This morning we arrived at the USITT convention center at 9am bright eyed and bushy tailed. We registered and received our badges and then departed for 10 minutes to the local supermarket where we picked up breakfast. I ate a burrito that was only okay. It was sausage, egg, and salsa. After we were satiated we headed back to the convention center where we waited for two hours for the trade floor to open. It was quite banal. The trade floor opened and streamers flew and all of our hearts soared as we bum rushed the Syracuse Scenery and Stage Lighting for a bag made out of velour – which is also used for drapery on stage.
After our initial pushing and grabbing, we browsed the expo floor for about two and a half hours at which point the people from the Disney costume internship told me that my resume was very well formatted, but to reapply next year as I was too young to take said internship. Kerri Leonard and I then took a picture with a giant bunny. Then we began an application process at Cirque du Soleil, which is for the most part fruitless as there are over 5000 people on the list for the internship.
Then we walked over to a booth for the Shakespeare Company of New Jersey where we received water-soluble tattoos and were scheduled for interviews almost immediately. My interview is tomorrow at 2:45pm. Wish me luck internet.
Then I went to my first session ever at 1:30pm. It was a session about ventilating hair. The name is quite deceiving. Ventilating hair is actually the process by which wigs are created. To create a wig it takes a professional over 80 hours. It is incredibly tedious and the technique is almost exactly the same as crocheting, but at different scales. You loop the fake hair and put a very tiny hook through a net (where the wig is attached to) and pull it through. Then you twist your hook and tie it back, and repeat, thousands of times.
After this I took a nap.
I woke up and went to the costume commission, which has been occurring since the very first USITT in 1960. The management was changing over, and I decided to consider a wig symposium over the summer. We also received an awesome website with thousands of images of different period costumes to use as reference images during design.
Then we went to a restaurant and had some of the worst service ever.
Now I’m blogging.
Peace kids.
