Susannah, My Masters Thesis in Theatre Costume in Dec. 2000 was "The Emperor's New Clothes," set in ancient China, for children's theatre. We made a fat suit of foam sheeting for the actor who played the Emperor. It was actually built by Kent Parker, who was the manager of the Costume Shop at that time. He had lots of experience in making fantasy characters.
If you'd like to take a look at the process and some pictures, my thesis is online. I'm going to give you rather convoluted instructions on how to get there. You can also get to it through UMI, but they make you email the pdf to yourself. It is 28 Mb since there are so many pictures. If you can pull it up, the instructions below might actually be easier. Go to: http://www.libraries.wvu.edu click on MountainLynx Catalog in the top right corner search by author: Hoover, Kathleen M. click the link in the record click again on the next record click the web link at the bottom of the page click "Access Document" click "Hoover_Kathleen.pdf the section on the Fat Suit starts on page 253 (there are some messages about missing fonts, but if you just click OK, it'll come up) There are embedded pictures in the text or you can scroll to all the pictures in the appendix at the end. *I realize we used a regular-sized college-age male actor, who could better withstand the heat than a young, thin girl, but here's what we did to help him. He wore a cotton flannel "jumpsuit" as the innermost layer, and, since the fat suit was meant to make him look quite LARGE, there was some air space between the flannel and the foam. We also had water and electric fans ready backstage whenever he came off. He had costume changes to go over the fat suit, and of course he appeared (nearly) naked in the last scene. And while it *was* hot to wear, it wasn't unbearable. I hope this helps you, Kathy Hoover >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/10/06 11:04 PM >>> Recently we costumed for the play "A Little Princess." One of the characters is a young girl with a bit of a weight problem. She was superbly portrayed by a rather thin young girl. We stuffed a bodystocking with fiberfill at first during rehearsals but it was so hot she nearly passed out and became very flushed. So we tried having her wear three cotton teeshirts but that didn't work too well either. We finally just used the fiberfill & stuffed her blouse, a fitted Victorian high-collared style, after she put it on to fill out the necessary areas. That didn't work really either, because after every scene we had to readjust the fiberfill because it kept shifting & even falling out below the skirt. She left puff-bunnies all over backstage but fortunately none fell out on stage --although in one of the final scenes she suddenly developed a "hernia" on her left side. Please --we may do this play again for the lower schools. Can anyone give us any ideas on making a Mrs. Doubtfire-type removable bodyshape suit on a low budget that won't cause the young actress to expire with heat? Thanks for any & all suggestions. Blessings, Susannah --------------------------------- Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone calls to 30+ countries for just 2ยข/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
