Black and White and Red All Over
MIT Theatre Arts Thesis Production, January 2014
Dir. Karen Hart
My friend Karen Hart is a superstar, and graduated not only with an MIT engineering degree, but with a concentration in technical theater.
As part of her final thesis, she wrote and directed a short theater piece. The show, Black and White and Red All Over, had such a cool concept and engaging stage directions that I had to get involved with costumes.
Dir. Karen Hart
My friend Karen Hart is a superstar, and graduated not only with an MIT engineering degree, but with a concentration in technical theater.
As part of her final thesis, she wrote and directed a short theater piece. The show, Black and White and Red All Over, had such a cool concept and engaging stage directions that I had to get involved with costumes.
In this show, Karen compared to roommates, sharing a dorm room, to mania and drepression sharing a brain. The set, evenly divided into a stormy gray and a dizzying rainbow side, lent an overarching sense of duality to the show, so I felt that the costumes of the main characters should be simiarly split: one in frumpy, moody clothes in monochromic gray, and the other in spastic, saturated club wear. The "RA" characters likewise had a range of personalities, although all were united in clear purpose with a distinctive "Residential Advisor" namebadge.
The stand-out piece of this show for me was the set of "shock wands" wielded by RA 3. With the help of some battery-powered LEDs, the control box glowed as the RA menaced the main characters with her metal rods. The effect elicited a few gasps from the audience during every show. The entire performance, as well as a brief introduction from Karen herself, can be seen on Youtube. |
|