Designing a character, playhouse costume shop full of creativity

Above the windowed double door hangs a sign reading “Costume Shop.”

Inside the costume shop for the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, music plays off an iPhone and five designers sit quietly in the workspace, lost in concentration.

The building is stuffed to the ceiling. Boxes fill an entire wall with labels indicating every costume piece imaginable — red, white and blue unitards, cow unitards, nuns habits, long john bottoms, short and medium bloomers, butt bows.

The next room is filled with clothes from every era; suits, dresses, and furs, offering the costume designers at the a large selection to begin building from.

The costumers have been hard at work since arriving a few weeks ago, creating costumes for West Side Story and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Most of them are completely new to the playhouse.

Alexa Larson, from Billings, recently graduated from the University of Montana. She designed the costumes for Thoroughly Modern Millie.

When designing costumes for a show, Larson looks at the script, talks with the director, and in the case of Millie, researches the time period.

“With musicals it’s a little easier because they pretty much give you a time concept,” she said. “The 20s is such a fun time period.”

Then, she forages through the items already in the costume shop, pulling things that most closely resemble her vision. Often items need alterations or are slightly different than imagined, but every now and then there will be a piece that fits the design and is ready to go.

“There are happy accidents when it does happen.” Larson said.

Designing a character’s look isn’t the biggest challenge the costumers face. They also have to bear in mind the comfort of the actors, their ability to dance in the clothes and easy maintenance of the costume after the costumers have left, and the shows are still running.

“In that way Bigfork is a very unique animal,” costume shop manager Nicole Zausmer said.

Larson got into costume design through a college roommate, who was a production design major and introduced Larson to working in the theatre. At the time Larson was studying fashion design.

“I like buying clothes as much as I like making them,” she said.

West Side Story’s designer, Allen Story, is also an actor. But, he said, designing pays the bills. “Right now I’m doing my second passion, which is design,” he said.

He drove to Bigfork from Georgia where he graduated from Brenau University. Before the three-day trek, Story said the furthest west he’d ever been was Alabama.

He met Don Thomson and playhouse stage manager Dwayne Ague at the Southeastern Theatre conference.

“After sitting down with Dwayne and Don I knew this was the place I wanted to be,” Story said.

Now that “West Side Story” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie” have opened, the costume crew is shifting focus to “Tarzan,” which Zausmer thinks will be the most challenging show to design, as she has to create costumes for characters that aren’t human.

“Friends don’t put friends in faux fur,” she said, as she reworked wigs that were once mullets, into 1920s styled hair for the stenographers in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.

“That’s my favorite part about theatre ... figuring it out, problem solving,” she said.

This is Zausmer’s fifth season with the Playhouse. She’s from Detroit, and graduated from Indiana University in 2012. She is married to one of the playhouse set designers.

She began designing in high school and went into college also thinking about performing. “It turned out I’m much more passionate about design,” she said.

Kaler Navazo is designing the costumes for “The Full Monty.” She just finished her freshman year at Arizona State University.

While she likes theatre, she aspires to do costuming for movies. “Sometimes costumes just make the characters,” she said.

Macy Conley is in her second season with the playhouse. She is the one member of the costume shop who isn’t designing a show.

She recently graduated from St. Gregory’s University in Oklahoma. She is a self-taught designer who began working in theatre costume shops during her sophomore year of college.

“I’m more of a crafter,” she said. “It’s a skill people really don’t have any more.”