Costume Process Made Easy

Providing costumes for your upcoming play should not be stressful.  Remember, we always have Amazon to back us up!  

Here are all the ways I have found to provide costumes…

-have the students completely come up with their own costumes

-have them provide part of their costume/clothes & you provide unique stuff (use MAD $)

-go to the thrift store and find stuff, or send a student or a parent to do that for you

-make items from scratch if you have someone who wants to do that for you

-order what you need online

Honestly, I find that each year I have to do all of the things above to some degree. Be flexible so people don’t have to spend money, if possible.

If you make a post on social media about needing something specific (for example, a cowboy hat) you might save yourself money and get publicity for the play.  Win, win!

Advice on how to make sure your costumes are cohesive with the other elements of your play…

Decide who gets to make costume choices.  The producer, director, costume team, actors, or a collaboration of people.  Whoever it is needs to read the play/skits and imagine their costumes, write all the ideas and needs down and maybe make some sketches.

Hopefully, before you start making and collecting costumes, you will have picked a color scheme for your play that you should apply to all of your costume choices. I’ll be making a blog post on choosing color schemes soon, so be looking for that.  You will need to micromanage the process if you want everything to stay close to the color scheme.

Allow your students and actors to contribute to the costume process for their own character.  Don’t be afraid to let them contribute some ideas and elements that you had not originally envisioned.  Hopefully you have an artist in your group that can provide drawings for the complicated costumes, or maybe the actors themselves would like to draw up ideas.

Don’t forget about hair and make-up.  Use a character questionnaire to help inspire the actors to imagine the details for their character. You can find blank face charts and body charts for designing costumes, hair and make-up to help you.

Hint: All students who are not actors should either wear all black to performances, or wear matching play or club shirts

How to outsource the work involved so you can focus on being a good leader & other people have the opportunity to be creative.

This is me…with my new script…my attic bins threw up on my piano room floor and a few of the students in the play made paper bags for each character, stapled their role/name/costume & props needs…they filled the bags with stuff I had, and then at practice tonight I’ll have each student try their stuff on and come up with a plan to get everything they need.  Outsourcing!

The costume designing team will stay with me as we make a plan for each actor's costume.  Creativity opportunity! If the student or adult helping with costumes wants to do concept drawings they are welcome to…but it’s not necessary.

Remember to express and post the deadline for costumes and it should be one week before your club’s picture day.

Link to download my free Costume Organization Chart: https://www.madsocietyinc.com/offers/YdEXR7Tp/checkout

~Coach Baldwin