THE CURRENT Your weekly dose of arts and entertainment • Thursday, October 31, 2013
Sketchbook to Stage
Sammy Caiola/The Current and Brian Lee/Daily Senior Staffer
A stitch of advice from NU’s finest costume designers BY SAMMY CAIOLA Turning one man into three women is tricky math, but Melanie Vitaterna greets the challenge needle in hand. The Communication junior is currently costume designing for “The 39 Steps,” an Arts Alliance production in which one male actor plays a German spy, a British ingenue and a Scottish wife throughout the course of the show. Vitaterna is responsible, through the cunning use of wigs and petticoats, for making these characters unrecognizable from one another (but just barely). Vitaterna is one of a small group of Northwestern students in the business of playing dress-up on a regular basis. As a costume designer, Vitaterna must
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devise and execute costumes for entire ensembles of student productions, collecting or creating clothing that is “of a different aesthetic, as if people with different personalities chose their own wardrobes,” she said. Her costumes will appear onstage in McCormick Auditorium this weekend. “Know the cast before you design, know the actors,” Vitaterna said. “I really want to be inspired by the character in the script but also the actor who’s going to embody that character. I want to find something that’s going to look really beautiful on his or her body.” Costume designing for stage is a long process, one that starts with pencil and
paper and a lot of brainpower. Weinberg freshman designer Beatrice Hagney, who is currently working on the Purple Crayon Players’ production of “With Two Wings,” said she begins by sitting with the script for a few days before drawing up preliminary designs to show the directors. Once the sketches are approved in a production meeting, the designer can move on to secondary or final drafts. Hagney, a political science major and STITCH magazine stylist, said the key to designing is seeing it through the right lens, taking into account period, setting and audience. “‘With Two Wings’ is a kid show, so we
wanted to create a lot of whimsical elements that would be really appealing to our younger audience, that kids would want to look at and touch, but also set it outside our world, which is what the script adhered to,” Hagney said. After approval from the rest of the production team, the designers go on to “pulling” for costumes or collecting the pieces and materials needed for the finished product, be it from the Theatre and Interpretation Center storage room or a local thrift shop. Lost Eras, a costume store hiding just off » See COSTUMES, page 2
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