The Tale (Tail) of Two Grandsons

It has been a busy month that involved two of my grandsons. Both were enjoyable, but one was easier than the other. One involved riding in a car for an hour. The other was much more involved. Have you ever made a Centaur costume? Nope me neither.

Last week I posted on Facebook that I attended a performance in the AL.Ringling theater in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Dylan, my oldest grandson, was in a play called “Something Rotten". Dylan has been in plays since he played Oliver in middle school. He continued through high school and college. In this play he was Nigel Bottom for those familiar with the play. He sang and he danced and it was very enjoyable. I had to google the play to see what it was about, but that was my only preparation. We just bought a ticket and showed up. All the work and preparation was done by the Baraboo Theatre Guild, and we had no responsibility. 

My next experience was different. My second to youngest grandchild Jack was in a performance of a Percy Jackson musical called The Lightning Thief. Jack is a junior in high school and this was his third show. It was this past weekend, but the process began a month or more ago. The play is full of mythological characters and a variety of costumes. 

My daughter offered to help and therefore so did I, by default. She ended up getting the title of Costume leader and Props master. She started as a mom volunteer and ended up with a lot of responsibility. She helped organize the set construction, painting and anything else that needed doing. She made a three headed dog,  Medusa headgear, pants to look like goat legs and took care of a multitude of details no one noticed but it made the play complete. 

By far the most difficult project was a Centaur costume. For those who don’t know, a centaur is half man and half horse. We had the young man but needed a horse's rear end.

My daughter had the help of a friend to make the bones of the horse. She works out at a local gym and asked the owner/physical therapist for advice about the anatomy of a horse. He is familiar with human anatomy, but I guess he knows about horses too. They got together PVC pipe, nuts, bolts, chicken wire and foam. They created the framework of a horses rear section. 

The next step was making the legs and covering the body. That's where I came in. She had a basic pattern but had to draw it out to get the size in proportion. Then I made pillows in the shape of a horse leg. These pillows had to fit over the PVC pipe that was jointed. It was trial and error all the way with a lot of error.

In order to cut costs we recycled a lot of supplies and went to thrift stores. Schools don't have a big budget for anything these days. 

I took an old sheet, cut out the shape and stitched it up. Then Sarah, my daughter, stuffed it with the stuffing from an old pillow. I know at this point they look like uncooked turkey legs.

She had to take the legs back to the carcass a few times to see if they were the right size. After some tweaking, pushing, pulling and stuffing/unstuffing, it was good enough.  The hooves were also created.

The next step was covering the legs with fabric. Since that much fabric would cost a lot, we found some old quilted curtains at the Goodwill store. Not exactly horse hair but the color was good.

Now to make the leg pillow covers and figure out how to get them on the legs. It was a two person job, that was for sure. Now they look like roasted turkey legs. 

Some bolts had to be inserted in the top of the leg so they could eventually be attached to the body.  Thank goodness for our special advisor because we had no idea where the joints went. Horses legs bend opposite to a human leg.

At this point it looks like it is almost done. WRONG! Next we had to figure out how to put it on Jack's body and attach the hooves. At first we thought it could be strapped to his waist but it ended up to be too heavy, so we needed a shoulder harness like a backpack. The hooves were just attached with metal strapping material which proved too weak so they had to be enforced with stronger metal, lock nuts and a lot of glue.  Originally we were going to have strings attached so the legs could be manipulated but that just complicated things and we scrapped that idea. We were going to put wheels on the bottom of the feet but gave up on that too. I said trial and error and that's what happened over and over again.

While this body part was being worked and reworked, I had to make pants out of the same curtain fabric. Since everything had to be put on easily between scenes, the pants were simple pull on pants. I sewed fur on the bottom of the pants and the hooves were fit over Jack's own shoes. A little beard and mustache finished out his outfit.

I added some fur to the horse legs, a blonde wig for a tail and it's SHOWTIME.

 

 

It turned out pretty well. By the end of the last performance it was a bit tattered, but not too bad. The horse looked a little tired and wanted to sit down, but we all did.