I am proud to say I was part of our El Dorado Stake Best of Broadway show. Different Disney Vignettes were performed from all different age ranges. The adults were part of the Tarzan number, "Trashin' the Camp." I was able to be a part of that which was a lot of fun!
I also unexpectedly got to do something I never would have dreamed of!
You had to do an "audition" if you wanted to be in the plays so the directors could see where to best place you within your age group's show.
Now to say I've always been a HUGE Disney fan would be an understatement! I had all the Disney movies on VHS. All the Disney songs on tapes.Then all eventually on CD's. I would listen to them over and over and over again. Literally just soaking them up and incidentally memorizing the words. Being born in '87 made me a lover of all things...The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty & The Beast, The Lion King, etc. Boy did I love to sing my heart out! But I never had that amazing Ariel or Jasmine voice... In fact, when my sister Rachel & I would sing the duet of Aladdin's "A Whole New World" --she would always be Jasmine & I would sing the Aladdin part haha. Ah good times...
So, one year for Christmas I get The Little Mermaid soundtrack and I instantly fall in love with Ursula's song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls." She was different from all the other villains --she was the ultimate diva of villains! You see her applying her mousse, her vibrant red lips and nails, flashy jewelry, and general swaying of hips. Ursula was pure awesomeness. Bold. Confident. Sassy. Her song was also a dialogue mixed with a medium vocal range - I was in love. At 11 years old, I sat down with my CD player and intently listened to it over and over again until I could recite the whole thing verbatim. (This was before all the lyrics could be looked up online!). Over the years I would prance around jokingly singing it to my family. They would tease that I WAS Ursula and even though I loved all Classic Disney --this was my favorite song.
So, it was a natural choice when I had to choose a song for the Disney Best of Broadway auditions...
Ursula's "Poor Unfortunate Souls"
In preparation, I had to brush up on the song... finally looked up the lyrics online and made sure I heard everything correctly from when I originally memorized it. Even though I knew it, loved it, and had been dancing around singing it forever for family --there is just something utterly terrifying about singing a solo in front of others! So I practiced and practiced and practiced. I bought the minus track of the song from iTunes and started practicing with music. I had secretly decided that I was going to try out for the plays and didn't even tell Truman until the day before. After much pleading from him, I nervously and probably awkwardly sang it for him. I had never even tried to seriously sing something in front of my own husband, more or less directors of a play I wanted to be in.
The day came for auditions and I felt sick --sick to my stomach nervous. With my stomach in knots and sweaty palms, I entered the audition room. If I wasn't tense enough, there were 5 directors watching plus a room full of other people waiting to audition. I knew a couple of the directors from my youth which probably contributed to them asking me to go first :(. My heart sank even further when they told me they didn't have their CD player there meaning I'd have to do it from the quiet speaker of my phone. I felt so jittery but tried to be confident and have fun with it. They were all smiles from the moment I started singing and acting. I was in literal awe (jaw dropped and everything) as they told me "You knocked our socks off!" "What a surprise!" "I have to be honest Amy, when you told us you were going to do Ursula's villain song, I thought --sweet little Amy? I don't know... But you did awesome! You totally surprised me! That was great!"
They tell me, "You've got the part!" and I'm looking at them puzzled because I am trying out to be in the only adult number which is Tarzan?? I had worked on my audition piece to try to perhaps get a better part in Tarzan. They tell me they want me to sing that for the Best of Broadway as a solo right before the "Under the Sea" girls go on. I am in total shock. I had no idea I could try out to do a solo. I just picked Ursula's song because it's always been a favorite and her song is more in my vocal range. They said it's a great choice for me and that I did it perfectly. If I had known I could try out to do a solo of Ursula --I may have not had the guts to do it! With jaw still dropped, I accepted, and giddily went to tell Truman.
I called my family to tell them the good news and they were so excited for me and all laughed knowing that's MY song! As my young sister Shelly put it, "Amy --that's like your theme song!" Haha. The directors told me that I wouldn't be practicing with The Little Mermaid group because I would go on right before them so just to continue to practice at home, but said they were so happy with it, that I could perform it that day! :). They paused and looked at each other and said, "Hmm, we'll somehow need to come up with a costume for Ursula..." --You had me at costume!!! I was thrilled to say the least!
The opportunity to make a costume for my all time favorite Disney villain? Yes, please!!! My wheels immediately started turning as I started to draw up in my mind how I could portray Ursula the Sea Witch! I was ecstatic that I would get to design and wear a costume all while singing her song, my favorite song --what a dream! I knew my Mom would be an integral part of making this all happen. She is a wise and seasoned sewer and although I've got some sweet sewing skills, I knew this was above my level.
My Mom & I made an excellent team! She brings the experience and technical side of sewing with a great creative brain and keen eye for things. I bring the internet, Pinterest, passion, a different creative side, and slave labor to the table. In designing this costume, I had a whole Pinterest Board dedicated to 'Ursula Costume Inspiration' and spent literal hours scouring the internet for ideas and pictures.
I finally narrowed things down and found the direction I wanted to go...
This was my inspiration...
I knew I wanted to be a pretty Ursula, like a Disney Princess version of a villain --not an ugly Sea Witch. I quickly fell in love with these photos and knew somehow I would use this design to make my costume. This is where my Mom comes in --the technical and experienced sewer! I could not for the life of me figure out how this woman made these amazing ruffles. I had almost nothing to go off and certainly no pattern. The only hint she gave was that she made a custom circle pattern. When I showed my Mom, she knew JUST how to do it! She had made a dress similar to it when she was in 8th grade! Whaa?! Making this dress took quite a bit of math and took nearly 15 yards of fabric! We had a great time shopping at JoAnn's for the perfect fabrics. I ended up choosing an elegant purple lace, a black tulle, a two-sided purple and black metallic fabric, a romantic deep plum satin, & a purple sequined fabric. I spent hours upon hours pinning a custom half circle pattern on and then cutting them all out. We used the hoop skirt from my wedding and measured the bottom circumference to determine how large my base skirt would need to be. My Mom helped me make a pattern for this base skirt so as I cut out all the circles, I could then sew them on. The waist had to be exact since we knew by the time everything was together, it would be very heavy! I sewed on hooks and a zipper for a nice tight fit around the waist. Then came the fun and also very labor intensive part of sewing on each individual circle I had cut out. This required more math and drawing lines down the skirt to keep the ruffles straight and even. Sewing on the inside edge of the circle created a beautiful cascading ruffle effect as it went down. Even though it took hours and days, it was gratifying to sew each one on and slowly start to see the skirt fill out. So many different shades of purple and textures made it so fun to put together.
Then came the tentacles...
I loved the idea of an elegant and beautiful dress, but I also couldn't deny the fact that Ursula IS indeed an octopus...not a Princess haha :(. So, to appease both sides of me, I thought it would fun to make it look like her tentacles were coming out and up from underneath her fancy dress. I made a pattern for tentacles, keeping in mind they would be shorter since it would just be more like the ends coming out from her dress. I found an awesome textured fabric that looked almost like skin to be the backside of the tentacles and then my purple metallic to be the underside. I cut them out, sewed the two right sides together, turned right-side out, stuffed with batting and wire, then sewed closed.
My Mom & I then proceeded to hot glue on the wood chips I had painted to be the little suction cups on the underside of her tentacles. It took the two of us to man handle the hoop skirt to sew these puppies on to it. We then took crochet thread and and suspended them in c-shape or s-shaped curves to give the illusion of my tentacles coming out from underneath my dress.
I could not have been more happy with how it came out! I owe all my sewing passion, skills, and experience to my Mom. I am proud to say I sewed 90% of this costume myself. I did some major labor intensive work of cutting all the circles out and then sewing them on one by one. I made the tentacles by myself and got to design it all by pulling from a myriad of ideas. However, I could NOT have done it without the amazing help of my talented mother! She gave me never-ending technical support, helped me finish and trim the edge of my satin fabric, did all the measurements, helped me make my base skirt and ruffle patterns, attached the tentacles for me while I tried it on, stuffed, hot glued, fabric shopped, late night thread buying (I went through 4 spools of purple thread!), and was my cheerleader all along the way. She could see my vision from the beginning! Thank you Mom! This costume took about 2 month to make and put together. It was so fun that we could work on it together, pooling our creative juices.
We had a great time! This is how it turned out...
Ursula the Sea Witch
My younger sister Shelly & I took my camera out by the Serrano library and did a photo shoot of me in my Ursula costume. I figured I worked so hard on it, I'm going to get some good pictures out of it! Thank you Shelly for taking all these fun photographs! We had a blast! These pictures were too fun to edit --purple skin, red lipstick, and blue eyeshadow? So many colors!
~For the rest of the costume~
My Mom and I determined it would be cheaper and much easier to buy a
corset, I found a great one from amazon.
It took tons of research but I finally found the perfect way to get my skin the pale purple color of an octopus. I bought a professional theater paint called
Kryolan Aquacolor Light Purple and it was a great match. To give my skin that iridescent look I applied a pretty roll on shimmer afterward by
NYX that I bought from Target.
I bought a
white wig from amazon then suspended it upside down with clothes pins on our clothes drying rack and styled it with protein gel and half a can of hair spray and let it dry. Then I added some white hair spray paint to lighten some of the gray areas.
I found my shells for the my necklace and earrings in a variety pack of shells from Michael's. I painted the nautilus shell with a gold metallic paint and topped it off with gold glitter nail polish. I hot glued black ribbon to the back and sewed on a snap closure for the ends. For the earrings, I painted them a plum purple and accented with the gold metallic paint. So I could get them onto my ears, I just hot glued on old dangly earring hooks.
I had this inspiration from this Pinterest Pin to do rhinestone eyebrows for my costume!
This was one of my fav overall parts of my costume! How often do you get the excuse to wear rhinestones on your eyebrows?!?!
I also used blue eye crayon, false lashes, black eye liner, gold glitter eye liner, red lipstick, red nails and I think that's about it!
For the Disney Best of Broadway show, we performed three times over two days, and it was incredible. I was very nervous but just kept trying to remind myself how much fun this all was & what an amazing opportunity it is. It was invigorating and probably one of the most fun things I've ever done. Getting to design Ursula's costume, make it, then sing her sassy song was all truly a dream come true for me. This was my first time ever having a solo like this in a production. Accomplishing this increased confidence in myself that I can do new things and come out of my comfort zone. I learned new things about myself and had many people say to me, "I didn't know you could act/sing/sew!". It was fun to surprise others --and quite frankly me! I feel I have come so far in the last 10 years in self-confidence and am enjoying exploring new and hidden talents.
Thanks for reading! :)
