Costumes capture images for actors
For Utah State University’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah! Wilderness!,” costume design was headed by Melinda McDermott.
McDermott is a senior theater major with an emphasis in costume design.
“I had a lot of help with this production. About five to eight people actually helped me,” McDermott said.
McDermott said the materials or articles of clothing which compose the costumes are usually purchased from local stores. Others are ordered and a good number are collected from the classroom shop.
“For ‘Ah! Wilderness!,’ we dyed a lot of the clothes that were used for the costumes,” McDermott said.
The entire process of design and selection took about 10 weeks, with the process beginning two and one-half weeks before the semester began McDermott said.
“What I tried to capture through the costumes was an image for each actor that would instantaneously identify Eugene O’Neill’s character,” she said.
Dustin Vetica, a freshman sports therapy major, attended a showing of the production.
“For me, the costumes made the play a little harder to understand at first. As it went on, I began to understand and I think the costumes actually helped,” Vetica said.
“The costumes needed to fit the personality of the actors as well as the characters of ‘Ah! Wilderness!,'” McDermott said.
“The director wanted the play to look kind of like a rehearsal but still have the costumes stay true to the characters, which was pretty hard to do,” she said.
The costumes were a combination of period clothing and modern clothing.
“The inside pieces of the costumes were one color, but each piece was complimentary to the actor(s). I chose black because I think that black is an indigenous actor color,” McDermott said.
Anthony Stewart, a senior physical education major, also attended the production.
“I thought the costumes were dope. They represented the spirit of the times,” Stewart said.
Each costume had words written somewhere on the clothing.
“To me, the writing on the costumes signified the literature that was being challenged during that time period,” said Chris Oustrich, a freshman elementary education major.
Another USU student, Kristen Arzani, an undeclared freshman also commented about the writings on the costumes.
“I actually had a class discussion about the costumes and I feel that the written words were a walking example of the importance of not allowing yourself to be censored. Each costume expressed the nature of the character,” Arzani said.
McDermott said, “The writing on the costumes signified what each character could not say. I actually got the idea after reading about it being done in a fashion show. Some characters had more writing than others: The more writing, the more the character was willing to say.”