Holes
Kate Barlow, Teacher
Sarah Cubbage, the costume designer, created an amazing and feminine look for Kate Barlow before she becomes the fearsome outlaw. Sarah wanted to show high contrast between the two moments in the characters life. Kate Barlow is presenting as almost the stereotypical frontier teacher in media. She is feminine, soft, and perfectly contrasting with the roughness of the wild west.
For her outfit, Sarah designed a 9 gored skirt with a pleated panel at the bottom of one of the gores and a ruffled shirtwaist with lace detail. The skirt was made from a vert soft material that was backed to net and silk organza so that it held up to the fullness of the hem.
The shirtwaist is a costume that needed to do "tricks." The director and Sarah wanted the shirtwaist to be able to be torn off and ripped on stage during the hanging scene. I experimented with where the "torn" places could be and how the performer could remove the whole shirt on stage. I achieved this with snaps painted in white nail polish and creating laps in seams where there are not normally any.
Madame Zeroni
Madame Zeroni was a lot of fun to make. The costume was constantly evolving in real time with the construction, which posed the challenge of working both forward and back when new ideas came. The bodice that I built went through a few iterations and styles before Sarah an I found the style that she wanted.
Madame Zeroni's bodice is a velvet with sewn on sequins mounted to a coutil base to help create shape and firmness to a very soft fabric. The hanging sleeves are sewn on sequins on a lighter fabric. One thing that the performer discover while wearing the costume was that she was very sensitive the scratchiness of the sequins. She was dealing with breakouts and discomfort. Through some experimentation, I found that clipping the sequins near the neckline, covering seams in silk organza, and adding a lining to the hanging sleeves helped to create a barrier to between the fabric and the performer.
Linda Walker
Linda Walker's dress was one of those moments in costume production where everyone knows that you have to make the dress because it does a "trick." It is supposed to be a simple sad looking dress to help move the story along and show how the drought is affecting everyone. Linda Walker is the character that shows how far the town of Green Lake has fallen after the death of Sam.
This dress has to do three things: 1. Be a super quick change. 2. Hide the Warden's costume while the performer was Linda Walker. And 3. Hold a pregnancy belly in place in the dress, so that it went on as one piece.
This dress is based off a dress that was in stock at Baltimore Center Stage, but was too delicate to survive the run of a show. I pulled a pattern off the extent dress and made some adjustments that the designer wanted.
