Ben & Babs: Month in Review

Now that we're well into November, I figured it was the perfect time to give you an overview (with lots of pictures) of October, a.k.a. somehow the craziest month of grad school each year.

And just to give yo some context here is a picture of my planner for September:

I'm pretty sure September had more stuff than this, but it was a pretty chill month.

Finally, this is a picture of my planner for November:

Not as crazy, but for some reason, I apparently in complete denial about the last half of the month... (which is now)

First, my Oct. 6th Trip to DC for the Mancini-Whalen wedding:

I'd never been to D.C. before this and I literally had just over an hour after picking up the rental car to grab a quick lunch, explore, and arrive at the ceremony. It was quick, but I loved it!

The picture on right has a funny story: I was doing the whole take a picture of myself by holding the camera at arms-length and it just was NOT working (I'm usually really good at it) and I hear this woman say "I can take your picture" I look up to see her looking at me and I say "Sure!" and hand her my camera. At which point she looked really surprised and told me she was talking to her friends but would take my picture anyway... sigh.

The wedding ceremony was held at St. Alban's church near the National Cathedral! It was stunning.

The reception was held about two blocks north of the White House... um, yea. I may have been geeking out all day.

It was a super classy affair with an amazing band that kept people dancing continuously, multiple courses including a palette-cleanser (!) and so may forks we didn't know what to do! Thank goodness for "Princess Diaries" otherwise I would have had no idea to work my way from outside in. Julia sat me with the a capella group she and Reynolds were a part of in undergrad - they were a blast! (and one of the girls totally knew which forks to use so she told us what was up) At 10pm Julia's sister's band took the stage and the serious rocking began!

Congratulations Julia and Reynolds!!!

October is when we switched from Powerpoint presentations to designing full shows in our Costume Design class. We did an opera (I chose "Doctor Atomic") and a musical (I chose "Anything Goes").

"Doctor Atomic" preliminaries.

"Anything Goes" preliminaries

We also designed "Titus Andronicus" in our Collaboration class:

"Spring Awakening" opened November 2nd, but it went into the shop at the beginning of October and I was working on it throughout the month. Here are some production photos:

The day before Spring Awakening opened I had my first production meeting for my next show, "The School for Scandal" so I had to put together a powerpoint of research and start preliminary designs.

Along with all that stuff I very cleverly got myself involved in some side projects. I was asked to do makeup and wigs for a production of "The Merry Widow" at the IU Opera and zombie makeup for two friends of our costume shop manager for "Thrill the World" an international "Thriller" dance. I was also asked by the Lily Foundation to make psoriasis prosthetic pieces for "Psoriasis awareness day" which ended up falling through. Finally, a local artist asked for my help making costumes for a performance art piece she was putting together. At that point I was booked pretty full and was just going to advise, but that's never how things really work out and I ended up recruiting Julia to help me put three costumes together (in the end they only actually used two...). It was pretty intense. The two dancers started out in these full, fluffy suits that would get torn off in pieces to reveal an opalescent bodysuit underneath. They turned out really well, but it was certainly a journey.

Ben has been pretty busy himself. He's going to write his own post about it all but in short: he is becoming a freelance acting instructor at local high schools, as well as teaching acting for singers with a new music and arts group in town called Studio Forza. He was cast as the non-singing narrator in "Akhnaten", a Philip Glass opera that will be produced at IU Opera, and as a chorus member in "the Wizard of OZ" at Cardinal Stage. Knuffle Bunny closed, and Ben has mastered a new cooking system with the help on Pinterest.

On the 30th, having had no time or energy to prepare a costume, I just put on some beetle earrings and called it a day.

Ben, however, hatched a brilliant plan with Reynolds to dress alike and trick people in Reynolds' classes. Luckily, I had a class with Reynolds that day and got to witness the event in person. First, Reynolds would come in, in this case he started a conversation, then announce casually that he'd be right back and leave the room. A minute or so later Ben would come in and sit in Reynolds' seat. In this case, Justin, the guy Reynolds had been talking with, immediately started up the converstation Reynolds had left. I must note here that Justin also attended undergrad with Julia and Reynolds and should know better than anyone. He claims he knew something was up but just didn't care enough to ask.