THE OVERLOOK PROJECT

The Overlook Project

This project was a mashup loosely based on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ and Strimbergs ‘The Father’.

These were theatre areas that our Tutor Douglas O’Connell was researching, so in response we collaborated as a project for our MA Visual Language for Performance class in order for him to be able to realise some of his ideas. I think this was very brave of him to trust us with such a large area of his research. As a group we brought a diverse range of skills, knowledge and experience to the table.

We came together to discuss the theme with Douglas as mediator and final court of appeal. As a collaborative group you start to feed and bounce off of each others ideas, everyone brings their own perspective to the creative situation.

Initially I wanted to contribute by doing something new rather than my usual costume making skills, although I was happy to act as support for others to make the costumes by teaching and guiding, so that they had a better informed path to follow.

But being the only part-timer, and only available two half days a week made this impossible. Douglas anticipated this and decided that I should do the costumes, as I could do this individually while still contributing.

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend all the meeting as they were not always on my core days and as the project needed to gather momentum I contributed to the project by passing my ideas to people so that they were brought to the table second hand. I was glad to notice that a few of my ideas were realised. I contributed more by helping other people with their parts of the project by sharing my knowledge and experience.

My main realised contribution to the project was to make the main character Jack Tarrance’s costume and to help Jessica, Daphne and Veronica with their costumes and puppet.

Jack is old school male chauvinist, dominant male with the younger trophy wife. Even with the confinements of such a marriage and trying to be the perfect text book wife, Wendy is younger and more technological and through this is in her own way independent.

Jack is also frustrated middle aged man who hasn’t realised his potential in life, an unsuccessful writer the opportunity presented by the job of the Winter Caretaker for the remote Overlook Hotel and the isolation it promises for the winter seems to be the catalyst for a last shot at fulfilling his dream and the chance to write a great novel. But the inevitable happens, locked up for long wintery months in isolation he develops cabin fever and slowly loses the plot and madness begins to settle in.

In response to this story we set the era and colour pallet in the 1970’s for the set and costume. Douglas initially mentioned his preference for earthy colours suggested by the era, the oranges, browns and purples presented a good stylised backdrop for such a tale of the comeuppance of male dominance. For this could be said to be the last era of the all dominant male. Jack being older and an-twacky I made his costume 1970’s with some aspects of 50s, another era of male dominance. He started off appearing normal with his shirt, tie, blazer and waistcoat all very respectable and smart. But as the plot unravels so does he. I wanted to represent this fact with Jack slowly starting to put layers of clothing on in disarrayed, dishevelled manner. The layering up of the clothing showing the slow layering up of his madness. During the production I broke down the garments so that they appeared disarrayed and totally different to the respectable items he wears at first.

When you’re exposed to abnormal behaviour long enough it becomes the norm. This is what happens to Jack and Wendy. As he descends she has no sounding board to measure just how far he is going. A phenomena that I know oh so well on a number of levels. To quote Tim Burton:

‘One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.’

Near the end of the production he puts on an overlarge overcoat, this is to portray his rapidly encroaching madness slowly engulfing and consuming him. His madness is like a big old grizzly bear that has been woken up from hibernation.

We found all of Wendy’s costumes and the main bulk of Jack’s from charity shops. Within this a few bits needed to be dyed to fit into the colour scheme. However I made Jack’s trapper hat and also made the leather waistcoat which I wanted to create as a symbol of a misspent youth that he was still clinging too, which was later broken down.
The overcoat was the ultimate garment representing Jack’s descent into madness, I started by breaking the coat down to make it look old and worn then put primitive cave drawing handprints onto the back with spray paints as madness is a primal coping mechanism. I then overlaid a moiré print to replicate water working from the lower left going diagonal across the shoulders. This was to show how the madness was washing over him and engulfing his sanity.

I used latex with inks and printed hand prints using numerous people to get a variety of sizes. I again did this with puff binder and ink which I treated with heat which makes it swell. This all created a 3D effect giving it different dimensions, as madness works on a number of levels.
On the shoulder I put a hand print with two fingers saying ‘f’ off as Jacks final salute to sanity, which I worked to look bloody this worked great in the final scene where Jack gets his head bashed in with a bat by Wendy. Douglas overlaid blood spatter for the viewers on line so that the media and the print work worked together, and the blood just landed in the right place. This worked really well and was a good finale for the online viewers.

Wendy costumes were of young hippie chick and this highlighted the age difference between the two characters. She’s young 70s whilst he represents old 70s, we used these stereotypes of the era to highlight the stereotypes of the characters.

In Wendy’s costume we used stripes and zigzag patterns which mimicked the television monitors and projection when the machines are on standby. This was to show that she was more technological than Jack and was leaving him behind. Later on whilst Jack’s costumes changes with the introduction of his madness Wendy’s stays the same to show and accentuate the contrast between them and their path through the play. The distressing of these costumes therefore was paramount to amplify this.

I felt disconnected from the team as I was working as an individual, but I was very aware of the group clashes, which is unavoidable when groups collaborate. So many egos in one room all wanting to shine. You just have to learn to let it go over your head and compromise or take a stand. As the project came closer to the deadline, the group became closer together but at the same time a more stressful working environment.

Once the play began it seemed a lot more communal and everyone pulled together, I was able to contribute more to what was happening within the production than during the build up. I was able to give Douglas some insight of how his character should act out his delusions as I have had considerable experience working with people with mental illness. I also helped a little with the camera work which was a completely new experience for me and although very short-lived it has given me some insight to different aspects of digital media, which I would like to explore more at a later date. I became mum as usual to everyone as caterer, cleaner and puppet first aider.
Working as a collaborative you become part of a unit so you lose your identity as an individual within the project. You have to all gel fluently for things to run smoothly. You soon find out who you meld with and who you don’t.

As individuals within a group you take away an experience often completely different from your colleagues but you also have the collaborative experience which is accomplishing something that is on an immense scale, one that would probably be impossible to do as an individual because of the time scale and the individual knowledge that would take a fair chunk of your lifetime to accumulate.

Each collaborator’s skills and knowledge may not seem significant individually, but by bringing a number of skills together they significantly contributed to the perfection of the performance.



Jack loosing it.





Danny, Jack & puppetmaster

Wendy Torrance with Danny