The Costume Designs of Susan Whitfield: A Gallery Exhibit

Count Almaviva from The Marriage of Figaro

I have known Susan Whitfield almost all my life.  She came to work at Ricks College (later BYU-Idaho) in the early 70's and worked with my father in the Theatre Department.  For 18 years she designed and built all the costumes for all the theatre department's shows as well as taught a full load of classes.  The college eventually hired a costume shop director and for the last 23 years she has been able to design the costumes but not build them.  She has also served as the department chair more than once.

In 2000, I became her colleague when I was hired to teach at Brigham Young University-Idaho.  In that time we worked on the addition to the Snow Building together and she oversaw the construction of a new theatre wing including a new black box theatre and a new costume shop with compact storage.  With all the things she has done, no-one has really ever recognized her for her accomplishments.  I think we all tend to take one another for granted alot of the time.

At some point, Susie started talking about retirement and I resolved to do something to show to the campus community what I had come to know about Susan Whitfield.  I conceived of a gallery exhibit with mannequins dressed in some of her best costumes on display either in the lobbies of the Snow Building or better yet in the Spori Gallery.  I started talking about this exhibit around five years ago to deans and department chairs as well as the curator of the BYI-Idaho art collection.  At first the idea was received kind of tepidly, almost as if it were a good idea but would require alot of work to do.  Over the course of the next few years deans and department chairs were changed and new attitudes prevailed.

As Susie grew closer to retirement the idea began to be more of a priority.  Our new department chair, Richard Clifford bought into the idea and did alot of the legwork to convince the gallery manager that we needed to do this and then he bought 10 mannequins for the exhibit.  The thought was, no matter what we were going to do this, even if we had to curate the exhibit in our own building.

Permission was granted and the show was scheduled for Spring Semester, 2012 in the Spori Gallery.  Richard, Kyoung Dabell (the gallery manager) and I designed the exhibit from the middle of February of this year to opening night which was at the end of April.  We selected costumes to be shown based on several criterion.  First we wanted to show the best of her work, second we wanted to show variety, and third we wanted to show costumes designed over a long period of time.

Count Almaviva's costume from The Marriage of Figaro was the opening piece in the show.  The photo at the beginning of this blog post is that costume.

To the left we had two female mannequins dressed in Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha's funeral dresses and one male dressed as Teddy from Arsenic and Old Lace.  There was also some interpretive materials that included a brief description of the costumes and concepts as well as additional photos, but these were not in place when I photographed the exhibit.

Aunt Abby, Teddy and Aunt Martha from Arsenic and Old Lace

Further to the left of the gallery and around a corner is what we called the "Biblical Room".  On one wall we had the wedding garb of Mary and Joseph from Savior of the World and on the other wall we had the costumes of the three kings from the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.  These costumes were not on mannequins but hung on custom hangers that I designed and Richard and I built.  We stuffed the costumes to fill them out and hung them from wrought iron hooks on the walls.

Joseph and Mary's wedding garb from Savior of the World

Kings Kaspar, Melchior and Balthazar from Amahl and the Night Visitors

On the exterior wall in the "Biblical" room we had a couple of stands with hats on them, then opposite on a movable pylon we had the two wedding dresses, one pristine and one distressed from The Taming of the Shrew.

Snood from Life is a Dream, hand beaded by Susan Whitfield

Wedding dresses from The Taming of the Shrew

In the center room we had an eclectic group of costumes beginning with Goods from Everyman which was a modern couture abstraction of medieval ideas.  Susan embroidered the big panel in the back of the jacket.  Opposite Goods were Orgon and Elmire from Tartuffe.  On one of the side walls in the center room we had Lady Bracknell from The Importance of Being Earnest and on the other we had a victorian lady's outdoor dress from Abe Lincoln in Illinois.  This was the oldest piece in the show and was made nearly twenty years ago.  I especially like how the bonnet is displayed with this outfit.

Goods from Everyman

Orgon and Elmire from Tartuffe

Lady Bracknell from The Importance of Being Earnest

Lady's dress and bonnet from Abe Lincoln in Illinois

In the other main room of the gallery we had a trio of costumes on mannequins from what I believe to be Susie's best show, Life is a Dream.  This show was produced in fall of 2011.  I find it remarkable that Susie is doing her best work at the end of her career.  She's going out on top.  I respect that immensely.

The costumes from left to right are Duke Astolfo, Princess Estrella and King Basil.  Each of these costumes and most of the others in the show had handstitched ruffs around the neck and the cuffs.  Susie stitched on many of these as well as other workers in the costume shop.  Princess Estrella's dress is gathered in cartridge pleats where the skirt and bodice meet.  One of the things I think set's Susie apart from many costume designers is her attention to detail, especially on period garments.  Estrella's underskirt is made from a piece of heavy chenille that Susie and I have been "fighting" over for twelve years.  I have wanted to use it for upholstery and curtains and she had been saving it for about twenty years to use on an Elizabethan gown.  She won!

Astolfo, Estrella and Basil from Life is a Dream

Finally, the last room of the exhibit is what we called the process room.  We designed it to be an interpretation of Susie's design and production process.  It started with a table with a script of Life is a Dream, some research for the play and finally some of her sketches in progress for the show.  Across from the table is a pattern making and cutting station to show the next step in the process.  After that is an industrial sewing machine we borrowed from the shop and then there are three dress forms, one male with King Basil's heavy sleeve made as a fitting shell and the other two dressed in other costumes.  One was a woman's costume from Athaliah and the other was Adela's green flamenco dress from The House of Bernarda Alba.  Finally, on the last wall were three hats.  Kyoung always likes to put something quirky on that wall since it is the least visible one in the gallery.

The design station

The cutting table

Industrial machine with suit form.  Basil's sleeve was fitted the day after this photo

Dress from Athaliah and Adela's dress from The House of Bernarda Alba

The quirky hat wall

In addition to the costumes on the walls and mannequins, for the gallery opening we had seven students dressed in costumes Susie had designed.  For the most part they were costumes that the individuals had worn on stage at one time or another.

Susie and the students

For my part, this was a labor of love.  It's something I've been invested in for the better part of five years.  It was a joy to do and absolutely satisfying once it was complete.  I'm thankful to have been a colleague of Susan Whitfield.

The gallery opening was from 7 to 9, April 26th, 2012.  It was a heavily attended event from the opening to about 8:30.  The last half hour the crowd thinned out but we were still greeting people almost until nine.  It was a great night.

This exhibit will be on display until May 18th, 2012.  It's well worth seeing.

Susan Whitfield and Me

Metope Tutorial

Last summer I had the opportunity to do a set and lighting design for the play Oedipus.  This is a play that I have wanted to work on for twenty-five years.  I actually became a real fan of Oedipus when I was a psychology major.  But that's a topic for another blog post.

For the set design, I chose to create an acropolis, not The Acropolis.  I found that most Greek citystates had the center of their government on the highest point within the city limits and they were called acropolis'.  The palace dominated the set but the temple of Apollo was also present, upstage right.  We also carved a pair of winged sphinxes to flank the steps down to the chorus.  The theatre department already had two large Greek-esque sculptures, so I designed the set around them.



Set design for Oedipus

On a Greek temple, there is an architectural feature called a Metope.  The Metopes on the Parthenon showed something like 92 scenes from the mythical war between the centaurs and the Lapiths.  I wanted to create a Metope story similar to the one on the Parthenon for the architrave on the temple. 

Sometimes the Metope was carved from a single piece of stone, and sometimes background elements were carved in the main stone and complimentery sculptures were fashioned and placed in front.  These were the Metopes we chose to craft.

The first thing I did was create a prototype because I wasn't sure it was going to work.  The prototype worked very well so I was encouraged and created eight panels of the centaur story.  Here's my process.

Step 1.  Create the story.  If you haven't got a story the panels won't make any sense.  Our story was to be broken up into eight panels.  The story we created was:

Panel 1.  The king and queen give the warrior the charge to slay the centaur
Panel 2.  The king sends the warrior on his way
Panel 3.  The warrior and centaur confront each other
Panel 4.  They grapple
Panel 5.  The centaur tries to impale the warrior on his spear
Panel 6.  The warrior stabs the centaur with his sword
Panel 7.  The warrior decapitates the dying centaur
Panel 8.  The warrior presents the head of the centaur to the king and queen

Step 2.  Acquire a whole bunch of GI Joe, Ken and Barbie dolls, plastic horses and such.  I had to scour several thrift stores for about a month to come up with enough dolls to complete the Metopes.  Our collection featured an Edward doll from the Twilight series.  I figured we needed 17 or 18 male dolls, 2 female dolls and 5 horses to tell our story.



The raw material with the prototype in the background

Step 3.  Prepare each of the dolls for demolition.  This step consisted of cutting the hair on some dolls, cutting out the boards for the Metopes, designing each scene on the board and marking the dolls with a Sharpie Pen to get the saw cuts just right.



Giving Edward a haircut

Marking the Ken doll

Step 4.  Cutting the dolls and doll parts.  I wanted to show different angles of bodies so our Metopes were more dynamic.  I chose to use a bandsaw to cut them because I felt I had more control.  If you choose to make a project similar to this, you must always keep your fingers behind the blade and away from the blade, and pull your work through.  You should also wear safety glasses when using power tools.  Some of the bodies I trimmed to be shown straight on, but most of them I showed at three quarters or profile.  It's all in how you cut them.  The most important part of this is to make sure your cuts are straight so you have as flat a surface as possible to attach to your board.

I also found that you have to cut a flat spot on arms and legs to get them to look right when mounted on the boards.



Cutting up Ken



What Ken looks like inside

Cutting up a horse

Step 5.  Attaching the doll parts to the base.  This is where good composition comes into play.  It's important to lay all your parts out before you begin attaching to make sure everything looks right.

On the prototype, I tried five minute epoxy and E-6000 first.  They worked ok, I guess, but the plastic parts tended to break out of the epoxy and the E-6000 took forever to cure, so I tried good old fashioned Hot Melt Glue.  It worked instantly and the best of the adhesives I tried.  When we were attaching the doll parts to the wood, we discovered that certain parts, such as free legs and arms had to be shimmed up to keep them in place.  Cutting a length of a hot glue stick worked very well.  On several panels, I needed the warrior to have a shield, so we found some cheaply built escutcheons from some hanging lights and screwed them to our boards.



Attaching the doll parts to the base



Attaching the modified escutcheon



As you can see, they are naked

Step 6.  Accessorize.  During this step, we added the stools for the queen, the swords for the warrior, the spears for the centaur and clothing for all.

The clothing was made from air hardening clay.  The stools were made from carved blue foam, random wood turnings and beads.  The swords were made from popsickle sticks, cut out and the spears were merely dowels.  These were going to be seen from afar so some of these details did not need to be completely rendered.

If I were to do this again, I'd probably attempt to find a substitute for the air hardening clay, as it tended to be brittle and also cracked a bit when it dried and cured.  That being said, it worked fine for something that was static.  If it were a moving prop it would have to be a little more robust.



Accessorized

Step 7.  Mastic and painting.  The plastic from the dolls takes paint differently than the wood on the stool.  The wood takes paint differently than the blue foam.  The blue foam takes paint differently than the air hardening clay.  That is why I use a mastic for a substrate before I paint props like these.  I like the product, Jaxsan 600 or Poly ViCryl, which I have referenced in other tutorials.  The mastic is white and creates a Gesso like texture on which to paint.

The paint job consisted of three or four colors from the set, painted in a scumble pattern.  A scumble is a spotty wet blend.  After the scumble, the last step before installation was a raw umber wash.



Mastic and scumble

Panel 1:  The queen and king give the charge to the warrior
Panel 2:  The king sends the warrior into battle
Panel 3:  He meets up with the centaur, prepared to do battle



Panel 4:  They grapple
Panel 5:  The centaur attacks with a spear
Panel 6.  The warrior stabs the centaur with his sword



Panel 7:  The warrior decapitates the dying centaur
Panel 8:  The warrior presents the head of the centaur to the king and queen