 Splash
- Las Vegas
Splash, the Marty Romley
and Jeff Kutash's Las Vegas Revue for the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas brought my
special costume work to the next level. Up to this point, I had not worked on a Vegas Show. And although, I had interviewed with a
number of resident designers who worked the strip, none were secure enough
to give me a shot. Still, large and lavish special costumes were a staple of
this industry and it was just a matter of time.
That time came when I
got a call from a technician friend of mine Mark Edwards, who was creating some
wonderful lighting effects using LED's and tiny circuit boards. He wanted
me to come by his shop to meet Marty's costume designer for the show Beaver
Bauer. She was a very intuitive talent and I liked that. And her concepts
stimulated my imagination. For this part of the show she had designed two
representational figures of the Oscar and Tony Awards. BTW, since these industry
icons were trademarks they could only be impressions, as the real art could not
be used.
Their original
idea was to create them as welded cages that dancers stepped into during the
revue’s salute to the 'Movies and Broadway' segment of the show. However when
the welders turned down the job as being impractical they began to think about
turning them into Special Costumes. And although, nobody knew how this could be
done, that's when Mark, called me. When I saw the sketches that light bulb
immediately went off in my head that said, "Yes, I can do this."
Not only did the concept art stimulate me but I finally got the chance to show
how the flexibility of industrial L-200 foam could move and flow with a dancers
body. Also the concept of these pieces being shiny metal excited me too. So, I
bid the job and went to work.
All the patterns
for these costumes were created on my drafting table. It was one of those intuitive moments that told me to interpret them
as paper sculptures. As each section was cut and assembled I began to laminate
the surfaces with gold metallic Lastex.
Below you will see the
finished costumes as they appeared before Mark added his SPFX lighting to them.
I wish I had a picture of that just to show you the combination of the metallic
cloth and light reflection. You will also see Beaver's original concept art and
my redesigns of that art into workable Special Costumes.
Unfortunately, Mark
Edwards is no longer with us. He was quite an innovator and expert in his field
and is sorely missed. He was also a great human being and a true friend.
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