In just 40 hours, Anna Avery — adjunct professor in theatre and design director — helped to make the seven-layer wedding dress showcased in “As Five Years Pass,” she said.
“This is one of my favorite shows to ever design because there was a lot of things we built and there was a lot of freedom to go in interesting ways with the costumes,” Avery said.
A total of 23 costumes were created or altered by 20 people in around 30 hours per costume, she said.
It was a collaboration effort, Avery said, between the directors, designers and technicians to create effective costumes.
Bill Walters, director of “As Five Years Pass,” said he has been wanting to direct the play for a long time. Federico Garcia Lorca wrote the play, in which a total of eight actors switch roles three times.
“I think it is one of the most successful attempts that I’ve ever read or seen to translate poetry into theatric form,” Walters said. “It remains poetic, but it comes alive in a theatrical piece both in the language and in the images he calls for.”
During the construction of the play, Walters and Avery discussed the balance between the real and surreal of the script and costumes, he said.
“(We were) also trying to capture a bit of essence from Lorca’s time period being the 1920s, so there is some historical period elements to it,” Walters said. “But we were in no way sticking to that hard and fast. Also, a lot of it has a contemporary feel to it too, but not strictly so, either. Things have kind of melded or meshed between this day and age and Lorca’s time period.”
In the script, Walters said Lorca uses the color blue to symbolize a dream, an idea Avery and the other costume designers happily embraced.
“One of the things we had a lot of fun with is tracking blue elements through all the various costumes,” Walter said. “So there is a young man who comes and is wearing a fairly normal white linen suit except it has blue buttons, or there is a maid who comes who is wearing a standard black-and-white maid outfit, but she has blue tights and blue lipstick.”
Veronica Gamez, assistant costume designer, said she worked closely with Avery on most of the costumes, but was given total control of The Flame.
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The Flame, played by Rebecca Pressland during the underwater act, has one of the most elaborate costumes. Gamez said it took the team four weeks to bring the design to life.
Gamez incorporated the color blue into the costume’s mask, dress and even the handkerchief, she said.
“It was actually pretty interesting and fun because I have never done such a surreal (play), I was never able to go out of my box in my other plays, and the other things I’ve done are very straightforward.” Gamez said. “This one was fun because I got to step out of my box, I’ve got to do different things and push my design.”
Lauren Marvin is the assistant culture editor at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @LaurenMarvin.
