The One Ring Circus!

Lord of the Rings Sweeps BayCon 21 Masquerade Awards

Costumes created by fans of TORn received five major awards at BayCon 21, the San Francisco Bay Area Science Fiction and Fantasy Converence, held in San Jose, California between May 23-26.

Over thirty individuals and team entries competed for prices in the Novice and Professional classes. Entrants were judged on technical costume making, and on over-all presentation in front of an audience. According to Trystan Bass of the Greater Bay Area Costuming Guild, one of the event's sponsors, the quality of this year's costume entires were the best in over ten years.

Best of Show was won by the One Ring Circus, a group of ten protrayed memebers of the Fellowship and performed a hilarious skit to the tune of "The Pitch (Spectacular Spectacular)" form the motion picture Moulin Rouge, as if Peter Jackson was picting "Lord of the RIngs" to New Line. Spectacular is the only word for their costumes, too. Members of the troup included Carolyn Staehle (Frodo), Leah Jakusovsky (Sam), Kelly Bolton (Merry), Cathleen Trowbridge (Pippin), Mitch Steinberger (Aragorn), Aimee Steinberger (Arwen), Kelly Lima (Eowyn), Cordelia Willis (Legolas), A.J. Wu (Ringwraith) and Judy Grivich (Gimli).

Best Fantasy Novice was a tie between two entries, Phillip Gust as THeoden, who performed the famouse "Arise, riders of Theoden!" speech. In a separate entry, Kathe Gust as Eown dramatized the moment when Eowyn first resolves to go into battle.

Best Workmanship, Professional Class went to Judy Grivich as Gimli for her stunningly accurate recreation of John Rhys Davies' dwarf costume and makeup. The costume was complete with hand-made chainmail, leatherwork, shoes, helmet, beard, wid and facial prosthetics.

Best Workmanship, Novice Class went to Philip Gust as Theoden. The costume, created by Kathe Gust, was a near-perfect replica of Bernard Hill's costume, with hand sewn gold trims on the green wool cloak and a brown velved surcoat, a hand embroidered horse patterns on the neck and front of the leather-laced black under tunic, brooch, boots, sword and belt.

The Greater Bay Area Costuming Guild's Rising Star Award was given to Kathe Gust as Eowyn for her recreation of Miranda Otto's court dress of green velvet, with brocade underskirt and lined front skirt panel and sleeves, hand sewn gold yoke trim, boots, jeweled belt and necklace.

Also competeing were Jeanetted Peters as Arwen and Sam Peters as Gaffer Gamgee, with preosthetic hobbit feet and a long pipe.

Silviane Mann-Willrich as an Elven Maiden won a special hall costuming award presented for notable costumes spotted by special judges while walking around BayCon.

Press Blurbs

Most of us have never been mentioned in a newspaper before. So we're a little excited, please excuse us.

May 28, 2003

From Intermission, Stanford University Arts and Entertainment Magazine

Intermission infiltrates the SF Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention (exerpt)

"...The hands-down most awesome sight -- not just at the convention, but, like, in the entire universe -- was the "One Ring Circus." A whole troop of conventioneers dressed as characters from "The Lord of the Rings," accompanied by a hula-hoop sized gold ring replica, came out and did this crazy-ass song and dance routine (modeled on the song "The Pitch," a.k.a. "So Exciting!" from "Moulin Rouge") summarizing the plot of the books.

After the performance, we sat in shocked awe for a while, unable to speake. "Now I can die," Anthony whispered sincerely."

From The One Ring.net

July 22, 2003

Comic Con 2003 Day 5 - Costumes

SAN DIEGO - The Best in Show award at the 2003 Comic-Con Masquerade went to the One Ring Circus, a group of devoted Tolkien fans and costumers that wowed judges and audience alike.

The group (Judy Grivich, Mitch Steinberger, Aimee Steinberger, Carolyn Staehle, Leah Jakusovzky, Kelly Bolton, Cathleen Trowbridge, Cordelia Willis, Kelly Lima, A.J. Wu, Annie Kim, Nina Kempf) presented their 100 percent self-produced costumes along with an adapted "The Pitch" from Moulin Rouge. They stopped by the TORn booth the following day, giving us a chance o find out the full details of what went into the award-winning entry.

The concept was born at a Two Towers line party when Bolton and Willis discussed the idea.The lyrics were adapted and the ball was set rolling. Bolton, who works at a crime lab, credited her job with providing her inspiration. "I do a lot of costuming because my job is boring and I don't get to express myself creatively. I am not good at art and I am okay at writing but I am pretty good at sewing."

Apparently her "pretty good" is good enough to win awards when combined with the sewing and other talents of the rest of the troupe. Grivich who was a fully armoured, fully bearded, and fully nosed invested an estimated 500 hours of work into her elaborate garb that weighed an estimated 50 pounds. Much of the work involved making her armor which was linked by hand - all 15,000 pieces. She is unable to raise her arms above her head but knew right away she would be Gimli when the "fellowship" was annouced. "It's the height thing," she said. Even the "easy" costumes average about 100 hours of work each.

Members of the group exchanged talent work in order to get the costumes at their top polish.

Richard Taylor of WETA workships spooted the troupe by the TORn booth and came over to congratulate them, calling their work "brillant." The group was pretty floored to be complimented by Taylor who they hold in high regard.

"He actually came up to us!" Willis said.

The all California group which has its eye on production stills from Return of the King has its own website at http://stitchinbabes.com/orcindex.html