Chapter 57 – The American Production Advances
Back at The Hall, Gwen stood on the stage next to one of the white boards, drawing horizontal bar graphs that showed the production schedule. She and the woman had figured it out that morning, to some consternation. Now she was trying to transfer that consternation to the rest of the team, so they would get off their asses and produce. Roger and The Whosey were particularly distracted, sitting next to each other and wondering when, where, and how Gale and Helstof were going to do their costume fitting of the fig leaf on big Bart, the guy who could throw women up in the air with one arm, them achieving a suborbital state of weightlessness at the zenith of the trajectory. Big Bart, thong and fig leaf. Roger and The Whosey really wanted to know.
Gwen threw an eraser at Roger but hit The Whosey instead, which was ok. She could see something juvenile was up with the two of them. She slapped her hand against the board, and said, “Look here, everyone, at the schedule which says opening night is forty-five days away. You realize that? Six weeks, and it’s showtime. Where do we stand? I want a report from everyone.”
The Whosey started, saying, “The transcription is done. I finished two days ago, and have draft parts for all the instruments, for the entire score, in the computer. You can listen to the whole thing anytime now, though some of it is rough. I’ll work on refining the orchestrations over the next couple of weeks. It’s a beautiful piece of music, and I’m having fun working through it and putting my own stamp on it. There are some very jazzy parts, as I’m sure you’ve heard. When it’s all done, when I get to do it live during the performances, it’s going to be great. It’s going to blow poor Paul’s composition away. I almost feel sorry for him.”
Gwen walked over to him and gave him a kiss on the mouth, which made him blush, him a guy who’s made it with, umm, more than just a few girls, in his time. She looked at Selgey and Bart.
“The dance is almost done, too. We’ve been keeping up with his transcription, just lagging behind by a week or so. We are well into Picasso and the story of the workers in the factory. Our stuff is a little rough, and we will refine it over the next week or so, just like him. I love the choreography, if I do say so myself. I would love to dance it, and I think the dancers will, too. What do you say?” looking at her husband.
Bart said, “I’d be happy to dance to this music and this choreography any day. Townshend’s stuff is great, unbelievably dynamic. He’s gotten the story lines, and he’s gotten Stravinsky, and he made it his own. We’ll be ready, Gwen, we’ll be ready.”
She looked at the woman, who said all the incidental stuff, the tickets, and insurance, and publicity, and ancillary special events, the Mayor, and all that stuff was right on schedule. The nuts and bolts of the production were in good shape. So Gwen asked Helstof, “Are the costumes done?”
“They’re done, mostly. We kept everything simple, because we’re not experts at this. But we like them, and Selgey and Bart like them, and they will be fine. We’re ready to fabricate them as soon as we have the bodies around here to size them to.”
“Sounds good, except the ‘mostly done’ part. What part isn’t done?”
“Well, the naked costume part. The part you want because you hate the flesh colored body suit thing. We haven’t finished that, yet.”
Gwen looked at Gale. “Well?”
“Well, we have some fig leaf designs done.”
“Well?”
“Well, we have to try them out.”
“Well?”
“We need Bart.”
“So?”
“So, we haven’t asked him yet. Understand?”
Selgey looked at Gale.
Gwen thought, Jesus, Gale the mouthy fashionista can be such a wimp. She looked at Selgey, said, “They need Bart to try on the fig leaves, the different ones, see if they work or not.”
Selgey looked at Bart, said, “This oughta be interesting.”
“Whatever,” he said, and stood up. “Where are they?”
Helstof went over to the table and opened a small box from which she took five small pieces of silk fabric. She brought them back to the circle of chairs and handed them to Bart. They were thongs with, well, fig leaves. Different colors, different shapes, all sewn onto the thong pouch. Quite attractive in their own right, in the hand, so to speak, not really in situ, as yet.
He looked at them, looked at Gale, looked at Helstof, looked at his wife, looked at the four guys sitting in the chairs. He was happy Henric was out on his boat, and not sitting there looking at him. Finally he looked at Gwen, who motioned him on, a slight grin on her face.
With that he started to take off his shirt, but Selgey stood up, went to him, and took the bundle of costumes in her hands. One after another, she held them up for inspection. She looked at Gale, Helstof, and Gwen, saying, “Not gonna work.”
Gwen said, “How do you know without even trying?”
“Simple. Not big enough.”
Gale jumped up, went to her, took one of the items and held it up. “Not BIG enough? This? You could take it to the local farmers market on Saturday morning, and use it to carry home all the groceries.”
Helstof said, “I told you so. What have you been looking at the last four months, during all those rehearsals?”
Bart stood calmly and at ease during this discussion. The topic had come up before, as it often did in his line of work, even if usually it was done a bit surreptitiously. Gwen stood up, seeing it was time to move on. She said, “Ok, just fix them, then we’ll try this again.”
Gale looked at Helstof, said, “Do we have enough material?”