Costumes with a view • a Logbook, pt. 1

Notes from a month spent staging a play in a castle ruin

For the past month, I got to work on a theatre stage in Heidelberg’s most beautiful work location: the castle ruin. More specifically, on the Dicker Turm – the fat tower, an open air tower ruin that’s sliced in half, throning over the old city. The play: Murder Mindfully, comedy and crime combined.

The best thing up there is, of course, the view. The second best thing is that each day working on the castle premises is different and unpredictable. It’s hot, it’s cold, it’s windy, it’s exhausting, it’s fun. I recorded the last few days in a logbook for you. In celebration of our premiere yesterday, enjoy part 1 of my logbook!

11.6. • Quest for the key

On a wooden board on the wall in the head of the costume department’s office, three keys hang on cotton cords. They are cryptically tagged “costume”, indicating their custodians rather than the space they unlock – the castle.

Three master keys to the castle, a ruin throning above the Neckar river and overlooking the entire old town as well as the velvety green hills surrounding it, flecked with the occasional magnate’s villa and a few mansions housing unspecified American congregations doing who knows what since who know which anno domini. I’ve been told these keys open all kinds of doors within the castle; places no tourist has ever seen, dark rooms, damp cellars, narrow staircases, high towers and lonesome windows, richly furnished salons, carpeted walls and painted ceilings.

I have yet to try them out, some night after rehearsals are over – no murders happening on the fat tower, no Carmens singing in the courtyard – packing up my bag with costume laundry and approaching the next best door as if I passed through it every day, then unlocking my way from one creaky portal to the next, hoping only that I’ll find a way out before dawn the following morning, and the next round of bloody murders and dancing polka dots begins.

Today, one of those keys broke. I hang the cotton ribbon around my neck and make my way from our stage on the tower up a flight of uneven, mossy stairs, across a lawn overlooking the old bridge, through a secret door that’s locked and unlocked with a twig hidden inside the brick wall, up a winding pathway and across the burning hot castle courtyard, until finally I reach the castle management office. Ten narrow steps lead up to a tiny wooden door, and I ring the bell. When I’m let in, I climb up floor after floor, not knowing where to stop: all doors are closed. This would have been a nightmare for Kafka (and literary fuel). I return without a replacement key.

12.6. • Bergfest at the director’s house

Halftime calls for a party. This time, instead of Pizza at Pasquale’s, it’s potluck at Hagen’s. We’re greeted at the door by Lone, as in Lonesome cowboy. Plates are not to be put down on the ground due to her (Lone, no! – an anglophone dog). Norah Jones waves us into the living room, where the buffet is displayed on quality wood, an extendable table of Jenga surface, matching, in small scale, the honey-coloured parquet floor. The food is as colourful as our group itself; the longest grissini I ever saw, a Balkan charcuterie platter, the local macaron selection, supermarket dips and saturday market cheeses (deux bien mous et un qui s’abondonne), my red fruit salad with chopped walnuts and mint ribbons, barely survived whipped cream (that would later into butter in my fridge).

But first – wine. I am to open the bottle, but he insists on pouring me the glass. With my red, I let Norah wash me outside into the courtyard (the only source of natural light for the bakery underground). I realize I’m tragically underdressed. Just 20 minutes earlier, I had hung my little black dress back into the wardrobe because of a hunch. As soon as there’s a chic person in the room, it’s a chic event and you’re officially underdressed.

When the buffet is opened and the party leisurely disperses, I take a closer look around the place. Pared down, almost minimalist, though by nature, not by design. The only art hung up on the walls: framed posters of theatre productions from the past thirteen years. As expected: a bookshelf wall, white, but not Billy. In the bathroom: two blue bathrobes hung up on the same hook.

I fill up my plate five times. The kitchen drawer contains an extensive set of polished silverware, in use. On the fridge door, the obligatory Lourdes magnet, but next to it, a Chinese souvenir, likely from the last guest performance in Wuzhen, Biedermann und die Brandstifter. On a cupboard, Chinese tea, too – perhaps an indication of more frequent trips to China. Hagen knows: Chinese people don’t drink wine, and I’m a fool to contradict him. The kitchen towel is casually suspended on the door frame. What gets me, though, is the frugal-indulgent bar of Aleppo soap next to the kitchen sink. I come back three times to wash my hands with it. This man has got style.

Crowning the evening, Raika pulls her strudel-card. She makes me cut her strudels (one apple and one topfen); I cut generous pieces to avoid leftovers. I carry the tray to everyone’s noses while she is trodding behind me. Everybody’s full, but it’s Raika’s strudels. I sit down with the tray on my knees and eat the remaining crumbs. Tonight, conversations spark between those who cross paths daily only to nod politely.

13.6. • Worst case scenario

I get a last-minute call from Emma: am I available to jump in as dresser for Singin’ in the Rain in 20 minutes? All dressers are out of order – one fell with her grandson in her arms and injured lungs, ribs, hands and knees. One broke her wrist, another her ankle, and the last one is currently in the restroom puking out her guts.

I am not available, though, I’ve got a rehearsal to attend at the castle. I am told not to leave the director’s side. I am late, and so I run up that hill, cursing the cable car, and I arrive on the minute. They’ve been waiting for me, a nervous tension in the air. I feel as if I’m pushed onto a podium to hold a speech I didn’t write. I don’t need to do anything now but to stand there and be ready for the run-through to begin – when I realize I don’t have my script. My script containing all the cues for the costume changes I’m solely responsible for. Information I totally depend on. I left my sacred piece of paper at home.

And so the stress begins. I tell the actors I will need to improvise – ironic, I know – and feel the usual suspect getting nervous, so nervous she skips the swearing and goes straight into punitive silence. No word from her. While the run-through begins, I go through a borrowed script (containing prop cues – useless! but thank god anyways for the colleagues from the prop department) and work out all the costume changes by hand. I’m surprised at how many of the cues I have internalized by now: turns out the phrase “let’s take care of hookers, drugs, and guns!” makes my hands reach for that purple scarf and jacket all on their own, prepared for action. In between the quick changes, I jot down the cues in capital letters, until finally, I’ve reconstructed the whole play. The evening is saved. I can relax now – only until page 16 though, the notorious Mediengewitter, with 11 changes within a timespan of maybe 3 minutes. This play has more drama backstage than front. By now, my adrenaline rush has reached a peak, and I wing it without a single look at the script. These are the best moments in theatre.

16.6. • Out of my hands

It’s AmA day – Alles mit Allem. Everything with everything. The sunset beams into our little backstage hut, blacked out to the stageside, but with a 2100x400 panorama to the riverside. Meditation seeps out of the play and into our evenings here. The top of the brick wall is hot as I lay down my script in front of me and arrange my little collection of glasses and sunglasses for each character in two neat rows to my left. On my right-hand side, Boris’s Russian hat and detachable fur collar. Below, two boxes filled with wigs. There’s exactly one spot for me to stand, everything I will need during the next hour and a half at arm’s length, and I stare out into the distance.

The play unravels as the sun sets behind the mountain range, leaving only an orange tint of the sky encompassing the whole city beneath. What I didn’t expect: tonight, I am superfluous. I have to let the professional do her work. I merely stand by and pick up costume pieces thrown on the floor in haste (and I’m scolded for it). But I cannot sit down and do nothing while the stress level around me is at 100% – I am reluctant to give up my baby just like that.

Below our tent, there’s a lost trampoline. Somebody tells me it’s been there for years – I wonder if anybody uses it. After packing up, I spend half an hour looking for my phone, lost once again to the depths of the props boxes. Tomorrow, I will print a label saying Keine Requisite. After 10pm, the castle’s portals are closed, only a dwarf door inside the portals lets the gremlins of the night slip through at knee height, if they really insist on getting out. Raika is indignant. Dressed in poison green, as always, she offers me a ride down, and I gladly accept. No cable car after 9pm (the road is treacherous). Ruf mi mol a moagn voamidag. I promise to call her tomorrow morning, and I already know she will have nothing new to say, calling only to satisfy her need to talk. I oblige. At Seegarten, I get out of the car and wave goodnight while she passes me by.

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