Long post. But with some pictures....

Since the last post I have:
-Been trying to work out the uniform-status lancers issue.
-Met with the director.
-Met with my tutor.
-Had 2 sessions of experimenting with draping (Saris and Dhotis)

MEETING WITH THE DIRECTOR
I was so relieved that the director was happy with my design-work so far. I talked to him about some of the issues that I'd been thinking about (whether Beatrice needed bedwear, Claudio's quick changes, the colour of artificial facial hair, and moreover- Indian dress is so steeped in tradition and meaning, how far is too far in terms of cultural and historical accuracy? Can I take artistic license?) etc. etc.
He agreed with me in that as we are setting it in a technically fictional context of 'Messina' in India (which doesn't seem to exist) then artistic license can be taken. He suggested putting a bit in the programme about it- how it is set in the British Raj just after the 1st World War, but that it sits in no specific region/context and therefore artistic license has been taken. etc. I'm not sure if this is over-egging it a bit, or whether we can just leave the audience to make-up their own mind as to whether they think it's historically accurate- I think it's a context that very few people know a lot about, and seeing as it's taken ME extensive research to find a lot of the specifics out, how likely is it that this includes knowledge that lots of the audience will already have built-in to them?
The director had a few concerns about the washing line idea in that he thought perhaps when the washing is in the rafters, it might inhibit the lighting, as a few of the rigs are off use anyway due to the mezzanine floor. I need to talk to the lighting designer about this- but I'm sure there must be a way around it. If not, the director suggested an alternative of having a washing line that can be pulled across the stage- but I don't think that will have quite the same appeal as one that is raised and dropped, plus it would potentially take up valuable acting time. I am a little worried about the running time as I think we are doing the script in its entirety- but then again, it's not my problem, it's a great play, why cut it?
The audience that are standing for a full 3 hours on the mezzanine floor may disagree....
The meeting with the director was so so useful as always, and I always feel incredibly lucky to be working with someone who is so happy to let me explore my creative vision without putting up barriers every step of the way. Every meeting is so positive and I get a lot out of it.
We talked about plenty of other things: the musical numbers, the dances, the costume designs, and everything ran very smoothly. We have decided that I should set up a facebook group for the actors and the Much Ado team so that it is easy to get notices out.

MEETING WITH MY TUTOR
Here we discussed some of the issues the director had brought up and tried to find technical solutions to resolve them. We discussed the dimensions of the seating blocks, how to source a tree, the lighting, the fabric, painting the theatre blue and if there's enough time to paint it back to black afterwards.
We decided to meet up again next week and have a play with some rope and some sheets and some clothes pegs to see if we could plot-out where the pulleys etc would have to go and how long the fabric should be etc.

Here are some pictures of the mezzanine floor now that it's up:

It does feel a lot more courtyard-y and a lot less cagey than I thought it would, so I'm happy.

EXPERIMENTING WITH DRAPING
As part of costume development for my principle characters, before I progress on to any finalised designs I felt it was important to try out some different draping styles for some of the garments, namely Dhoti (Leonato's trousers), Sari (For Hero), and Odhna/Sari (For Beatrice). 
I have a lot of styles to chose from, but exploring how easy they are to drape or how manageable it would be to make into a fixed stitched garment is important in my decision as as well as how the garment looks.
Here are some images from our 2 draping sessions:  

 UNIFORM DEVELOPMENT
It really is getting to the point now where I need to start finalising my designs, but the change in my decision in uniforms is causing me endless grief.
I made the decision that Benedick and Claudio's lancer's uniforms should probably be the same given that they are of similar rank in the same regiment. But now that I've got that sorted I have to reassess the Don Brothers.
Here are my basic initial designs for them that I did a while ago:

With these initial designs I gave them caps rather than hats firstly as a status symbol but also as they were less cumbersome and therefore they could keep them on throughout. Don Pedro was given what I deemed a 'higher status' smarter uniform whereas Don John was given a beige lower-ranking uniform that made him stand-out from the bright colours of the rest of the characters.
But then during my lancers research I found this picture:

 Which made me think that maybe my designs for the Don Brothers were wrong, and not coherent with the new 'lancer' status I have installed upon their regiment.
However, this design had a plethora of its own problems. It seemed perfect for Don  Pedro but then he would look lower status than Don John. And then what do I dress Don John in? He won't even look part of the same regiment now that all the other men are in yellows and blues! Also the hat with this uniform looks very severe for such a  friendly character and will potentially limit facial-exposure of the actor and might be quite hard to act and move about in. So it was suggested that maybe he carries it in, which would be fine but then he would be hatless for the rest of the play. But in my old design I'm also worried he looks a bit naval- which is all kinds of wrong. There were so so many issues that I really had no idea what was going on. It's like a chain reaction, change one thing about one of the costumes and every other costume related to it has to change as a result.
My costume adviser (not an official title, but a much deserved one) Lucy Anderson, said that as much as she liked the new picture I'd found, to her it looked more Victorian than my previous designs. Of course she was right. After revisiting the date I found that the illustration was from 1890- not the First World War.
So I decided to go back to the history books. For once, being historically accurate might actually make my job easier.
The problem has always been that there is not enough specific information about the Indian Army on the internet- or at least not stuff that's easily accessible. I just found myself revisiting the same old sites over and over. I discovered that although that illustration was from 1890, the Skinners Horse Lancers (whose costumes I am basing my regiment on) uniforms didn't actually change a lot until the 1920s when they merged with another unit. And I found two very similar illustrations from 1901 and 1910. So I was back to square one!
It looked Victorian but could have been correct for my era. But this raises the question again... is it about being historically accurate OR is it better to help the audience get a sense of the historical era in which the play is set by building on knowledge they might already have? That is, would I be digging myself a hole by not making the Dons uniforms quintessentially 'British WW1'? Would the audience even KNOW that it was set just after the First World War if my British Army costumes were as obscure as the Generals' and Lieutennants' costumes of the British Indian Cavalry?
Finally I found the answers to MOST of my questions when I checked the small-print at the bottom of one of the web-pages I was using which directed me to the book from which they had taken their illustrations : 'Skinner's Horse' by Christopher Rothero.
And what do you know? It's free to download as a PDF.
Wonderful.
The layout was a little confusing, so I've made myself my own little book of the uniforms that I found appropriate for the play.
The most frustrating thing being....
This is the highest ranking uniform I can find...

doesn't it look remarkably like my very first initial design that I did without ANY research into the Indian cavalry at all?!
So that's Don Pedro sorted (plus some jodhpurs).... but Don John will remain to be a 'canker in a hedge'.