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This digital portfolio shows my costume design work from
Fall 2016 through Spring 2024. In that
time I designed 13 productions: 3
musicals for Penn State University, 1 musical for another university, 7 musicals
in regional theaters, 1 play and 1 opera.
Of course, there was an 18 month period in this time when all theaters
were close for the pandemic. As Head of Costume Design in Penn State’s School of Theatre, my design work provides the opportunity for my costume design students to observe how I work on large musicals, which is often my bread-and-butter work in the profession. Most of my professional design work has centered on dance-oriented musicals and operas, so I bring my expertise in designing large scale productions to share with my students. Our production of BRIGADOON was a brilliant show which took 9 months of planning to shepherd from page to stage. Combining a rental package with designs built by our shop, and making it look like a unified production is often a professional costume designer’s task. The Penn State costume shop built costumes for all of the principals, and the female dancing ensemble, working from September to April building petticoats and skirts and bodices as part of our costume construction classes, and then building the principal’s costumes after the show was cast in December. What a joy to design and build my favorite musical and to share it with our MFA and BFA costume students.
The highlight of my professional work was the production of EVITA I designed for the Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach Florida. After seeing the Broadway revival of RAGTIME,
it had been my dream to work with Marcia Milgrom Dodge, and sometimes dreams do
come true! Designing for an all Latinx
cast was thrilling, and although some traditions are baked into the show,
Marcia made it very much her production of EVITA. The beautiful set by Michael Schweikardt featured a centrally placed tiled tango floor and the show opened as if the
ensemble were hearing the news of Evita’s death in an Argentine tango
hall.
Early on Marcia asked ‘what if each ensemble member had only one costume?’ This was a brilliant and exciting concept, and a real challenge to make everything make sense. In the end we decided on a complete change to all white for the Aristocrats, but otherwise worked with adding and removing costume pieces to basic black dresses and black and white pants and vest combinations as the scenes required.
My favorite two words are’ What If.’ One day Marcia asked “What if Eva’s waltz dress was the Argentine flag?” I designed a blue and white dress with the center sun of the flag, and it was built for us by Barak Stribling in Jersey City as it turned out that our actress playing Evita lived there!
I most recently designed ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE for the Delaware Theatre Company which has become a second home for me in the Philadelphia theatre scene. Generating 10 costume changes for the actress playing Patsy was a huge challenge for us given the production’s 2-week rehearsal schedule. A professional costumer friend fit and measured our Boston-based actress on her home turf and then sent a sloper, photographs, and measurements to us at Penn State. We built 5 costumes for her in our shop in the off hours, and 3 students received a professional credit as a result. It has been many years since I built an entire costume, but even I joined in and built Patsy’s finale dress.
My side gig as a young designer was costume crafts, especially millinery. I teach a course on Theatrical Millinery at Penn State. I am proud to say I am an accomplished theatrical milliner. I often save money on tight budgets by building the hats and headpieces myself, so there are some examples of hats I built for GYPSY and LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD and BRIGADOON included with the production photos in this portfolio.
Early on Marcia asked ‘what if each ensemble member had only one costume?’ This was a brilliant and exciting concept, and a real challenge to make everything make sense. In the end we decided on a complete change to all white for the Aristocrats, but otherwise worked with adding and removing costume pieces to basic black dresses and black and white pants and vest combinations as the scenes required.
My favorite two words are’ What If.’ One day Marcia asked “What if Eva’s waltz dress was the Argentine flag?” I designed a blue and white dress with the center sun of the flag, and it was built for us by Barak Stribling in Jersey City as it turned out that our actress playing Evita lived there!
I most recently designed ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE for the Delaware Theatre Company which has become a second home for me in the Philadelphia theatre scene. Generating 10 costume changes for the actress playing Patsy was a huge challenge for us given the production’s 2-week rehearsal schedule. A professional costumer friend fit and measured our Boston-based actress on her home turf and then sent a sloper, photographs, and measurements to us at Penn State. We built 5 costumes for her in our shop in the off hours, and 3 students received a professional credit as a result. It has been many years since I built an entire costume, but even I joined in and built Patsy’s finale dress.
My side gig as a young designer was costume crafts, especially millinery. I teach a course on Theatrical Millinery at Penn State. I am proud to say I am an accomplished theatrical milliner. I often save money on tight budgets by building the hats and headpieces myself, so there are some examples of hats I built for GYPSY and LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD and BRIGADOON included with the production photos in this portfolio.