A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Just before I started designing Midsummer, I had seen the Guo Pei fashion exhibit in San Francisco, and I was inspired by the imagination and resourcefulness in her work. Coming into Midsummer, I immediately felt how much room there was to be fanciful and playful, and to let the design support the magic of the story.
The ballet academy was on a very tight budget. We did not have access to expensive materials or paid labor, so much of the design came from using what we already had in inventive ways. We incorporated leather pieces in different shapes throughout the costumes, along with upholstery fabrics, donated fabric samples, dyed feathers, flowers, ribbon, and other materials from our stock.
For Oberon’s fairies, we started with green bodysuits we already owned and added bloomer-style pants made from black and sheer ribbon fabric. We also had upholstery fabric that we cut into hundreds of individual leaves. From our mask-making work, we had thousands of leftover metal nose pieces, so we sewed those into the leaves. That allowed us to bend and shape them instead of having them lie flat, which gave the costumes much more dimension and movement.
The headpieces were another area where we could be very playful. We created dragonfly-inspired headpieces by purchasing small wings, spray-painting them, and attaching them to decorated headbands. Puck’s costume was built from a combination of leather and donated upholstery materials. Interior designers often give us discontinued fabric books, and we used those small samples and scraps to create leaves and other textured details throughout the production.
A great deal of that creativity came from volunteer Lynne Donaldson, who is an exceptionally inventive collaborator. She developed many of the ideas for the leaves and helped find imaginative ways to transform inexpensive and donated materials into something theatrical.
I especially loved how the Oberon fairies and the little fireflies turned out. They became a good example of what we were trying to do throughout the production: create a sense of wonder through resourcefulness rather than expense. I was also challenged to figure out how to keep the two couples visually distinct so that our youngest audience members could understand the story without words. I chose the simplest solution and put one couple in red and the other in blue.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alexander Academy Performing Company, Maui, Hawaii, 2023. Artistic Director: Amelia Nelson. Choreography: Absalon Figueroa and Hallie Hunt. Costume Shop: The Sewing Hui of Maui. Lead Costume Assistant: Lynne Donaldson.
Photography by Chelsea Fine
