Some years ago Shirley Gee's play ASK FOR THE MOON was performed here in Chicago, and I was asked to be the lace consultant for that production. Elizabeth Kurella and I jointly served that purpose for a performance of the same play the following year in Michigan.
I mention this because the situation was similar to consulting for a TV show. You have actors whose primary purpose is the drama they are enacting. No one expects them to be lacemakers. So what the consultant has to do is decide what gestures to teach that will give verisimilitude to the performance. It is a question of juggling priorities. If you spend all your time teaching them to make lace authentically you won't be much use overall. You also have to decide how much the actors and the director need to know about the lace world then, and our attitudes to that world now, so that their performance is accurately grounded. I have had lacemakers tell me that if they had been chosen as consultant (with the clear idea that they would have been better at it) they would have insisted that the actors learn how to make Honiton lace, while speaking in dialect and performing, live. Instead, I decided they needed to know something about the history of lacemaking in the 19th century and its economic condition -- how the industry worked. They needed to know the life condition of most of the lacemakers. I thought it important that they not overlay modern ideas and attitudes onto an age that was vastly different from our own. I haven't seen the current Larkrise being discussed (we get it in Chicago on the city college public broadcasting station). But the issues involved aren't just teaching lace making. It is the props, how a lacemaker would move holding a pillow, how she would handle it or pick it up, how she would handle a piece of lace or a Honiton veil, what her attitude is towards the work she does and its product. For those of you who have access to old IOLI bulletins, I wrote an article about this for them in Volume 11 #2 winter 1991. You might find it interesting. Lorelei Halley - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com
