'BEATRICE AND BEAU' - SKETCHBOOK 2009

I designed costumes for Beatrice and Beau, one of the 14 short plays in this year's SKETCHBOOK at Collaboraction. Since light plays a large part in Beatrice and Beau, I kept the pallet light for the hipster-chic couple.

MANIFEST 2009 - COMMON GROUND

Another sneak peak a few of my designs for Columbia College Chicago's annual Manifest Spectacle Fortuna parade!


I designed these costumes for Common Grounds - Columbia's LGBTA group. The women wear an exaggerated "bubble" dress with a cinched belt, and the men wear "bubble breeches" and a fitted vest with a "bubble" lapel.

Photos thanks to Alexis Ellers
Styling by Jennifer Friedrich, the Spectacle Fortuna Artistic Director
Hair and Makeup by Jennifer Friedrich and Tania Gonzalez

'CONSTRICTION' - SKETCHBOOK 2009

Constriction is one of the short plays in Collaboraction's annual short play festival SKETCHBOOK.

A gang of girls are way over their heads when they kidnap a teacher and she accidentally overdoses on laughing gas...

SKETCHBOOK 2009 - 'NEW AMERICAN FABLE'

Collaboraction's SKETCHBOOK 2009 - New American Fable opened last night to a packed house at Chicago's Building Stage! Seven new short plays and seven devised works were chosen to be part of this year's festival. There is a huge variety in the types of theatre, dance, mime, and movement pieces that make up this year's festival. I designed all sorts of costumes ranging from space suit liners and turn of the century migrant farmers to a WWI German Zeppelin pilot and a Harajuku inspired girl gang.

With over 200 artists involved in SKETCHBOOK 2009, the design process was extremely collaborative. Each of the individual pieces are all so unique, yet as a whole the festival needed a design that flowed through out - unifying the pieces into a collective work of theatre. I kept an eye of wonder in all of the costumes I designed. Something new and fresh, or slightly magical that gave a new perspective on what could be fairly ordinary. Since there is such a variety in performances I interpreted this differently for each piece.

In Para Carmen - a choreographed dance based on Lhasa de Sela's piece 'De cara a la pared' - I used a whimsical, light, and ethereal palette to create the early 20th century migrant farm worker's clothing. A light yellow bonnet shared by 3 dancers signified the passing of one woman's lifetime as it flashed before her in her death.

In What Am I Supposed To Be I created caricatured, storybook-like costumes for many characters, including a blushing bride, an experimental scientist, a convict on death row, and an American soldier. But unlike a storybook, these characters were all not what their costume suggested they were. The bride was nervous and unhappy, the scientist's experiment had gone horribly wrong, the convict was not just waiting for his death, and the soldier struggled with society's simultaneous expectations and neglect.

For Beatrice and Beau I coordinated outfits to create the picturesque cute couple. Both were completely dressed in very light colors - creating an other-worldly tableau. There was also a care-free ease to their costumes which contributed to the "roles" the characters were forced to play within the piece and highlighted their disillusionment at the end of the play.

Here's a short video from WGNTV in Chicago!

Tweets in Collaboractions' Sketchbook fun to follow'by Hedy Weiss for the Chicago Sun-Times

Theatre Review: Sketchbook Festival by Nina Metz for The Chicago Tribune

I will be posting more photos and information of my designs in the next few weeks.

Special thanks to my crew of wonderful and talented assistants:
Bethany Kelly
Kelly Coll
Kelsey Rhodes
Krystal Troutman
Stephanie McNair
Stephanie Paradiso

Don't miss SKETCHBOOK 2009 - New American Fable - there's no other theatre like it playing in Chicago. The shows run through May 10th. Use promotion code 165 for $3 off any tickets at Collaboraction.org.

'PARA CARMEN' - SKETCHBOOK 2009

Para Carmen is one of seven devised works in Collaboraction's annual SKETCHBOOK. Para Carmen is a dance piece created by Sandra Delgado, and is inspired by Lhasa de Sela's piece 'De cara a la pared'.

Michelle Nolan photographed the dancers last weekend.

Photograph courtesy of Michelle Nolan Photography.

SKETCHBOOK opens this weekend at Collaboraction, April 18th and runs through May 10th. Get your tickets now, and use promotion code 165 for discounts!

MANIFEST 2009 - MOVED DANCE GROUP

Here is a sneak peak of the costumes I've designed for MOVED - Columbia College Chicago's dance group. They will be participating in Columbia's Manifest Spectacle Fortuna Parade on Friday, May 15th.


As Spectacle Costume Shop Manager at Columbia, I lead a crew of student employees to design and build the costumes for the Manifest Spectacle Fortuna Parade, as well as many other college-wide events. For MOVED, I created a structured paper mache breastplate made out of tissue paper and paired it with a flowy chiffon A-line dress.

Photos courtesy of Alexis Ellers
Styling by Jennifer Friedrich, the Spectacle Fortuna Artistic Director
Hair and Makeup by Jennifer Friedrich and Tania Gonzalez

'A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN' - JEFF RECOMMENDED!

Josie and Phil Hogan played by Erin Noel Grennan and Larry Neumann, Jr.

A Moon For The Misbegotten opened this weekend at First Folio Theatre in Oak Brook.
 

A Moon For The Misbegotten is one of O'Neill's more heart-wrenching and also surprisingly funny plays.
Phil and Josie Hogan make quite the father-daughter pair, both are headstrong and quick witted, and few can get the best of them when they work together. T. Stedman Harder, the rich oil-man who has built up an estate adjacent to their tenant farm can barely keep his composure as Phil and Josie ridicule him for the "funny jockey's pants" he is wearing. Harder is the image of wealth and privileged in his riding outfit, and he starkly contrasts Hogan's rough appearance and soiled overalls and dingy shirt.

Phil Hogan's schemes seem only to be bested by their landlord and old friend, Jim Tyrone. Jim is an extremely likable Broadway gambler, womanizer, and alcoholic. Jim looks sharp in a summery brown three-piece suit. His dress looks as if he didn't belong on the farm, but his easy manner and familiarity with Josie and Phil mesh naturally. After having long promised to sell the farm to Phil and Josie, Jim gets the best of Phil by pretending that his promise doesn't "go north of ten thousand bucks," and that he would sell the farm to Harder without a second thought.

Always the schemer, Phil creates a web to bring Josie and Jim together- if only briefly. He used "everything [he] knew" about both Josie and Jim, as well as a few lies, to make them realize they loved each other. Each character has their own lies they tell others, and themselves. And in the end, Jim is already too far gone for Josie to save from drinking, and from himself.

I built two blue cotton calico dresses for Josie in the production. Blue is a beautiful color on actor Erin Noel Grennan, and a very fitting color for Josie - blue can be both very strong and also melancholy. I chose a subtle, light calico for the first dress we see Josie in. I liked the slight femininity that the gentle floral pattern gave her in a very utilitarian style work dress. Josie changes for a "moonlight date" with Jim, and I made this second dress out of a midnight blue calico with larger flowers in red and white scattered across it. This pattern was more boldly feminine that the dress that she was most comfortable in and highlighted her embarrassment at being so dressed up when Jim missed the date. I designed both dresses to button down the front so that Josie could show more of her "big, beautiful breasts" than may have been decent for most women of the period.

Check out this video from The Stage Channel of one of the scenes from the play.

The production is Jeff Recommended, and here are some reviews!

Theatre Review: 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' by Kerry Reid for The Chicago Tribune

O'Neill's 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' gets better with age by Barbara Vitello for the Daily Herald

'A Moon for the Misbegotten' by Tom Williams for ChicagoCritic.com

'SPACELAB 2030' - SKETCHBOOK 2009

This is the SpaceLab 2030 photo shoot with mime, actor, and devisor Dean Evans for SKETCHBOOK 2009 - New American Fable at Collaboraction. SKETCHBOOK is an annual festival of 14 short plays and devised works. It opens on April 18th - don't miss it - there will be a huge variety of theatre, dance, music, ...and costumes!

Check out this great time lapse video of the shoot from photographer Ryan Robinson.


SpaceLab 2030 from Ryan Robinson Studio on Vimeo.

SKETCHBOOK 2009 - New American Fable runs through May 10th at The Building Stage in Chicago.

Video and photo courtesy of Ryan Robinson Studio.