Creativity elevates a production's look
By Lucinda Garcia
4/30/10
Smaller theater groups attest that ingenuity is all that separates their theater productions from the well-financed shows that take place on Broadway. With a little money and a lot of ingenuity, local productions have opportunities to impress audiences with their work. Costume and set designers can take center stage in being frugal.
Neil Fortin, 26, works with a $900 budget for the plays at Hanson Community Theater at Camp Kiwanee on the South Shore. The costumes he creates can rival any professional company, he said.
Fortin said a show's extravagant look often requires a few elements. The group has an enormous closet where all the costumes from previous shows are saved, waiting to be used again for future works.
"We pull things from upstairs if we have them for that time period. If we don't have them, we try to make them, or we have a fantastic partnership with Providence College, actually from where I graduated. I took a lot of the theater stuff there and the guy who does their theater design opens up their closet for us, and we can pull whatever we want," he said.
Fortin said he uses the great pieces he gets from the college to outfit the background characters of a play he dresses. It provides these characters authenticity to match with the leads he is outfitting.
Rafael Jaén, an experienced costume designer and technician who teaches at Emerson College, said redesigning and re-purposing along with networking is what designers must do when working on a small budget.
"There's the concept of redesigning and of re-purposing. So when you have a small budget that is what you have to look at," he said, "But at the end visually you may end up with the same idea on stage."
Jaén said the key is making the right design choice when borrowing or re-adapting. "It's harder and demands more creativity," he said.
"It makes it even more fun," Fortin said, "to try to put across a show that has all these professional qualities. People don't believe that's how much money we put in."
He said he believes it drives people to do better and to make more connections.
Jamie Marcotte, 27, is an actress who has worn different costumes from all types of budgets and can relate to Jaén and Fortin's thinking.
"When I act, I expect a costume," she said. "I've experienced the do-it-yourself costume for a low-budget production, and I've experienced a costume made specifically for me." Marcotte said she prefers having an actual costume to work with.
Marcotte said, "A few costume pieces make you feel beautiful." These pieces help you get out of yourself and become the character, she said.
For the audience, they are expecting the scenery and costumes to match the setting and time period of the production.
Antonia Martins, 10, an avid theater patron said, "Matching. It needs [costume] to match the character and match the setting and time." She said she prefers the simple designs of a costume compared to the over-the-top look.
Click below to listen and see how Fortin created his previous lead's look for Arthur Sullivan's and W.S. Gilbert's comic opera, "Pirates of Penzance."
Photos in slide show by Andrew Bertino.
