Jessica M Gafford

The Rite of Spring April 27, 2009

Costume III: Design

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2008

This was our last project of the semester in Costume III and it’s possibly my most favorite. This project focused on designing costumes for the dance The Rite of Spring which is a dance about nature and sacrifice. I chose to focus on the nature aspect of the dance and started by putting together some beautiful pictures of colorful flowers and insects. I really wanted to go with something simple and stick to dance wear so I designated how many men and women were in the dance.  The opposing tribes of men dance around the stage in a quasi-fighting ritual in colorful shirts and black dance pants. The witch comes in to bless the earth and she is wearing black pants with a long flowing coat that has gotten its pattern from a caterpillar  from my collage. The maidens start to dance as the virgins that might be chosen for the sacrifice. Their costumes are brightly colored hooded shirts with matching tie-on skirts and black capri pants.Finally, the girl in pink is chosen and the other maidens dress her in her ritual clothing which is actually a dress that is revealed when the tie on skirt is taken off.  The maidens sink to the floor and are possessed by the spirits of the ancestors. To reveal this change, the maidens remove the tie-on skirts and pull on the hood to become the ancestors. The same girl who was the witch earlier has now added a beard and flipped her coat inside out to reveal a new pattern taken from a beautiful flower in my collage. Now this dancer is the sage who will bless the chosen one and sacrifice her so that spring will come. As you can see, all the colors and color combination were pulled from the collage I put together. It was interesting designing dance clothes, but I would love to be able to do this production some time.

Medea April 26, 2009

Costume III: Design

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2008

This is another project for Costume III. We had to take the story of Medea and set it in any context we chose. I decided to set the story in America in 1640, one year before England declared witchcraft a capital crime. I did this because I wanted to focus on the theme of paranoia and fear that runs through the play, so I made Medea a black princess from Africa who was also a witch in her country. This plays on the idea of the strange sex and race. For a more detailed analysis of my design, read (more…)

Little Foxes April 26, 2009

Costume III: Design

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2008

This was another project for Costume III in which we had to design costumes for the characters in Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes. The costumes I designed for them are period costumes with color associations between the couples. For instance, Oscar and Birdie are wearing shades of brown, and Alexandra and Leo are wearing shades of grey. However, I tried to focus more on my presentation of the renderings for this project. As you can see in the pictures I put the costume for the first act on the form of a body with the other acts to the side, almost like paper doll costumes. This conserved paper as well as giving an interesting look to the renderings.

Lady Nijo April 26, 2009

Costume III: Costume Design

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2008

As one of our projects in Costume III we had to pick a character whose costume creates a problem for the designer. I chose Lady Nijo from Top Girls by Caryl Churchill because she was a concubine in the Japanese Feudal era, but was exiled and became a Buddhist nun. I struggled with the idea of making her costume full of layers and layers of kimonos, and I even sketched a rendering. However, after studying the text I realized that Churchill put the character of Lady Nijo in the play because she gained strength after becoming a nun and she wanted to give advice to Marlene on how to become the woman she was meant to be. I discovered that Buddhist monks and nuns wore the same clothing and shaved their heads to eliminate vanity from their lives, so I put Lady Nijo in the Buddhist robes of the time with a green cloth (the color of nature), and a design featuring the five colors of the Buddhist flag.

Leaves Study April 26, 2009

Costume III: Design

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2008

This was one of the first design projects we did in Costume III.

1. Find an object and draw sketches of it from different perspectives.

2. Paint the object from one of the perspectives.

3. Design an abstraction of the object.

4. Design a showgirl costume that is a literal representation of that object.

5. Chose a charcter from a play that has the same characteristics as the object and design a costume for that character with the object as an influence.

As you can see I chose some leaves on campus that had started to fade into yellows and reds. The leaf looked as though it were on fire and that really drew me to it. The abstraction of the leaf was the hardest for me. I came up with many ideas that were too literal until I finally sat down and started painting. The second painting is what came out. The show girl is obviously the leaf with a sassy collar. For the character I chose Mosca from Volpone because he “bends with the tide” like a leaf does in air, but he also has a little more going on to him that the other characters don’t expect, just like the red tips. The hardest part about designing Mosca’s costume was how to make it represent the leaf as well as the pest that Mosca is suppose to be in the play. To reach this end, I used the colors of the leaf in Mosca’s vest, pantaloons, and tights, while giving him a cape that is remeniscent of fly wings and rosettes on his hat to look like fly eyes.

Macbeth April 23, 2009

Costume I: Intro to Costume

University of North Texas, Denton, TX 2007

I took this class my first semester at University of North Texas and worked on the costumes for Antigone and Slasher. I also designed costumes for Macbeth, that were never realized, as my design project.

My concept for these renderings was that the play is set in 1606 and played by the King’s Men. The costumes for the Macbeths are from English costumes from the late 16th century to the early 17th century, as though these were the costumes the King’s Men had come across to use in the play. My goal was for the Macbeths to become almost otherworldly when they came into the banquet as the new king and queen of Scotland, so I put them in oranges and golds for that scene. The Weird Sisters have a different concept. They are immortal triplets from ancient Greece. They became oracles for Apollo when they were children and their mother blinded them, hoping to increase their ability to talk to the gods. This proved effective and now the Weird Sisters are able to exact justice for the gods.