Still Life With Iris is coming to life!

I feel like my life has been consumed by the world of 'Still Life With Iris' and I love it! I am designing the costumes for this magical play being performed at the Yellow Tree Theatre in Osseo, MN. If you are in the chilly state in February you must go see it, it will warm your heart and dazzle your eyes!

STILL LIFE WITH IRIS
February 3rd -26th, every Thursday-Saturday 7:30 and Sundays at 2:00
To Order Tickets Call 763-493-8733
yellowtreetheatre.com

The costumes have been so much fun to design, you can see my costume renderings here. I started by doing a lot of research of images that created the feeling I wanted to convey through the costumes. The director Andy Frye and I met often to look at images and talk about each character. I then did my drawings to refine my vision and be able to start my search for each costume piece. I found a lot of costumes at my parents house (thanks for never throwing anything away!) and a variety of thrift stores in St. Cloud, Hutchinson, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Paterson, NJ! All of the clothes needed some sort of artistic tweaks or total reconstruction, but I would say 85% of the costumes are recycled, reused, or found materials. I feel really good about keeping my design eco friendly, which also adds to the charm of the clothes. Here is a sneak peek from the fittings I had with the actors...

Iris actress Mary

Leaf Monitor actress Sheila

Memory Mender actor Bruce

Mozart actor Nathan

3rd String actor Ryan

You can also watch a darling video Jason Peterson, artistic director, made of the costumes on Facebook. Thanks for the support and I hope you can see the show!

post by Sarah

'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