Boys and Girls of ev’ry age
Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?
~ The Nightmare Before Christmas
Halloween on ships is – as I’ve said before – rather a hodge podge affair in some ways. The crew tends to go all out, especially those of us in the entertainment department, and the passengers either care a lot, or forget what day it is all together.
For my part, I was in rather a unique situation: I have two costumes and only one party.
One costume is, of course, the T.A.R.D.I.S, which is a thing of beauty really, made by a professional seamstress and of theatrical quality or probably better; it’s a three piece Victorian suit with pockets big enough to hold all the gear I need to actually work. It also takes an hour to put together properly because it has accessories for everything down to the right shade of blue nail polish. Having packed all this with me, there was no way I was not going to wear it…
However…
I always bring a second costume for the possibility of a crew Halloween after-party. I had packed the Green Fairy, which, as facebook so kindly reminded me this morning, I have had for twelve years…and have worn almost every one of those twelve Halloweens, no wonder it’s starting to show some wear! I was prepared to trot it out again, although I was missing some accessories. But sometime last month Amras and I were playing our usual bout of video games before dinner and I looked at him in a very slow distasteful way after he had just stolen a flag from me for the fifth time.
Gah! Don’t do that! You look like one of those dolls..
Oh the creepy clockwork dolls? Yeah, it’s all in the eyes…wait…hmmm….
Not the exact conversation of course, it was too long ago for me to remember the exact words, but it was something like that. And it put the idea into my head to go as a windup doll to the crew party, an idea which I could not shake. Now, when I do a costume, I seem to be physically incapable of doing it by half-measures, so when we went shopping in Hawaii for Halloween stuff I picked up a full clockwork doll costume, dress, gloves, tights, hairpiece and…coloured hairspray. Also, white cream make up.
And then…there wasn’t a crew party.
So…two full – very elaborate costumes – and only one party to wear them too.
Enter in my most fantastic manager, who basically ordered me to wear the TARDIS to work in the afternoon, something that would normally definitely not be allowed. Cue me being a very happy costume-nerd! So, just after lunch I laced and zipped myself into the TARDIS, which still never fails to floor me with the level of detail that was put into it. That costume has everything, even a place for the pocket watch that a Time Lord would use to store his consciousness (and yes ,I have the pocket watch).
Teaching in costume does have its restrictions, the costume doesn’t allow for a lot of arm motion for one, but hey I got to use a sonic screwdriver as a pointer! How many times do you get to do that on a work day? And the guests loved it, I did start class a full ten minutes or so early so that people could take pictures.
After work was done I trotted to the salon to spend the resquite yearly hour in the hairdressers chair having my stubborn – and once again overly long – locks tugged and pulled into a mass of Shirley temple style ringlets. This works for the tardis beautifully, but also would work well for Kathy (yes my doll costume has a name, and there’s a reason for that, bear with me). Thankfully the girl doing my hair this time around had a technique for it that went way faster, and I was out of the chair in half an hour. By this time it was nearly 5:30 so I got fewer looks as I walked to dinner than I did when I walked down the hall from class. Leaving Amras to hold my place in line I made my way over to wear my manager was sitting and watched his jaw drop
Shaughnessy you look…stunning honey. That is…this is amazing
He meant the costume just to clarify. The rest of the table rather agreed with him
Did you make that yourself?
Hells no – I love being able to say this – I have a seamstress, and she’s really good
I’ll say!
Is that top a separate piece?
It’s three pieces guys…skirt, bustier and…whoa, a waistcoat that goes all the way to the floor?!?
I want that waistcoat!
So yes, the TARDIS was definitely a hit, although it did mean that I had to eat my fried chicken very very carefully. Grease and several layers of satin do not make very good companions.
But, the complicated stuff was yet to come. You see, the TARDIS is complex, but it fits together, and it doesn’t’ require much more than itself to be impressive. The clockwork doll costume however, that’s a whole different story.
The store bought costume was a base, the rest I had to put together myself. The character for the costume was actually pulled from the improv troupe I used to be part of; where I played a creepy physic child character by the name of Kathy Bastion (named after a character in the twilight zone and the most haunted part of my hometown), so she was already established. But looking the part?
The last time I did full face cream make up was almost 7 years ago for Rocky Horror, I remembered the mix somewhat, but I’d forgotten (or blocked out) just how hard it is to work with. Amras grabbed me a cereal bowl from the crew mess, which I used to mix the white cream base with just enough standard foundation to turn it into an almost skin tone that was still way too pale to be natural, and then I had to apply the stuff. Which is a royal pain. Because it has to dry, and if you don’t wait for it to dry perfectly the second you put on another touch up it will smudge. Thankfully, I was supposed to look a little broken so the cracks worked in my favour. I was only doing the base myself, our supervisor has training as a costume designer, and – because he is awesome – he volunteered to do our make-up. So I trotted up to deck 6 with Amras and spent a half hour or so watching him be transformed into a seriously mad looking skeleton before being painted up like a porcelain doll. Literally. Even had a little tiny crack running out of my hairline.
Okay, that’s terrifying. I did your make up and it’s still terrifying.
Yeah, it’s all in the eyes.
Normally I would have gone straight from getting ready to the party, but I was slated to help with the Halloween Pub Crawl, which technically I could have begged off of, but my boss has done so much for me with hour adjustments and things over this contract that I didn’t feel right throwing a tantrum – at least not over this. So I braced myself behind my make-up and settled into my idea of hell. I hate pub crawls you see, bad associations with people who go out only for the purpose of getting smashed, and an aversion to disordered crowds; all I wanted to do was slip up to the party and treat myself to a single glass of rose. But I promised, so stay I did. At least for the first four bars, after which we needed someone to run up to the upstairs lounge and let the band know that the Crawl was on it’s way. At that point you couldn’t really see me for smoke.
You going?
Someone has to go tell them we’re coming right?
Go on get outta here
Thing is, the Crawl was moving at…well, a crawl…so it took them much longer to reach us than we thought, but they made it eventually. But just as everyone was raising their glasses for the last toast of the event before everyone joined the party, Amras caught my eye from the bandstand.
Shaughnessy! Go down and get my guitar, ours just broke a string
What?
Guitar! Please go get my guitar?
Sure thing, back in a flash
I can run the stairs down to the crew deck faster than the elevators, even if it does leave me somewhat out of breath. One of the most entertaining moments of the night was when I plowed down the stairs and swung around the corner into the hallway, completely startling one of my fellow crew members who was standing at the time capture terminals.
Whoa!
I just kept moving, throwing a “Thanks! Happy Halloween!” over my shoulder. Made it to Amras’ cabin, found said guitar, slung it over run shoulder and snagged the elevator which thankfully went all the way up with no stops.
The whole thing made me miss the mandatory dance of the Electric Slide.
I am not particularly upset about that to be honest.
Swapped out the guitars and went back to the party. Realizing that, yes, I truly am I born-and-bred band girl.
The rest of the night was a blur of a very crowded dance floor and a lot of camera flashes – the by-product of wearing a very detailed costume. By the end of the night I was limping a tiny bit, and remembering precisely why I didn’t wear full face make up! Under lights, stage make up is claustrophically hot.
But totally worth it.
Which is what I was thinking as I was sitting cross-legged in front of my mirror, going through the all-too-familiar ritual of smearing my face with cold-cream to remove the mask I showed to the world for a night.
Totally. Utterly. Worth it.
Happy Halloween Everyone.