Macbeth

This play was put on as one of three in my university's "Shakespeare Festival". Abridged to fit into an hour and a half, I was given the challenge and opportunity to design the costumes for this tragedy. Ironically, the first design meeting met only a month before the entire world suffered a tragedy of its own: Covid-19. Thus, this production was thrown into a lot of uncertainty and constant change as we, like all those around us, tried to work with what we could. This meant that these designs changed drastically from the first meeting to make space for the necessary safety requirements. And then it changed again and again and again. As someone who has struggled with coping with change, this assignment was indeed a challenge for me. However, it also continued to be an opportunity for me to learn to adapt continually - a necessary skill in this industry.

This production began with the decision that all actors would share a base layer that could then be layered upon. I began my historical point in the late 1200s that went into the 1300s. Aesthetically, the director was hoping to reach for grittiness as well as references to bonds of relationships and blood. This led me to think of both familial blood as well as blood being drawn or "pricked" - thus the imagery of the thistle became huge in my designs. To symbolize family, I drew on the ideas of the "tartans". While not in use until the 1600s, I knew that it was visually something that could connect characters to each other. It was also a way to show that Macbeth was slowly losing everything. piece by piece, until he has nothing left.

When Covid-19 made it clear that resources would be limited, and with two other Shakespeare plays using a large part of our stock of medieval costumes, I began to toy with the idea to instead take it modern and insert small pieces that heralded back to the medieval.