The Costumes
Now it is time to design the costumes. The costumes are what the characters wear. What will they look like?

You need to think about three things:

• Who the characters are. Kids don’t dress the way adults do. Very old people may dress somewhat differently. A very serious person may dress differently than someone who is trying to be silly.
• When the play takes place. If it is in the past, people probably didn’t dress the way we do today.
• Where the play takes place. Does the play take place in the United States? Does it take place somewhere else? Sometimes people in other countries dress differently than we do.

Who
It is important you think about the character. Wealthy and important people have always dressed differently than the average person. Really poor people may dress even more differently.

Color tells the audience about the characters. We always think of the villain wearing black and the heroine in white. For plays in ancient China, the emperor and royal people wore yellow and red. The poor people wore blue and black!
Think about the characters. They will give you clues.

When and Where
If the time of your play is now, costumes for most places in the world are pretty much the same. You can wear your own clothes. Of course they have to fit the place of your play. If your play is at school, wear school clothes. If you are at a work place, you’ll probably have to wear dress up clothes or maybe work boots and overalls – depending on the job your character has.

The problem comes when your play happens in the past. Pictures are the best way to find out what people wore. Books often have pictures of people and if you look closely you can see how they are dressed.

Kathy Stephenson, a costumer at Arizona State University, has drawn and painted costume plates for us to give us ideas about what people wore in the past. Click on the image once to see a larger version.

Immigrants

Ukrainian 1891	Italian 1905	Irish 1872
Chinese Railroad Worker 1866	Middle-class man Chinese 1866	Middle-class woman Chinese 1866
American Civil War
Plantation Owner 1865	Plantation Owner’s Wife 1865	Fredrick Douglas
Confederate Soldier 1864	Union Soldier 1864	Harriet Tubman
American Revolution
American Upper-class Man 1782	American Upper-class Woman 1782
American Soldier 1775-1783	British Soldier 1775-1783
Shakespearean Times
Shakespearian Gentleman	Shakespearian Lady	Shakespearian Soldier
Fairytale Times (The Renaissance)
Prince	Princess	Knight
Ancient Greek Times
Greek God	Greek Goddess	Greek Soldier
Ancient Egyptian Times
Egyptian Man	Egyptian Woman	Egyptian Soldier

Also check on the web. Revolutionary War and later http://www.5rivers.org/en-gb/dept_28.html
Civil War http://www.cwartillery.org/pastref.html
Here is information about Japanese clothing. http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/japanese/briefhistory.html
Happy hunting~

Costume renderings
Just as with the setting, drawing the costumes helps you decide what you want the costumes to look like.
Here is a rendering of the three characters in “The Drug Store Robbery.” (The boys and girls looked at pictures they found at http://artswork.asu.edu/arts/students/comdrama/les4.1_05.htm to get ideas about the shapes of the clothes. They used colors they thought might have been used and that would look good with the setting.)

Now, after you’ve done your research and found out what people wore when your play happens, it’s time for your to draw your costumes. Here are three models.

Print the page with the three figures below and then draw and color the costumes you would like your characters to wear.

Finding the costumes
Since we were most interested in learning how to do drama and about the history of the characters, we felt we didn’t need to have exact costumes. We looked several places the costumes we did use.
1. In our own closets. In the past men and boys usually wore long pants and long sleeved shirts, not tee shirts or sweat shirts. So we looked for them. Women and girls wore long skirts and often blouses with long sleeves. We looked for them.
2. We asked around. We found a girl who came from China and she had a nice kimono.
3. We got some mothers to sew a couple of long skirts that the girls could wear. They used cheap material and elastic waistbands so the skirts would fit several girls. We also made some caps and aprons for the girls and found some shawls. We found a “Simplicity” pattern for the caps.

4. Our teacher had a costume box with some hats and skirts and shirts. It helped a lot.

Shoes were a big problem for plays taking place in the past. We tried to have the camera not see feet too much!
Do the best you can. Worry first about staying in character and telling your story. The audience – and you – will enjoy your videotape or play.

      

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