Waiting For Godot

Much of my time for the last two weeks (or months, really) has been taken up with this play. I directed it for SUDs- Sydney Uni Dramatic society- with my friend Cale. I also did the costumes, and the design, for sets and posters and such.. it was all great fun. The last few nights of our run, which ended yesterday, really made me proud. And, we had a good turn out- on two separate occasions in the second week we had an audience of 63 people, which for the Cellar theatre is a lot- we had to expand the set and improvise seating.

I'd gone off the play a bit by the time we were starting, but now, after several months of thinking about it, I think I've developed something of a fondness for it. My next plan is to write my own! But I'm not sure how that will go. Anyway, here's a few images- I didn't, in the end, get proper photos of the cast in costume, but you can see some of them in these. Obviously, in the final production, Lucky was not wearing jeans.

My favourite trousers

Such was my attempt to smile in a photo- perhaps I went a bit overboard. In any case, this was what I wore to the opening night of Waiting For Godot, (a SUDs production), that myself and my friend Cale Hubble directed. I actually convinced him to wear a jacket and buttoned shirt, and even got Nick, our producer, to wear a suit. Of course he was wearing it with a T shirt, but it's better than nothing. The play is also the explanation for the lack of entries here, despite various goings on that otherwise would have made their way, I am sure, into posts. Stay tuned for photos of my new desk, as my refurbishment of my room at home continues. I was looking for lamps today, but didn't find any- there was a fairly nice art nouveau brass one, but the lamp shades were overly decorative- I don't like lamp shades designed to look good only when the light is actually on, and terrible the rest of the time.

Velvet Jacket

I've always quite liked velvet, but I'd never come across any of it before I finally found this blazer in the Vinnies on Glebe pt. Road. It's Studio Italia I think, quite nice. You can't see it very much in this, but it's actually dark brown, worn with the bottom half of a grey suit. Were I to take this photo again, I'd tuck the shirt in properly, and get a new belt- it rather has an American not quite fitting into chinos look about it this way, which is a bit sad, because I was quite proud of this outfit. The shirt is actually striped, and is itself also a good find from the same op shop trip. Dark brown contrasted with a brighter colour- bright, dark blues or reds, generally, works well. .. Isn't that building horrendous? It's one of the new USYD campus developments. I honestly cannot understand contemporary architecture. Why would you pay for that much glass and then decide to cover it in ugly, opaque green stickers..

Occidental Authoritarianism

Rachael and I went to the market today, and I bought a Mao Zedong alarm clock- as you do- for the princely sum of $10. I'm absolutely in love with it. It's essentially a tin can with a very basic movement in it, so the ticking is more of a clunking, and the bells don't work unless you turn the key yourself. So it won't be much use for waking the workers of the republic. It just has tons of historical flavour- I'm sure the radium on the hands has done terrible things to a few factory workers in its time.

The green hand, clutching a little red book, waves emphatically as the hands move- I have yet to see if it's glow in the dark, I really do hope so. I can't imagine anything I'd like more than a glowing green arm, eerily denouncing my bourgeois lifestyle, bobbing about in the night.

If at first...

Oh dear.

It appears that this is going to be more difficult than I thought.

Well, at least I'm all in this one. Unfortunately, my tripod is rather non-functioning at this point, for the usual reason- that blasted thingy you screw onto the camera is gone. So, camera perched perilously upon my car, I bowed to fate. Anyway, here are some close ups:

Shirt/Tie

Shoes

Jacket and pocket square.

The jacket, the shirt and the tie are all from various op shops. The trousers are from Kenji, bought in Myer- I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen it. They were excellent value, (sale) and they have no awful brand names plastered all over them. The shoes are from Payless, or somewhere like that- I've found good things emerge occasionally, even from Australian shoe stores.

The tie was actually bought in a bag from a big Anglicare depot. All the ties I could eat, for a mere $18. I found several of my new favourites inside, and it had all the fun of a lucky dip to boot. I found lugging a translucent sack of ties through Ashfield quite fun, but that's probably just me.

Shirts with simple colours and classic patterns are the best sort of shirts. Not too formal, timeless, interesting to look at. The sports coat has an early 60s, late 50s air, also not very formal, and more interesting than a simple grey, that works well with a thinner tie- generic fat ties should be reserved for business settings, and avoided even there if possible, to my thinking. This tie is obviously at the very skinniest end- current fashion, I believe, prefers ties to be somewhere in between. Certainly, on most occasions, I find that to be the best choice.

Some might say, that this shirt/tie/pocket square combination is too matchy. To you I say, pooh, sirrah. This is hardly likely to be a popular notion, but I find 'sprezzatura' to be absolutely daft. Unless you actually have just thrown your outfit together you are likely to succeed only in creating an air of deliberately getting it wrong. And, in my position, as a young male Sydneysider, wearing anything more than a pair of board shorts halfway down my arse is going to make me look like I dressed up. Thus, I feel no need to hide my penchant for varied shades of colour. I tried this outfit with a white square; I prefer it this way.