New to costuming: A Tale of Two Cities

[Painterspoon]

I'm a high school teacher and have the great fortune of directing our musical theatre production this year for the first time. I have chosen Jill Santoriello's "A Tale of Two Cities". My colleague who has done the costuming in the past can't help out this year because of scheduling. So, I'm on my own. I have a few pieces left over from Oliver, but beyond that, I need a great resource for repurposing clothes or a great online crash course in costume design, or awesome shortcuts for 18th C European costumes that read well on the stage....you know - basically anything that might help. I don't have a budget to spend on a lot of patterns because they add up really quickly. So perhaps repurposing second hand clothes might be the answer? Ultimately, I think this could be a good thing for the students, as I plan to set up teams to take charge of different aspects of the show...now costuming can be handed over to them too. But I need to oversee it. So....help? I should point out that our school doesn't have access to sewing machines...a few of the kids do and I do. Thanks in advance!

 

[VCTMike]

Nice show, a bit long but nice. I loved the music in it and when we did it last year the musical director wrote a new piece for Jill for the overture. Had the opportunity to chat with her for about an hour as well. We rented a number of period costumes.

 

[TheaterEd]

I would call around to other local schools and community theaters and see what they have. We have several schools in our area that allow us to just borrow costumes as long as we are willing to lend them ours as well. Get your kids researching period styles so that they know what to look for when thrift shopping, or if you are able to go picking at other theaters.

My best resource for costumes is two of our theater parents. They love thrift shopping so all we have to do is show them what we are looking for and they scour every thrift shop in southern Wisconsin for us. Reach out to all available parents and ask for help. You never know what you might find. When my older sister was in high school my mom volunteered to help with costumes one year, and she just kept helping until my younger sister graduated. That meant our director didn't have to worry about costumes for 10 years. Who knows, you may get lucky.

 

[Painterspoon]

Thanks for the advice....always good to get more people helping