Finding the right outfit for a night can be daunting or exciting depending on the event and who you are trying to impress. Imagine trying to do that for 15 people for an imaginary setting! Everyone’s costume has to be appropriate for the character, his/her actions, the time period, and theme of a performance.
How do we do it?
The director has some ideas about how the play will come alive. These ideas are sketched out and in these technically savvy times, we use a lot of Google Image searches. A plan gets drawn up with some mash-ups.
And then we start looking at previous costumes…
In people’s closets…
And decide if the original costume plan will work. If it does, then we go about buying clothing and also sewing pieces.
If the original plan doesn’t work, we decide what doesn’t work and why. Maybe everyone has to have new costumes or maybe the costumes wouldn’t actually be good for the actions of the characters. Then the costume ideas that don’t work are changed. And we start looking again.