Carrie Stage two

Angel FoxThea 499C3/11/2016

Carrie Stage One Paper

My senior year design is costumes, hair, and make-up for the MSU Production of Carrie:

The Musical. I know that musicals are usually complicated, but nothing prepared me for the

build and what would happen during the month until we opened. The during process for this

show I ran into quite a few problems along the way and though I managed to make it through, I

would have done something very different had I had more time (and maybe not a budget cut).

My first problem came when we had our first production meeting, I had designed enough,

over break, for each character to have one costume for school, uninforms for the girls and prom

attire; the basics for the show and I was confident that those would be all the costume pieces we

would attempt since the show was to be up in a month. I was wrong. When we had our first

production meeting of the semester I had all my research and sketches ready, but Sean wanted

there to be a slight change for each character through the show which added many costume

pieces, a cast of twenty-two is already ambitious enough but now each one will have at the bare

minimum two costumes and Carrie will now have five costumes to herself.

My worry of the expediency of this time frame proved that no matter how much prep I

did, we had to go down to the wire and a new problem would arise that I would have to take into

stride and handle. The first production meeting Sean introduced the idea that, subsequently,

made my job far more complicated. He wanted every character to go through a subtle, daily,

change to convey the passage of time. This meant that even the smallest role had two outfits, and

that meant designing roughly ten costume pieces for each character, for a twenty-two-member

cast, for me. It took too long for me to draw out the new variation and I knew that from what I

had already pulled that my design would not be easy to match with what was in stock at the time.

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Even pulling all that I could, there wasn’t a lot and that is where I hit another wall…the

costume shop’s stock had very little to pull in the ways of modern clothing, not to mention that I

had chosen a specific fashion movement, Hipster, and there were even less options available to

me. To make things even more complicated, a few cast members had to drop out, I had already

designed and begun pulling and buying costume pieces for those character and now it was a

physical reminder of a waste of resources. After, the show was up, I calculated the hours spent

on Carrie ad it was equal to five weeks of my work study hours. With eighteen credit hours

already and managing to do that many extra hours, it’s no wonder I’m behind in some classes.

I’m almost caught up though.

Scheduling a shopping day was going to be of the utmost importance but I found out

quickly that my schedule didn’t mesh well with that of Denise’s and Christine’s and I would

need them both for a shopping day if I was to pull this off. The first week of school, I had

shopping links ready to go but because of our time crunch, many of these garments would take

too long to arrive by mail so we had to abandon that plan and I pulled everything I could from

stock. I was able to attain casual clothing for the ensemble and similar pieces for the main

characters but nothing that would suffice as a full outfit.

Finally, after a scheduling nightmare, Denise, Christine and I, were able to set a shopping

date. We went February sixth and we had a lot to buy. I had created a list of thrift stores,

consignment shops and similar stores like Goodwill so that we could buy a bulk of items for a

more than fair pricing. I was lucky to find a few prom dresses in goodwill running around fifteen

dollars. After hours of sifting through thousands of items I had taken care of the majority of the

casual daily changes and half of prom. The men’s tuxes still eluded me at this point, I would later

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have to cancel my order of tuxes from Goody’s and pull business suits due to a halt in the

school’s budget.

Since the show was massive in scale, the costumes took me weeks to get together and it

was cutting it close for first dress. From stock I got the basics socks, undergarments, etc. Many

pieces were pulled from stock or bought but we ran into fitting problems consistently for a few

actors. After analyzing the situation, I realized that four people had to be re-measured due to

changes in the body since last semester or inaccurate measuring. After that was cleared up, I had

only a small list of pieces to find, but they were pieces I had issues with locating. The only order

that we could successfully and viably secure was the uniforms from Holbrook’s Embroidery.

They turned out well, even though they mixed up in shorts that caused a fitting issue, but they

arrived for first dress and they looked great.

The build of this show was to happen in only a month. Planning for this fast a pace for a

show wasn’t proving to be easy and putting my concepts to work with what resources I had was

tougher still. As I began to break the character’s costumes down it became very clear that

another shopping day was in order, but neither my schedule, nor Denise’s, permitted us to leave

town so we went to every store we could, in Morehead, to finish out the show.

Last semester, before we took our Winter break, we all met for a production meeting and

it wasn’t clear if we were going to use actual stage blood for the show yet. We had mentioned

lighting for it and maybe water but that changed when this semester began. Sean had decided

that blood was the way to go and so I had to plan accordingly. This meant that Carrie would have

two dresses and there would be pressure squibs for Margret and Carrie.

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Blood proofing is a nightmare for costumers and its always hit and miss if the stains will

come out for the next show. Many blood tests were done to assure that our methods of cleaning

and protection were effective. The blood packs consisted of a baggie filled with a specific

mixture of Ben Nye stage blood, blue dawn dish soap and water, to allow it to come out of

clothing. The blue dish soap gave the blood a darker hue and a thicker consistency. The contents

of the baggie were then collected into one corner of the bag and then twisted off to create

pressure and is sealed by wrapping thread on the twisted area. The remainder of the bag is

snipped of and you have what I affectionately call a “blood strawberry”, ready for a pressurized

burst of blood when hit by the actor.

Going into the tech run of a show is stressful enough, but the sheer work load that

everyone had in Carrie was astounding. Even now, I’m still surprised that we managed to pull it

off in the time frame that we did. Everyone was feeling to strain of such a technical heavy show.

As usual, with first dress train wrecks are expected. There were an enormous amount of quick

changes and plotting them out with the choreography proved to be difficult for first dress. After a

few blocking changes the major issues were remedies. To allow for easy changes all athletic

shoes had elastic shoe laces put in. The quick change into the uniforms took all three costume

rehearsals to successfully master but it to was managed. Carrie quick change from the water

soaked prom dress to the pre-blooded double dress was surprisingly smoother than initially

thought. It only took two tries to get it show ready. My costume crew was professional, fast and

magical. They had to be to survive the run of this show.

The design for the hair and makeup was modeled after many trending styles from the

iconic, Kylie Jenner face with dark lipstick, to the dramatic, smoky, cat eye. Both genders had

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contouring to do and the clarity of their feature read well on stage because of that choice.

Makeup and Hair purchasing was halted since it was to be bought for the second dress rehearsal,

this happened to be after the news that we could no longer utilize our budget, so some changes in

did occur in accordance with what we had in stock and what actor had on a hand. Regardless, the

makeup and hair design for the most part stayed the same, with the exception of the prom

changes, which for budget, skill set and quick change issues needed to be simplified. In hide

sight it was probably better that people used some of their own personal make up shades to best

match their complexion as well as the style is harder to convey in stage makeup shades.

When I saw it all together I was baffled that it was complete. I was so busy doing that the

revelation that I had actually pulled it off didn’t sink in until the first show began. I thought

Oedipus was hard enough but the fact that I actually pushed myself to do such an ambitious

show in this amount of time really made me feel like a fully realized designer. It was the

fulfillment I felt from this show that made it special and the fact that this was my senior show

only proved that I could, in fact design elaborate projects. Of course, there were a few things I

would have changed about the show had I gotten, more time to design, full access to funds, and

longer build time, but I am very proud of what I managed to do with what parameters I was

given.

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Carrie Stage two