colour matching it with a plain hoodie that I carefully removed the hood of and then sewed that onto the track jacket. This was a great new skill to learn and I think could definitely come in handy in the future.

We then gently moved to Verity’s second design at Kiln Theatre with Kiln’s Young Company, who were performing Let Kilburn Shake by Carmen Nasr. I was so intrigued by this design the first time Verity pitched it as the play spanned four time periods that one immediate hearing have extremely different looks. The 1700s, 1968, 2003 and 2020. However, Verity had managed to find common threads between these periods to create a cohesive design that spanned all four periods and the costumes could work in each era. This was actually surprisingly less challenging to find these items than I thought it might be, it turns out that what they say about fashion being cyclical is very much true and I managed to pick up items that were reminiscent of all the eras from a combination of online and high street shopping as well as a couple of charity and vintage shops. There was obviously some alterations to make the clothes fit perfectly for each actor, but overall I was relieved with how everything seemed to be quite readily available and I was really happy with the final look.

Just as the show was going down for Yong Company, we began preparations for the next three. These were all a lot more overlapping, but it began with the youngest group who were performing at The Grange Business Centre, Neasden. These kids were adorable and were telling the story of What A Wonderful World, which they developed themselves along with their director, Tash Marks and assistants Milly Bianchini and Ed Hill. This told the story of Grey Land where all colour had been stripped away because they no longer cared about one another and spoke to one another, they were too focused on working and looking at screens, until they read the story of Mr Marsh who talked about when everything was bright and colourful and the place was called Candy Land and everyone was happy, but then people got greedy and one person tried to take all the candy for themselves and he could not cope anymore and the land turned grey. By helping one another and being kind, however, they managed to bring the colour back to Grey Land. This was such a cute piece to be working on and Kaajel created two fantastic contrasting spaces for the kids to tell their story in. The costumes were relatively simple, with a brightly coloured t shirt for each child that once all the kids from Candy and Grey Land came together created a magnificent rainbow. We also managed to use some clear plastic raincoats we had gotten for last year’s Mapping Brent to signify the difference between the people of Grey Land and the people of Candy Land. I think the coats worked really well to create a slightly darker and more dreary look in Grey Land and slightly mask the bright colours within.

While Neasden Group 1 were preparing and performing What A Wonderful World, Kilburn Youth Theatre were beginning to prepare for their show, The Gift by Simon Brett at Kiln Theatre. This was all focused around a group of kids in detention so it was mostly acquiring school uniforms. Lucy really wanted to bring out the colours already featured in the James Baldwin room where the young people were performing and it had a wonderful burgundy flooring and exposed brick, so red seemed like the natural choice. Once we had the basics for each cast member, skirts, trousers, jumpers, shirt, tie, it was then a case of making these individual outfits that still brought out some character. This came through accessories like necklaces and bandanas as well as through their shoes. It was really fun to really try and bring out a lot of character for each of them through their choice of shoe while still keeping with a black base for the shoe to ensure they could get away with wearing it in school. This was a great new challenged and definitely gave me an extra appreciation for how important shoes can be as part of a costume. But outside of the school uniforms there was also the formidable Dr. Fera. A teacher who to the young people is incredibly unfair and strict, but we learn through the play that they have their own struggles. Dionne, the director, and Lucy wanted to created an almost Ms. Trunchbull vibe with Dr. Fera while still giving them an unfashionable teacher look. So we tried to create this with a simple checked shirt, striped tie and mustard chinos as the main outfit, but pairing it with a structured chord jacket that I added shoulder pads to, to give the young person playing Dr. Fera a bit more presence and authority on the stage.

During the tech and dress for The Gift, the cast and crew back at The Grange, Neasden were preparing for Neasden Group 3’s show Bump by Sonia Jalaly, developed alongside the young people and director, Ruby Thompson. This was designed again by Kaajel. The main challenge for this project was that we really wanted to create looks that were inspired by the young people themselves. The characters in the piece were supposed to be heightened version of themselves so Kaaj and I wanted to reflect that in the costumes while still giving them and overall group aesthetic. To achieve this we took inspiration from the set. Kaaj had created a space age rave/disco vibe in the set and we wanted this to carry through in the costumes so we applied this idea to the young people’s own style. This was such an interesting look to try and achieve but I was really happy with the overall outcome, bringing blacks, neons, purples and blues to their style and I think they worked really well alongside the set. Of course the main hurdle to overcome with this piece was to try and balance the aesthetic with clothes the young people would realistically see themselves wearing but I feel like after some trial and error we achieved bringing those two things together.

And then just as quickly as the festival seemed to begin it was complete! I had such a fantastic time working with all of the different creatives across all the pieces and working with such a variety of young people. It was great to see some of them who had performed last year again and see how they have developed in the year since I was last with them. It was also brilliant to see how much the Kiln has developed since its launch right in the middle of last year’s Mapping Brent festival and I hope to work on more projects with them going forward. And of course a major shoutout to the Creative Learning Team, Liam Shea, Roxan Kamali, Alix Rainsby, Juliet Styles and "Nick Gibson", as well as Gareth Howells who production managed the whole festival I do not know how he did not explode with all the things going on!