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Magazine
June 20135
Amanda Aldridge and her team are busy creating costumes
When you walk into Barter Theatre’s
busy costume shop, you’ll see racks of
costumes neatly hung and labeled with the
name of the play and the character, and all
the equipment, such as dress forms, fabrics
and sewing machines, you would expect
to see in a design shop. You’ll also see a
small piece of gray fabric that is priceless to
Amanda Aldridge.
“When we were talking about the
concept of everything being gray, I grabbed
some swatches, some fabric and some dye
and took it home. I dyed some fabric in a
paper cup and came up with samples. We decided on one particular gray, and I cut in into
two pieces and gave a piece of it to Amanda
Stewart for a reference when she dyed costume pieces and yards and yards of fabric.”
That piece of gray fabric is priceless because it is the centerpiece of Aldridge’s entire
design scheme. She says that she had to
lend it to the set designers, so they could mix
the right color to paint the set and missed it
while it was gone.
Every other color has to work with it.
She has a large board labeled with every
character’s name and under each name is
a group of fabrics that will be used to make
their costumes, and on that board is that
small, irregular piece of gray cloth.
“Everyone starts off all in that gray,
except for Javert; he’s in his colors. As you
meet the principals and as Valjean escapes,
they put on their colors,” Aldridge says. “It
was interesting balancing these colors. The
reddest I used is the red of the rebels, but
it’s not as bright a red as I would use if I
were just making red, white and blue rebel
sashes. But in context of the other colors, it
looks really red. It’s interesting to balance
the colors so that something pops out and
doesn’t look pretty - with this gray, dustier
colors look really pretty with it.”
As the members of the ensemble,
referred to as “ghosts” in Barter Theatre’s
production, take on roles such as factory
workers, they add pieces of costume that are
in a specific, carefully chosen color.
For example, when one actor becomes a
prostitute, she adds a corselet over her gray
top and skirt; another adds a shawl and one
tucks her skirt up to show off her stockings.
“I don’t want to represent the characters or try to pretend we’re dressing the
character. I’m trying to just give them a piece
of the colors. I chose burgundy for the prostitutes, the students are in warm browns and
the rebels are in red. They’ll have a touch of
the color, so they step out of being a ghost
into the scene. I try to keep it as minimal
as possible and just evoke the character;
as opposed to pretending they are different
people. We want to know throughout that
they are ghosts and to see part of that ghost
costume the entire time. Sometimes my
instinct is to add this and this, so I’m trying
to be consistent as I go through.”
That consistency requires that Aldridge
make numerous decisions throughout the
process. “It’s hundred and thousands of
choices that get made with the designs, the
fittings and the shopping, – creative ones
and practical ones,” she says. “For instance,
Rick decided that he wanted Valjean to give
Cosette a new dress when he rescues her,
so we had to rethink design decisions on
the dress. We needed a closure that Valjean
could do on stage prettily and in time. Things
that happen in rehearsal change the tack we
take on something. We found out that Rick
McVey (Javert) is going to have a chair broken over his back, so we added padding to
his jacket. Some of the actors have to kneel,
so we added padding to the pants.”
Right: Ashley Campos fits an actress’s
corset to a dress form.
Below: Ashley Campos slides individual
boning pieces into one of the corsets
the Barter Theatre team created.
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The color board for “Les Mis,” the precious gray swatch is indicated
with an arrow.
There are so many pieces of costume,
which are in various stages of completion,
that Aldridge uses a database to track them.
“Les Misérables” isn’t the biggest show she’s
done in terms of the number of costumes –
that honor belongs to “Evita” – but she had
to create, buy or make, and track 555 pieces
for “Les Mis.”
The database includes descriptions,
where each piece came from, whether it has
been purchased or needs to be pulled from
stock. If it’s in rehearsal the database tracks
whether it’s a facsimile piece or the actual
costume and whether it’s been fitted to the
actor.
After thousands of decisions, dying
costumes and yards and yards of fabric seven
to 10 yards a time, redesigning costumes because of changes in staging, discovering that
one actor was allergic to wool so she had to
find a different fabric for that coat, shopping,
dying shoes and tracking everything, Aldridge
is still excited about the production.
“I’ve never done anything quite like this,
so it’s interesting, challenging and fun.” And
she says she hopes that the audience gets
“captivated and engaged by the work and
doesn’t necessarily analyze it. After the fact,
they may go ‘oh that’s cool,’ but hopefully
the experience is more visceral, and the costumes help to tell the story. That’s the most
important thing to me - that the costumes
don’t distract and draw attention but tell the
story.
“Of course, it would be lovely if they felt
like the costumes are gorgeous to look at,”
she adds.