I was able to make my mark on CU Theatre's production of "ShakesFear: An Autumn's Tale" with one of the most beautiful costume pieces I've ever made.
This year the mainstage theatre at the University of Colorado Boulder is under construction to improve the acoustics of the space, so the university's Department of Theatre and Dance had to get creative when finding venues to put on this season's shows, and they certainly did not disappoint.
ShakesFear: An Autumn's Tale is a haunted, walk through experience in the university's iconic Mary Rippon Theatre, an outdoor theatre venue that hosts the annual Colorado Shakespeare Festival. The premise of the show is that Shakespeare's characters have escaped from their plays, locked Shakespeare up in a cage, and are now running amok in the forest. The show is full of jump scares and elaborate technical elements from lighting and sound, to set and props, to costumes and makeup. The characters from Shakespeare's plays mingle together giving a brand new experience and interactions between characters that have never happened before.
I work in the costume shop for the Department of Theatre and Dance so, while I did not participate in this show as an actor, I was lucky enough to work on many of the costumes for this production. For the majority of the time we were working on ShakesFear I was given the project of creating these beautiful leg ruffles for the character Ariel, played by my good friend Edie, from The Tempest.
I actually began this project at the end of the spring semester last school year, sketching out a rough idea about how to bring the design to life, and the shop managers decided to keep me on the project when I returned in the fall. It was a long and difficult process from mockups and redesigns to patterning and construction, but in the end I had created that element of the costume almost completely on my own, and I am so proud of myself.
Once the show was cast in the fall I began editing my sketches and the math about possible construction for the ruffles based on Edie's measurements. Once that was done I moved on to creating mock ups of the ruffles out of muslin. After creating a couple different options we decided that the best way to create the desired ruffle effect was to cut out a bunch of donut shapes and then sew them to tubes that would then be fastened around each of Edie's legs. Then, I was able to begin creating the pattern. I made a paper pattern for both the leg tubes and all of the donuts that would be sewn around each tube.
I then moved on to tracing the pattern onto the fabric we were using. Each ruffle was constructed out of two layers of fabric, so I laid out the fabrics on top of each other, traced the pattern that I created, pin basted the two layers of fabric together, and then cut all of the pieces out. The leg tubes were more simple since they were just one layer of fabric.
Once all of the pieces were cut out it was time to assemble. The leg pieces were sewn into their tube forms, and I made sure the double layers of the ruffles were connected to each other before putting them onto the tubes. I was then able to attach each ruffle to the leg tubes one at a time from the bottom to the top. It was a long and tedious process, but it was all worth it by the end when all of the ruffles were attached to the leg tubes because they just looked so pretty.
When the show finally opened on October 7th I was beyond excited to see the ruffles in action, and they were more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. It was incredible to see the whole costume come together, and I really think that the ruffles added just such a special, magical element. I am so grateful that I had this opportunity to create such a beautiful costume piece for such an amazing show.
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