Anatomy of a Suicide Costume Process
Costuming by: Carly Bozeman
Below I provided a breakdown of my costuming process Angels in America, one of the 13 short plays in Connection Collection. This process is out of the ordinary due to COVID-19, but I felt was incredibly helpful in staying organized with my work.
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1. Finding Visuals
The first step of my online costume design process for Anatomy of a Suicide was to gather visuals I felt were representative of the discussions I had with the student director, Miranda Tilley. She pictured her scene having a 1970s feel to the costuming/sets, so originally I had gathered images reminiscent of that time. Miranda had a very clear image of Daisy appearing incredibly young & naive, whereas Carol she wanted to appear as an aloof middle-aged woman--always smoking her cigarettes.
2. Converting to Darks
In the second step of the costume design process, I was rerouted to imagine each of the scenes costumes as dark/muted colors like black, dark brown, or dark blue (Any dark color that wouldn't interfere with lighting). I took my original thought process of 1970s looks and tweaked them to fit the desired overall look of dark colors.
3. Creating Lists & Notes
I then took the inspiration I drew from the visuals and listed out the items that needed to be pulled from the SSU Costume shop for costuming--(considering the pandemic, Costume Shop Director Martha Clarke played a substantial role in helping the costume process run smoothly. She went on campus during COVID-19 to pull the necessary pieces needed). Considering most costuming was basic black, many actors had the pieces we needed in their closets!
After this point in the costuming process, I focused the rest of my time gathering costume pieces from actor's closets & meeting with Martha, on occasion, to pick up the costume pieces she pulled from SSU. From there, local actors came to my house to pick up their pulled costume pieces, and the actors far away had their pulled pieces mailed to them by Martha.