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.
