Costume Methodology 1: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Instructor: Ellen McCartney

One of the highlights of being a costume design student at CalArts is getting to take Costume Methodology. Methodology is a two semester course in which the instructors, Ellen McCartney and Camille Benda, give the students a play and teach the process of designing for a show from start to finish, getting into the intricacies of dramaturgy, costume plots and budget. Semester one, we designed Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As it’s a fantastical story with many beings and creatures within it, I chose to materialize my ideas through digital collage to play around with color, silhouette and proportions of each character to convey the otherworldly quality that’s so essential to the play.