Costume Designing at Endstation

Designing the costumes  for Endstation Theatre Company's children show was an awesome experience! From the moment I read the script for Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island, I knew that there was something fantastic there in the stylization of the language and the vivid imagery it brought to mind. After speaking with the director, Geoffrey Kershner, we decided to make this show look like a cartoon come to life. Geoff also sent me a link to playwright Josh Mikel's illustration work which truly inspired me! You can see more of the playwright's work here: Sharkguts Design

As a costume designer, one of the first steps in my process is to do image research. A lot of the time this can involve period costume research but in this case, I wasn't limited to a specific period of time. I could use anything and everything! For one of the main characters in this show, Rosa, I wanted to create an innocent and sweet look. I started by doing a google image search of 60's shift dresses and found some really fabulous things but none of them quite did the trick. I put together this research collage to show to the director and we decided that the dress for this particularly spunky little girl needed to be a composite of several of the dresses below.

The next thing I do is do several rough sketches for each costume. Then I do one final drawing called a rendering. Below is the final rendering for Rosa's dress:

Another aspect of the design for "Good Good..."was the idea of using modern clothing as a way of representing animal qualities. My design for Turtle incorporated basic turtle colors (green, yellow, and brown) and the distinct shapes that a turtle has. I decided to use a puffy vest to represent the padded underside of a turtle and a backpack to stand in for the turtle's shell! Here is the collage for Turtle and the final rendering:

If you scroll down, you'll see some of the finished costumes for Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island, or you can come see the show's final performance tomorrow at 2 pm. I was so thrilled to start off my first season with Endstation Theatre Company on a show that was not only fun, but allowed me to be truly creative!

Signing off,
Sarah Woodworth - Costume Designer