Write Place, Write Time: The Hag

There is a mystery within Write Place, Write Time which involves the character of the Hag playing the part of a ghost of a murdered woman, or so it would seem... 

Design by Katie Pollitt

The director  wanted the hag to be overly ragged, so I went a bit mad with the ragging of the skirt, but to keep the actress' modesty she wore a long night shirt underneath. However because the group only had two of these, they didn't particularly want it all shredded up, unable to use again without rags. So 

I unpicked the sleeves from the shirt, and used them as a template to cut two new sleeves, which I then sewed into the sleeve hole and shredded to pieces.

In order to make the ragging of the night shirt simple to do, I pegged it to the washing line...with perhaps more pegs than needed... and so not dragging the Stanley knife through anything else beneath it.

By the way guys, great way to relieve stress/anger...as long as you're careful...I mean look at the wound I made when making this costume....

Obviously only joking, above is a photo of the stab wound I painted onto a scrap piece of fabric, to later attach to the back of the Hag's ragged and dirtied costume.

Again because I couldn't rag the actual night shirt, for the used bottom section you would see underneath the green skirt I used scraps of white fabric, ragged them and then hand sewed these into place.

To emphasise the rags on the night shirt and the skirt I went over the edges with a graphite stick and then charcoal, as the graphite didn't seem to do quite a good a job as I was hoping. The purpose of this was to make the rags look dirty but when I first did it, up close it looked more like she'd been in a fire...but after rubbing the excess off from a distance it just dulls the white a bit which is good.

The Wound:

The Hag played the part of the ghost of the woman who was stabbed in the back...which therefore meant she needed  a stab wound on her back.

Again because the night shirt was to be able to be worn again, I had to come up with a way that wouldn't damage the original garment, so I decided to make it separately and then stick it to the night shirt once done.

To do this I got two layers of white cotton fabric to match the night shirt, and ripped one layer with the edge of scissors, marking where the top and bottom of the rip would be onto the other layer of fabric, showing me where the wound should be.

I then used matt Impasto Gel to get the raised look of the skin peeling back from the wound (impasto gel is something you can mix into acrylic paint to thicken it).I then brushed the surface of the raised skin with different shades of red, acting like dried scabs/clots at the edge of the wound, with darker reds.

I know things like this can't really be seen from the audience but doing these little details mean that if you can see up close, it looks just as effective as in the audience.

To create the effect of the blood seeping into the shirt around the wound, I watered down the paint quite a bit, running the brush against the edge of the rip, and then dabbed more of the watered down paint slightly further out from the wound.

I then cut out the shape of the blood stain, where the white of the fabric had just started to appear at the edges, hopefully making it look a bit more realistic. I then applied double sided tape to the back of the wound and stuck to the night shirt she would be wearing.

The double sided tape worked well because it acted as if the blood had dried to the fabric and stuck to the wound. I also had some threads frayed from the rip sticking into the wound.

The above image shows photos throughout the process of making the wound.

Below is the front and back of the finished costume and the Hag during rehearsal performances.

Original Performance Photos by Ashley Foster

Links:

Thank you to Ashley Foster for the performance photos, if you want to have a look at his other work or more photos from the adult production please visit his website at http://ashleyfosterphotography.co.uk/  The performance photos I have used I have cropped down to focus on individuals, going to his website will allow you to see full performance shots.

If you are interested in the drama group itself that I do the costumes for please check out their website at http://www.thegrangeplayers.co.uk or their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/thegrangeplayers where there are more photos to look at and you can check out any upcoming shows.

Talk to you soon.

~K