May 2, 2024 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Brett LeVan
For the first time in many years, there is a student costume designer for a Theatre and Dance Department production. Carina Rockart ’26, a Performance Design Major, has spent the past two Blocks designing costumes for “Eurydice” by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Gleason Bauer.
During Block 1, Rockart took TH110 Fundamentals of Performance Design with Assistant Professor and set designer, Marie Davis. During the Block, Rockart helped Davis with designs for the fall 2023 production of “Small Mouth Sounds.” Then, during Block 4, while Rockart was working with Costume Shop Supervisor Jan Avramov in her free time, Davis and Avramov asked Rockart to be the costume designer for “Eurydice.” After accepting the role, Rockart then signed up for Block 6 TH210 Intermediate Performance Design, Block 7 TH212 Topics in Theatre: Staging Eurydice: Producing and Performing and the TH215 Theatre/Acting Studio: Tech/Studio – Eurydice adjunct.
Throughout Avramov’s almost 40 years working at CC, there’s only been one other time when a student designed costumes. “We want to change that,” Avramov said, and make it “into an experience as close as possible to a hands-on, real-world experience.”
Prior to Colorado College, Rockart was passionately involved with theater in high school, participating in acting, assistant directing as well as working on and building sets for productions. The closest experience to this one, Rockart said, was designing and building a tree for a production of “The Addams Family.” “I did everything from drawing it out, to cutting it out, to painting it…that was really exciting for me and why I wanted to move back into [design].”
Previously, Rockart explains, the costume designer would give designs to Avramov, then she would build them. However, this time around, Rockart has been involved in the process and worked to gain the utmost knowledge and experience; the mentorship from Davis and Avramov has been a valuable part of this process for Rockart.
Avramov’s years of experience and now mentorship to Rockart “has helped [her] pick out fabrics that will look good on stage,” Rockart explained, like changing designs based on what is possible in terms of patterning and give her an idea on how everything works technically.
Something Rockart was thinking about when designing the costumes for the underworld characters was that “the whole play takes place in Eurydice’s subconscious,” Rockart said, “and is kind of this dream world where things are realistic but also off and that is where the hints of the time period come in…nothing is truly real or accurate.”
In the original script, Sarah Ruhl had written the underworld to represent an “Alice in Wonderland ” kind of vibe, however, this production of the play doesn’t necessarily follow that aesthetic except through the colors of the costumes that Rockart designed. The sentiment with the costumes represents again this world where things are accurate but also off just a bit.
An important part of designing the costumes for Rockart was using color purposefully. After Eurydice and Orpheus get married shortly after their first scene on the beach wearing their bathing suits, the Lord of the Underworld/Nasty Interesting Man entices Eurydice up to his apartment. He wears “funky red shoes,” Rockart describes; in the play, red symbolizes temptation. As Eurydice is tempted up to his apartment, she falls down the stairs and dies which is how she finds herself in the underworld.
The costume for the Lord of the Underworld/Nasty Interesting Man has shifted quite a bit from Rockart’s original design back in Block 6. His costumes are meant to represent a creepy, “ridiculous” and “clown-y character,” Rockart said. At the beginning of the play, his clothes are abnormally tight as he rides in on a tricycle – signifying a little boy. The next time the audience sees him, his clothes have gotten much bigger, oversized and enlarged. So, two identical but different-sized costumes were designed and created for his character, indicating the passing of time and the impressiveness of the costume decisions – portraying him as creepy and misogynistic throughout multiple stages of life.
When Eurydice goes through the reigning elevator into the underworld, she loses the ability to speak the language of the living and is unaware that her father is trying to tell her that he is indeed her father. In response, he tells her that he is her tree, so the moss and water originally designed into his costume but later removed during dress rehearsal was represented for that reason, Rockart said. Water is a key theme throughout the play and has to do with memory loss and “how we communicate with people after they die,” Rockart said.
Eurydice’s father is an essential character throughout the play because there is the Lord of the Underworld/Nasty Interesting Man, and then there is Orpheus, both characters are obsessed with Eurydice. However, the father symbolizes a purity and an actual love for Eurydice.
In the original Greek story, Orpheus is the God of Music but, in this play, he’s a musician with a “huge ego,” and he has an obsession with Eurydice, Rockart explains. During her first week working on the play, Rockart spent many hours in storage looking for pieces which could be reworked for the play. Orpheus’s tuxedo was found in storage but his bathing suit was built by Rockart and Avramov. Eurydice’s traveling coat was also found in storage which she wears after she dies while she goes through the reigning elevator into the underworld.
Orpheus’s tuxedo has accents of “yellow and gold [which] are his colors because he is kind of a narcissist and is really into himself,” Rockart said. He also has a gold bowtie and cummerbund, the piece that goes around a man’s waist to camouflage where the shirt is tucked in. Orpheus’s character also has gold music note cufflinks, and while the audience may not be able to see the cuff links, “they are for him to see and hopefully help him get into character,” Rockart said.
“There are about 15 different costumes,” Rockart said, “some of the characters are in the same thing the whole time and some of them are changing.” Eurydice wears her wedding dress the whole time, but then wears a travel coat as an overlay when she’s in the underworld. The traveling coat goes over the dress, so Rockart sees it as just an iteration of the same costume.
Rockart explains that the stone costumes have shifted the most from her original design. One idea for the stones is that they are “supposed to be the annoying children at a birthday party.” There is the big stone, loud stone and little stone, the costumes are made of a Velcro material which is loose and oddly-shaped and helps mimic the characters movement quality throughout the play. Rockart hand-painted all the stones’ costumes and explained that since the fabric is Velcro, the paint helps eliminate anything sticking to the fabric prior to the production.
The fabric for the stone costumes was reused from a surplus of leftover material from a previous dance performance. “The stones’ movement has impacted the designs and what the costumes need to look like,” Rockart said. The stone costumes “are based off Victorian and pre-Victorian outfits…[and] are meant to be weird shapes and silhouettes that have been petrified into the stones.”
The big stone wears a corset around their neck which “reflects on the sentiment of being accurate but wrong because it’s a corset but in the wrong location,” Rockart said.
Only recently have Rockart and Avramov begun spending money from the production budget to buy necessary pieces consisting mostly of shoes.
Washable fabric also had to be purchased for Eurydice’s wedding dress because, “[the characters] have all this paper that they are painting so it’s going to be kind of messy on the set which probably wouldn’t have been figured out if [the production crew] wasn’t communicating well.”
Every week since Block 6, Rockart and Avramov sit in a production meeting with the actors, director, set designer, technical director, assistant technical director, sound designer and lighting designer. The communication during these meetings has been essential for Rockart to know what needs to be done and to what extent. “Everyone really does need to collaborate” to make a production happen, Avramov said.
Block 7, TH212 Topics in Theatre: Staging Eurydice: Producing and Performing, is a brand new Block within the Theatre Department with the intention for students to be more involved with the design process for Theatre productions. The reality and nature of the Block Plan can often compromise artistic vision and Rockart explains, it’s “really difficult to design a show and work on the show when you’re also in another class.” Rockart has been able to create her own schedule with Avramov as they’ve worked together nearly every day since the start of Block 7 and through this past Block Break.
The rest of the students in Rockart’s Block 7 course were actors in the play, and the table read with all the actors at the beginning of the Block was the most helpful part for Rockart to fully understand her role as the costume designer.
Rockart’s love for the visual art aspect and the English/Creative Writing aspect of Theatre is why she has chosen to be a Performance Design major. “It’s a good combination of all the things and just being able to collaborate with other people and different art forms…bringing what’s on paper to life is really my favorite thing about Theatre,” Rockart said.
There is a German word Rockart loves, Gesamtkunstwerk, which roughly translates to “total work of art.” Theatre is all art forms coming together as one and, while Rockart has never taken a formal art class, she is driven instead by what she can learn from working with artists of all art forms.
The Colorado College Theatre and Dance Department’s 2024 Spring production of “Eurydice,” directed by Gleason Bauer will be performed May 2-4 and May 9-11, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. in Norberg Studio Theater in Cornerstone Arts Center. Come to the production to see Carina Rockart’s designs come to life and to see the hard work of so many artists within the CC community.