A theater itself is a very neutral space, and what we put in it and how it contrasts
to the room around you is exactly what we're trying to create is a world in a room.
By doing this, we're creating the atmosphere that the audience is going to see.
How does this world feel?
How does this world smell?
We take that into consideration even though the audience is never going to, they don't
know.
We know as designers.
I think there are several ways you can approach design, but we sort of have an official process
here and I kind of combine that with my professional experience and how I do it.
I read the script a few times and I sort of try to get the world of the play that the
playwright is sort of trying to create within the words and get a lot of the visual imagery
and what we actually need to accomplish this show.
We want them to kind of dissect the script and really get into the poetics if you will
of the script.
We have to imagine the world in which the design takes place and then condense that
world literally into a room.
If it says it's 1912, find out if that's where the play is actually going to be set
or if you're moving it.
The thing to look at is within a script, if somebody says, oh, those are beautiful red
shoes you have on, then you want to make a note that it's beautiful red shoes.
How many doors do we need?
How many entrances?
How many exits?
Where are we?
Are these people rich or are these people poor?
It's all very specific for the role.
So depending on what the costume is and how quick it needs to be, it's always, there's
never like one easy answer.
When we know that it's going to have to be a quick change, and we can tell by reading
the script that's part of the design process, we can construct them to make it easier to
get in and out.
And then other times, if it's not a super quick change, they'll have just people backstage
helping them.
There'll be like four people helping take off a costume, put on a costume.
I've had people as many as five people dress a person, and one person's job is to place
the shoes, take the old ones off, put the new ones on, and another is to drop one skirt
and have another one around her shoes so she just steps in and the dress comes up and zips.
So a lot of it's in the planning and organizing of the crew, and a lot of it is, yeah, rip
away costumes, snap away costumes.
One technique is if a lady is wearing a corset, corsets, if you know anything, are just like
shoes that lace up the back.
You can actually put a steel bone down the center, and instead of lacing from grommet
to grommet like you would a pair of shoes, you loop it over the bones.
That way, when it comes time for the quick change, you take the bone out, the corset
falls off.
You have to kind of keep all these things in tune before you even start designing.
But then from there, you start cultivating images.
I keep bins of images that I just search through, books, fashion books, history books, books
on painters, modern, modern things as well, and just anything interesting, I save it.
I collect a lot of images, show them to the director and the rest of the design team,
and see what we as a whole are responding to.
From that, you kind of flesh out who the characters are with your director.
I constantly talk to the costume and the lighting designer, even the sound designer,
to figure out what they're doing and how I could better complement or contrast what
they're doing.
After that, I start doing my sketches, my drawings, my drafting, my color work.
Then all those drawings, research, swatches go into the shop, and we plan out what we
call a work Bible or a show Bible that has every detail, every item and earring and how
the fabric's treated all laid out.
So we kind of use it as our guide to build the show.
You come up with your best game plan, but you must always be ready to roll with the punches.
Someone gets sick, someone gets into an accident, changes wind up happening in rehearsal, so
you do the best you can.
In the early stages of design, you're designing in a complete model space, and in small scale,
you don't have the actual costumes on there yet, you don't have the actual lights on there
yet.
You have all these great ideas or ideas that you think are great, and you have to sort
of make that conscious decision to weed out certain ideas.
I've known designers in the past to come up with a great design for a show and then find
out that their actor is a foot or two taller than what they were anticipating.
So when everything comes together, it might become more apparent that a redesign of something
is needed.
Some of it is practicality, you know, hey, we just can't build this the way we thought
we could or the way we wanted to.
Sometimes it has to do with actor safety.
We can build this, but the actors are going to hurt themselves.
We've got to redesign this.
Usually you build the costume so it's adjustable, so what you want to do is leave enough room
so that you can negotiate a fitting, you know, so you can let it out or take it in.
You have five eighths in each seam, so if you let out each seam, you could gain up to two
inches depending on the garment.
And there are certain things that you certainly can't make fit a whole different body type,
but if an individual actor gains or loses weight, you should be okay.
This last week is kind of like the, okay, we have X amount of days, X amount of hours
left to go to get this ready for first dress rehearsal.
It's just a lot of crunch time and you have to get a lot of the detail work in because
now that we have the walls up and all the flats ready and mostly prepared, you have
to go back through and critique everything and make sure it's the way the designer wants
it to be presented on opening line.
When we get to the technical process, which is really putting together all of the technical
elements, the tech rehearsals are putting all the technical elements together along
with the actors on stage and it's a tedious process, but it happens over the course of
three, three or four days.
We set down and go cue to cue and fine tune each of the lighting cues, the placement of
anything that's going on in it and we really just work out the entire show in that day.
The first dress rehearsals, we generally go and meet with the wardrobe person and the
assistants do this in particular rather than the designers to tell them this character
needs to look like this, this vest is worn like this, this jacket is worn like this.
And of course things change up until opening night.
That's the whole purpose of dress rehearsal to look and say that him's too long, we need
to make it shorter, I don't like that trim, let's replace it with a different color.
Like, oh, he doesn't need to wear that jacket yet, oh, her hair needs to look like this,
like making sure everything's the way it should be for the director to see when it's
finally on stage.
That's our last chance to finalize everything before they go on stage.
We've had instances where, you know, if we put a, you know, a completely different color
than what we're looking for on the costumes and just totally mess that up, then people
get really upset and can make the show really ugly.
Under the lighting, a costume will look different than you anticipate, so sometimes things have
to come back to us and be dyed down, you know, for the actual first performance.
In every design, it's what do you want, more money and more time.
So and, you know, you just want more time to just kind of tweak this one thing, but
there comes a point where you have to just let the set go and sort of it doesn't ever
get released.
It kind of just escapes you from your hands.
It's a very stressful process, but it makes it so worth it to see it opening night and
the actors on stage and everything, just, it's a different world.
It just makes it so magical and beautiful and you're a part of that.
It's kind of like, I mean, you're racing, racing, racing, and then we hit this wall
and there's not a lot we can do anymore.
I think that, you know, a lot of designers will sit back and hopefully enjoy their work,
their product, but I know that you're constantly thinking of ways that you can change things.
Even just being like an assistant, you know, watching like, oh, I made that hat, it looks
so great.
Oh, I made that, it looks so great, everyone.
You get to see where all of your time went and, you know, what you've created and how
it looks on stage and that's very, very nice.
And you kind of have that aha moment and you're like, yes, we're done.
I feel like oftentimes the designers and the construction people, the people working backstage,
they don't get the recognition a lot, you know, because we see the actors and then we
know the director, is that designer?
Not as important, but he is to the overall, you know, he adds to that show and that goes
right down, everyone down to the carpenter, down to the gas sweep and the floors, without
those people, you wouldn't have a good show.
