Costume Master Class

It's amazing how quickly a Saturday goes by when you have a three hour class smack dab in the middle of it. The master class is part of the Hawaii Theatre's apprenticeship program. For once this group of kids was incredibly engaged. Without the aide of the acting ensemble they usually shell up and are very reserved. It's tough to get them to participate in talk backs after performances. They all have a tendency to be late or dress not quite appropriately to events at the theatre. The head of the program is a stickler for such things and has been toying with consequences that might put them back on track. It's the whole issue of complacency. These kids are good, they were selected from a large pile of applicants. And they have previously been able to float by. We're all trying to up the ante a little bit.

One carrot dangling is an upcoming trip backstage at the Lion King. Engaged and on their best behaviour, or they're out of the program. It's tough. But it's life.

Anyway...

The class went over really well. It's tough to decide how to distill the essence of costume design into one three hour class. We spent most of the period picking apart each others outfits and then people watching downtown. I was hoping to get them to decipher some of the basic psychology of dress...why people wear what they do. Trying to help them see what clothes can tell us about the person, from social class, age, ethnicity and environment to personality. They were a very engaged group this time around. And it was fun to see how they reacted when their peers told them what their outfits revealed about each other.

In the last hour and a half we plowed through the design process and then delved into a scene (heavily edited for content) for them to do a mini design of their own. It would have been nice to have more time to cover the art aspect of it...how to draw people and clothes...but ultimately, I was more concerned with getting them to pay more attention to the how and why of clothes.

I think they got it.