Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010 - 44

cOStuMe deSign & technOlOgy
by valerie Kaelin in 1982, lucy nowell in 1989,
don stowell in 1990, and richard davis in
1994. a 1989 fellows' address on workloads
by Willard bellman which suggested that we
might be doing it to ourselves appeared in the
same issue as an ad for a university theatre department which was recruiting graduate technical assistants at a stipends of $10,000 per year
for a 35-production season.
for much of the twentieth century, women
interested in theatrical design have been channeled into the costume field. indeed, most of
the members of the costume commission are
female. from these ranks, usitt has gained
some notable leaders, including sarah nash
gates, the first woman to head the organization
(1992), Joy emery, the first female to present a
fellows' address (1991), immediate past president sylvia Hillyard Pannell (2006), and fellows diane berg, Whitney blausen, alexandra
bonds, laura crow, debra Krajec and Zelma
Weisfeld. not to be forgotten are leon brauner,
who served as president in 1998 and the late
don stowell, the first costume commissioner.
costume designers and technicians have gone
on to become chairs of academic departments,
deans, and valued members of professional
theatrical unions. but the spiritual mother of us
all has to be design pioneer Millia davenport,
who told this story in a 1978 speech reprinted
in TD&T: "three men and i had worked ninetysix consecutive hours... the men passed out. i
went up to collect. i was a living zombie, but it
was clear that i would manage to swarm across
the desk and kill Mr. Ziegfeld with a cut-glass
presentation ashtray, if i did not get a check...
You were supposed to work for Ziegfeld for the
kudos...i managed to collect $17,000...no
one in the office would ever forget it."
one of the joys of membership in usitt
is watching students grow into roles as theatre

professionals. in 1987, tara Maginnis, a doctoral student at the university of georgia, published an article on using nineteenth century
stereographs for research in costume history.
When transported to a much colder climate at
the university of fairbanks in alaska, she wrote
in 1994 about safely executing costume crafts at
fifty degrees below. the sheer difficulty of travel
in the frozen north caused her to embrace the
new technology which allowed her to present
her portfolio on-line (1996) and to create
her own teaching Web site, www.costumes.org
(2000), allowing her to interact with her farflung students, regardless of where they were
stranded for the winter. in 1988, tan Xuiaxiang,
a student at utah state university, was listed as
a first runner-up in the actf national college
design competition. 2005 saw the publication
of her article on magic indian clothing and her
first book, Character Costume Figure Drawing. in 2008, twenty years after her first mention in TD&T, she published her second book,
which now contained her costume sketches
bearing the coveted stamp of a union designer.
because TD&T is a technology journal, all
sorts of imaginative materials have been cited
for use in creating the wonders of theatre. some
of these uses are far beyond the ones originally
intended by the manufacturers. thermoplastics first appeared in the journal in 1968, and
wound up being used in corsets in 1993. found
objects proved to be favorite costume materials, with plastic laundry baskets morphing into
gothic headdresses, automobile car mats into
combat armor, and the tops of recycled juice
jugs turning into bosoms containing some
rather unique storage space. even clear plastic
shrink wrap, first mentioned in 1977, found its
way into see-through costumes for the characters in a 2002 production of The Importance
of Being Earnest.

"The Art of Feltmaking: Producing
Handmade Felt for Theatrical
Application" at the 2000 USITT
Conference & Stage Expo in Denver,
one of the many professional
development workshops sponsored
by the Costume Commission over
the years.

theatre

design

teChnology

W I N T E R

2010

the machinery used to assist in theatrical
endeavors has moved from the mechanical age
into the electronic era. ibM selectric typewriters (1974) and slide projectors (1979) were
followed by microform archives of TD&T and
makeup instruction on filmstrips (1985).
Makeup training videos (1988) and rosemary
ingham's Pattern Development Video (1990)
gave way to makeup lessons on dvd's (2006).
research materials such as Joy emery's Commercial Pattern Archive became available on
cd-roM's in 2007. a 1997 article on dressing
performers for wireless microphones was superseded by developments out of ucla in 2002
which foresaw the use of ultrasonic mics and
tracking devices embedded in costumes which
enabled performer-controlled light and sound,
a development described by columnist beeb
salzer as "the body electric." Plastic templates
for drawing male and female figures (1985)
were the primitive ancestors of fractal design
Poser and Photoshop (1997). the use of conventional photography for makeup described in
1974 was followed by the use of a frame grabber for makeup design (1988). digital cameras (1997) became tools for creating digital
makeup sheets (2009). but the ultimate proof
that everything old is new again came in reading a 1979 TD&T article on deriving precise
measurements from scenic sketches and having catherine bradley explain in 2009 how to
do exactly the same thing for costumes using
her digital costume technical sheets.
When the computer age arrived, it found
a perfect partner in technical theatre. the first
book on computers and the performing arts
was mentioned in a review in TD&T in 1982.
With amazing foresight, in 1983 clairemarie
verheyen and Karen ewick wrote a short piece
expressing the need for computer programs for
costume shop inventory and management. in
fact, early computer programs were used for
many practical purposes, such as calculating
lumber and materials for scenic flats and for
creating lighting plots, similar to the uses which
the two women had envisioned. the early generation of computers such as the trs-80 had a
capacity of only 16K and were great for making
lists and crunching numbers. in 1984 the first
apple Macintosh was on display at the usitt
conference in orlando. by 1985 the much-desired costume database program existed in the
form of Wardrobe Master. 1987 brought cad
programs for lighting design. 1989 saw the

http://www.costumes.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2010