UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The costume production area of the Theatre Arts Production Studio (TAPS) was buzzing on a recent Monday afternoon, as faculty and students put the finishing touches on five of the ten costumes for the title character in the Delaware Theatre Company’s production of “Always … Patsy Cline,” running through March 10. Richard St. Clair, longtime head of Penn State’s costume design program, had been hired to design the costumes. He immediately brought in some students to build them — and add a professional credit to their résumés.
“You could call it ‘pedagogy meets the profession,’” St. Clair said. “We do beautiful professional work in our shop under (head of costume production) Laura Robinson's teaching, and it gives us the opportunity to highlight to the profession what we are teaching here at Penn State.”
On this particular afternoon, master of fine arts candidate Erin Stanek was working on a blue and white star cowgirl costume, the first costume Patsy wears in the musical. As a draper, or costume production specialist, Stanek takes the rendering created by the designer and produces that design to fit the performer cast in the production. She also oversees the construction process from preparation of fabric to fitting and finishing.
“This dress became a base look for Patsy. It has been recreated many times,” Stanek said. “Richard did the research on the outfit and made a rendering for me to use, so this version is his take.”
Work on the costumes for “Always … Patsy Cline” began about six months ago, including a trip to New York City to purchase fabric. With the production in Wilmington and the lead actress, Meagan Lewis-Michelson, living in Boston, some creativity was needed to ensure the costumes were built in the right size.
St. Clair hired Penn State alumna Therese Stadelmeier-Tresco, a costumer living in the Boston area, to do a fitting with Lewis-Michelson, putting her in the period undergarments she would wear in the show and taking measurements and photos.
“We then used that information to make the costumes,” explained St. Clair, who designed and built the white sequined and beaded dress that Patsy wears at the end of the musical. “We put a long-line brassiere on one of our mannequins at TAPS and padded up the mannequin to the measurements of our actress. I took muslin versions of those costumes to Delaware to fit on the actress.”
For Stanek, it was a unique experience to build a costume without meeting the actress who would be wearing it.
“I worked with notes and photos, and that process was really interesting,” she said. “I was honored to be brought on this project. It shows that Richard, as a professional designer, trusted me as a professional draper. The blue dress opens the show — him trusting that to me is really meaningful.”
Robinson, who has taught at Penn State since 2006, built a baby pink suit for the production. She explained that the term “draper” refers to the act of draping pieces of muslin on a dressmaker stand to develop a pattern. Drapers may also produce a pattern by developing it with measurements on paper, which is called a flat pattern.
Robinson said she approaches costume-making for a professional theatre in exactly the same way as she does for productions at Penn State.
“This is how we model the professional world for our students and seeing us go through the same process consistently over their course of time here helps the students know what to expect in the world outside our classroom,” she said. “Sometimes the materials and deadlines for professional gigs are different but the product is the same — a well-made costume that achieves the designer’s two-dimensional ideas in a three-dimensional form that the performer can inhabit with the character.”
The other student drapers who built costumes for Patsy were master of fine arts candidate Erin Stumm, who built a royal blue cocktail dress, and bachelor of fine arts candidate Lauren Greenfield, who built a black and white shirtwaist dress.
Penn State’s theatre graduate program offers both costume production and costume design emphases. Undergraduates may focus on costume design or production through the theatre design and technology option.