Date of Award

1985

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Theatre

First Advisor

Richard Rickert

Second Advisor

Robert E. Peffers

Third Advisor

Melvin Dickerson

Abstract

In my process of choosing the culminating project for the MFA degree, I originally planned two such projects: a production's costumes in performance presentation and a draft for a tentatively titled "The Art and Craft of Costume Design." Shortly after this decision, the well known designer-costumers, Liz Covey and Rosemary Ingram, published The Costume Designer's Handbook. This book quite adequately covered the material I had planned to include in my projected volume. I then reconsidered my projects and eventually decided to combine my ideas into one two-fold project: a thesis covering all the problems of design and execution of the costumes for that particular show in the small costume shop. The thesis, with the inclusion of additional examples of production types and other methods of execution and the deletion of personal material peculiar to this show, could later be expanded into a text or handbook directed specifically to the problems of the small costume shop, whether educational or professional.

As will be seen in the Afterword, the specific costumes for my thesis project were adapted and used for a different musical comedy in a small professional theatre during the summer following their presentation at Lindenwood. These costumes thus fulfilled requirements for discussion of problems in both the educational and small professional costume shop. This fortuitous coincidence of use in both types of theatre was not known, however, when I made my decision to choose Kiss Me Kate as the thesis vehicle.

The usual graduate student in costume design has only one or two opportunities for actual production, or a theoretical design project, as the choices for the culminating project. The working costume designer/teacher has not only more actual production choices (usually four to six within an academic season) but has input to the theatre department's decision on what those productions will be. The theatre faculty accepts and offers suggestions on a season, discusses the options and decides the season's productions. In the year of my thesis performance, I had a choice of five shows. Because I was a working designer/teacher, I felt a need for a very challenging project in both design and execution for the culminating project, since it would serve as the basic example of problems in the small costume shop. Given the necessities of the thesis and the choices of productions in the 1982-83 season at Lindenwood, I considered only one of the season's shows: Kiss Me Kate.

Why Kiss Me Kate? The discussion of the script in Chapter I will answer that question.

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