Personal Game did not fit the standard of a normal MFA costume design project because of the drastic changes caused by Covid-19. In a normal year, I would have been assigned to one of the department shows where I would have worked closely as a costume designer with a faculty director to bring their vision of a script to one of our stages. “Personal Game” flipped some of these expectations because we would need to innovate if we expected to present a live event. Costumes would be the central piece of this project, and everything else was built around it. There was no story to the piece, and the actors were meant to accentuate the costumes with movement, not act as characters. We innovated to develop a live production that met the state guidelines of Covid-19, and we were prioritizing the safety of everyone in the department. For example, masks were integrated into the designs as they were developed to follow the mask mandate in Oregon.
Personally, I wanted this to be a project where I could express myself creatively beyond the framework of a traditional show design. I had already started exploring costume beyond the context of the stage and wanted to continue down that path. I also felt that it was key to design the project around something that was important to me. I chose Dr. Sarah Lynn Bowman’s aspects of the self in role-play games as our core theme and designed 8 costumes to represent 8 aspects. This piece became my rare moment to truly express myself as a designer in a way that our rigorous theatre programs normally couldn’t let us. I’m so proud of the work I did on “Personal Game.” However, what I am most proud of is the way this project brought over 50 artists safely back to work in our department in a time when we couldn’t run a normal season.
Dr. Bowman’s Aspects:
- Doppelganger
- Devoid
- Augmented
- Fragmented
- Repressed
- Idealized
- Oppositional
- Experimental
- Taboo (not designed due to scoping restraints)
Production Credits
University of Oregon
Director – Dr. John Schmor
Scene Design – Jerry Hooker
Costume Design – Ashley Baker
Lighting Design – Janet Rose
Sound Design – Madison Fung
Projection Design – Bradley Branam – Gillian Ortega – Kyle Letsom – Jennifer Chaney
Tech Director – Bradley Branam
Stage Manager – Dara Willmarth
Actors featured in Photos
Aero Ankle
Will Calton
Audrey Ettel
Megan O’Keefe
Emily Pocock
Daniel Ricker
Kelsey Stewart
Amelia Takahashi