'Still Life With Iris' Costume Renderings

I am working on an exciting project with Yellow Tree Theater in Osseo, Minnesota. Yellow Tree Theater was started three years ago by Jason and Jessica Peterson, University of Minnesota Duluth alumni and my classmates. They invited another fellow UMD alum Andy Frye to direct a show this season, he chose the magical play Still Life With Iris, and asked me to be the costume designer.

This is a big undertaking me being in New York and all the actors, other designers, and theater in Minnesota, but I love the play and my friends so much I couldn't turn it down. Still Life With Iris opens in February 2012 and runs from the 3rd through the 26th Thursdays-Saturdays 7:30pm and Sundays 2pm. If your in the area you need to check it out!

I am sharing some of my costume renderings I did for the play and you can check out all my costume renderings in my online gallery here.

Now, Still Life With Iris is a fantasy children's show with a dark twist. There are three worlds that I decided to design vastly different.

Nocturno is a land where everyone who lives there works during the night to create things we see in our everyday life. For example there is a Flower Painter, Rain Maker, and Thunder Bolt Bender. Each person wears a coat that holds their memory, if they get a rip in their coat they will forget something and if they take it off they lose their memory completely. I designed the coats with DIY handmade style and my family in mind, cozy, colorful, full of little details, trims, and buttons.

The Goods are the rulers of Nocturno and they get what they want. What they want is the best of everything. So this means the best chair, the best shoe, the best little girl and so on. They are dangerous, mentally unsound, and intoxicatingly sexy. They wear formal high fashion garments that are sleek and a bit off putting.

The Tunnel of the Unwanted is where everything goes that no one wants. This includes three colorful characters Captian Also, Third String, and Ray. They each have a sad story of how they came to the tunnel and hold a nasty grudge against anyone they meet. They wear their most prize possesions on their back and resemble horders with their collections of unwanted items.

posted by Sarah