For this production we presented several shorter works by Sam Shepard over two weekends. Several design students participated as designers for some of the works and I designed Pecos Bill, Red Cross, Killer’s Head, and Tongues.
For this adaptation of the Jane Austen novel by Jon Jory, we were interested in the textures found in paper and watercolors. The scene designer and I had recently seen the film, Miss Potter, and we were very inspired by the beautiful renditions of Beatrix Potter’s creative process in her beautiful watercolors for her books. I wanted to explore dainty prints for the early 18th century empire gowns instead of the solids unusually seen. Unfortunately, the quality of the cotton prints of that period don’t really exist and so I chose to work in silks instead, which, were actually much more like the fine cottons of the era. As this was a large show and I had already decided to build all the daughters’ dresses we were able to rent the menswear and some of the extra womenswear. We did build lovely period over gowns for the older women characters as well. The build of the dresses was fun, as I had a whole group of students who had just taken costume craft so each of them got to be cutter/draper for one gown. My assistant, Sydney, made some fabulous hats that really topped the design off.
For this production of the Scottish play we worked over the summer in a devising method of developing imagery and Anjalee worked with an actor to create some of the movement and character work. Our main spine for this production was to tell a frightening story of evil. We developed a Hecuba out of baby doll parts. We created backward witch masks to give the sense of misstated limbs. We were very lucky with several aspects of this production. We had some nice stock of some tunics, gowns, and capes. a beautiful green dress and gold dress for Lady M from a previous production fit our current Lady M like a glove. I rented some incredible movie-quality armor from a source that cannot be named. And then we got a huge donation of extremely high quality fake fur just when we needed it. All of these elements really enhanced our production and allowed me to spend more time making an incredible yards long red silk gown for Lady M.
Curtains was the biggest costume show we had done at Bucknell up until this time. We had well over 100 costumes, which, for our small shop was a lot. This show also marked the beginning of our two year cycle of presenting musicals with our great team of Gary and Dustyn. This show presented the frequent challenge of the show within a show and then another show within a show so we had the 1950s, the 1950s theatre, and the western setting.
Link to costume research slides.
For our version of The Bacchae we spent the semester in devising process to reinterpret the play. We began with many images and used the “Is it Vice?” method” in which we identified the things that really resonated with the group and discarded those images and moments that did not. I had to work in my design during this process instead of designing before rehearsals began and so designing was more compressed than usual. I enjoyed developing costumes in a more responsive manner as the production evolved.
Link to PDF of research and inspiration.
