I stopped by the wardrobe room yesterday before the evening session of tech, and found Kristin, McCarter’s “First Hand,” adjusting a belt. The costume shop is a well-threaded machine: the Costume Shop Manager (and her assistant) coordinate with each show’s Costume Designer, and get sketches (and fabric swatches) of the designs; then, the Drapers create patterns, and Kristin (the First Hand), cuts out the patterns in the chosen fabric; then everyone works together to stitch them up.

In the picture at left, Kristin was working on a belt that the Stick Fly character Kimber wears in the play (she is adjusting it while looking into a mirror). The belt has to be able to put on during a quick change, so Kristin was playing around with different ways to attach it so that it could be put on in a matter of seconds. During last night’s tech rehearsal, Cheryl, the Production Stage Manager, was timing out the quick-changes with a stopwatch. After each attempt, she would tell everyone how they did (shaving off another 4 seconds, etc.). It was a little bit like watching the coach of a swim-team.

The neat thing about Kristin (and about many of the staff members at McCarter) is that in addition to supporting McCarter’s artists, she also has a career as an artist in her own right. As a costume designer, her work was recently seen as part of NYC’s Summer Play Festival, and her designs have started to crop up all over New Jersey. So when she’s big and famous, let’s hope she remembers McCarter!

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Out of the Box, Stick Fly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.