Vol. 38, No. 18

4-20-2004
By: Susan Wittstock

A stitch in time

Resident costume designer responsible for 60 Candide costumes

Sewing for Barbie dolls is all well and fine, but when Kristine Kearney discovered she could sew clothing for herself, her calling in life began to become clear.

She was nine years old, a child in Buffalo, N.Y., who liked to draw and paint and imagine herself as an actress and singer when she became a grown-up. As she sat with her mother at the sewing machine, learning how to make life-size seams, she was learning skills she’d eventually use as a costume designer for stage and cinema productions throughout the United States.

Kearney’s career led her to Ohio State in the fall of 2003, when she became an assistant professor and resident costume designer for the Department of Theatre. It’s been a busy year for her, most notably through her work designing, finding or renting the 60-some costumes that the actors and singers will wear in the School of Music and Department of Theatre’s joint production of Candide. The musical will be performed in Thurber Theatre April 23-25 and April 30-May 2.

“It’s been a challenge,” Kearney said.

Although there are 22 cast members, Kearney had to create many more costumes because the chorus members tend to wear between three to four costumes.

She found out in May, before she officially began at Ohio State, that she would be designing the Candide costumes. In September, she began talking about designs with guest director Steven Anderson, artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre.

After reading the script, Kearney knew she was working with a comedy. “The question then was ‘How broad do we want to play it? Close to realistic style or more of a clownish look?’ The director decides on that with our (faculty lighting designer Mary Tarantino and faculty set designer Dan Gray) input,” she said.

The musical is based on Voltaire’s 1759 novelette, so Kearney said there is an 18th century sensibility to the show. “I’ve used that as a jumping-off point, but the nature of the play gives me leeway. Some plays you have to be exact with the historical detail. In Candide, we could have gone in any direction.”

To gain inspiration, Kearney’s research included looking at photos from other productions, examining 18th century paintings, and traveling to fabric stores to see what caught her eye. In November, she sat down at the drawing board and began putting designs to paper, using her preferred method of watercolors.

Her office, where she has a drafting table and a wall of books on various costume periods, is in the basement of the Drake Performance Center. It is only a door away from the costume shop, so the place buzzes with activity through the week. When she wants to get some drawing done, Kearney likes to come in on a Saturday and enjoy a few quiet hours of design time.

In December, each member of the cast came in to be measured. By Christmas, Kearney had started constructing some of the principles’ costumes. “It’s really been 10 weeks of intense work,” she said. “The women’s clothes are very complicated. There’s lots of underconstruction.”

To make the costumes, Kearney creates a pattern based on the drawing, fitting it onto a dress form. Then, in a step called draping, a version in muslin is made for the actor before the final costume is cut from the chosen fabrics. Kearney, however, often drapes without first creating the muslin prototype. She gained confidence in her accuracy while working as a draper in the early 1990s on films such as Driving Miss Daisy and the Shawshank Redemption, where she had limited time with the actors and had to create the costumes quickly.

For Candide, she focused on the principles’ costumes because they’re on stage the most. For chorus costumes, “You design them as a group. I made sure the color palette was very neutral — grays and browns. I was able to pull most of them from stock and rentals.”

Ohio State’s Department of Theatre has a collection of costumes currently stored in three different rooms in the Drake, and in a small space located inside the CAR-IT center on Kinnear Road. The costumes are stored using a relatively simple organizational system: men, women and time periods, from say, ancient Greeks on up through the 1950s. Petticoats are all in one section, hats and purses in another.

Additional costumes are rented from other theaters. “I have a lot of contacts at other theaters, so they’re often free, except for shipping and dry cleaning,” Kearney said.

For this production, Kearney had a budget of $5,000 for 60 costumes. “I’ve tried to be as frugal as possible early on, so I could afford the things we can’t make — jewelry, hats, shoes,” she said. “It’s part of the job to not waste money, and I enjoy making something inexpensive look like a million bucks.”

The costume shop has one staff member, Julia Weiss, and three graduate student workers, as well as a number of undergraduates who are doing practicums. They all worked on the costumes for Candide, as did two professional stitchers. The costumes had to be ready by April 19 for dress rehearsals, though Kearney had the option of adding trim later, if necessary.

Kearney earned her MFA in design in 1985 and spent the next 12 years as a freelancer, designing for regional, professional and university productions, as well as films, before taking a teaching position at Willamette University in Oregon.

She said she’s enjoying her first year at Ohio State. Standing in the costume shop, she can see the fruit of her labor: racks of costumes for Candide — silk bodices, brocade jackets and doublets, colorful Mexican skirts, fleece lamb outfits, black robes with red flames and little red devils appliquéd onto the hems.

One of the robes will be worn by a soft, stuffed dummy that plays the role of a dead body. The dummy was stretched out on one of the shop’s three large worktables, and a graduate student was busy stuffing him with strips of muslin.

Kearney reached out and picked up one pale plastic hand, then gently lowered it back to the table. “I’ve done lots of weird things,” she said. “If I stop and think about it, it’s just surreal.”

THE EVENT

Candide, by Leonard Bernstein and Richard Wilbur

• Department of Theatre and School of Music

• Performances are at 7:30 p.m. April 23; 8 p.m. April 24, 30 and May 1; and 2 p.m. April 25 and May 2 in Thurber Theatre, Drake Performance Center.

• Tickets are $14 general public, $10 OSU faculty, staff, alumni and seniors; $8 students and children, available at the door or call the box office at 292-2295.

• Immediately following the April 30 performance, audience members are invited to participate in a backstage tour with the production team.
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