Fists of fury

I had always intended for the cast of the production to have a base costume, and when I spotted black t-shirts on special offer in the local supermarket – Eu.1.99 each – I grabbed them.  The next stage was to have some sort of simple logo on the front, but I was not sure how I was going to manage this, as it is outside my skill-set.  I did think at one stage that I might have a go at creating a very basic stencil out of dinghy rubber (of course!) – maybe just a circle, maybe with even a pair of C’s (for Chalk Circle) pained on with fabric paint.  Have to say I was nervous, having little to no confidence in my technical and artistic skill.  But then I met Jaime, a volunteer from Madrid, and I was able to up the game.

It turned out that. As well as being an English teacher back in Spain, he was also an artist, and I asked if he might be interested in creating a design.  It did take us a little while to come up with a design we could agree upon.  He was keen to avoid the obvious image of two women pulling a child between them, and I did not like his initial idea of a distressed child.  In the end, we settled upon the image you can see above (modelled by Jaime): two clenched fists within a chalk circle, as a symbol of struggle and conflict (though I did have a last minute crisis of confidence that it might come across as a fascist logo.)  The idea of a group of refugee children as members of a fascist cell was not attractive.

It was easy enough to find a t-shirt printing shop to do the job, and that is another production task ticked off the list.  And the kids will get a free t-shirt at the end, so that’s a win win.