Costume Design

Airness
University of Colorado
-Costume Designer-

Airness is a contemporary play about Nina and her journey as she discovers more about the very real sport of competative Air Guitar. The play centers around six air guitar competitors who perform as their personas: Shreddy Eddy, Golden Thunder, Facebender, Cannibal Queen, D Vicious, and The Nina. I aimed to reflect the characters personalities, passion for music, subculture, and the magic that the air guitar community calls "Airness".

Photos by Rachel D Graham

Director: Jenna Moll Reyes

Assistant Director: Heather Kelley

Stage Manager: Wessie Simmons

Assistant Stage Managers: Hannah Iverson, Liv Blakeslee

Costume Designer: Celeste Fenton

Lighting Designer: Rachel Lynne Fields

Show Electrician: Nick Cozzo

Props Designer: Nikky Haabestad

Scenic Designer: Connor Robertson

Sound Designer: Matt Eckstein

Systems Engineer: Sam Morin

Shreddy Eddy: Brian Cloutier

Facebender: Derek Hernandez

The Nina: Lucinda Lazo

Cannibal Queen: Sofia Rodriguez

D-Vicious: Tristan Skogen

Golden Thunder: Skye Tran

Ensemble: Marie-Antionette Banks, Braint Chen, Ian Mccance

Hamlet
University of Colorado
1972

By setting Hamlet in the early 70s, I aimed to remind viewers of the themes of civil unrest, political scandal, and liberation present in both the play and our recent history.

Casting Hamlet as a woman aimed to further the allusions to the Women's and Gay Liberation movements. It challenges the audiences view of the "emotional", "immature" Hamlet.

As the friends called in to help with Hamlet's emotions it made sense to also cast Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as women.

I furthered the comparison by referencing John F Kennedy in my design for Hamlet's Father, both being the patriarchal head of state who died before his time.

Similarly, Claudius' design referenced Richard Nixon, the ruler who's remembered for scandal and deception.

The Gravediggers were inspired by returned Vietnam veterans who protested the war and contemplated the life and death in the context of PTSD.

A Midsummer Nights' Dream
University of Colorado
Late Victorian

We were assigned to create renderings for 14 characters in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The show as to be set in the late Victorian era and we worked with director Wendy Franz of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival to bring her interpretations of the text to life.

It was important to me that with the symbols I used in the fairy world supported the interpretation of the text that Wendy and I were after. The play’s power shift from Oberon to Titania is one things that has always bothered me about the play. By representing these characters as Autumn and Spring, this power shift is part of the natural cycle of “Midsummer”.

My fairies drew inspiration from Pre-Raphaelite artwork in order to draw from Victorian interpretations on Fantasy.

For the rude mechanicals, I enjoyed creating their improvised costumes for Pyramus and Thisbe. Wendy and I decided to take a gender-bent approach to Peter Quince. As the plays director, their character is already set apart from the group and I thought it might be an interesting explanation for Quince’s different status.

My version of Quince wears bloomer suit which was gaining fringe popularity with working women in the late Victorian Era and which was inspired by the same Ottoman fashions that I used as reference for Hippolyta.

Tartuffe
University of Colorado
Modern High Fashion and Baroque

For this assignment we were tasked with creating rendering for 8 characters in Molière’s Tartuffe. Our designs took elements from Baroque fashion and modern high fashion. I chose to combine the exaggerated elements of the Baroque with the similarly exaggerated glam rock fashion of the late 1970s.