1. Angel Fox
Thea 499C
3/11/2016
1
Carrie Stage One Paper
My senior year design is costumes, hair, and make-up for the MSU Production of Carrie:
The Musical. I know that musicals are usually complicated, but nothing prepared me for the
build and what would happen during the month until we opened. The during process for this
show I ran into quite a few problems along the way and though I managed to make it through, I
would have done something very different had I had more time (and maybe not a budget cut).
My first problem came when we had our first production meeting, I had designed enough,
over break, for each character to have one costume for school, uninforms for the girls and prom
attire; the basics for the show and I was confident that those would be all the costume pieces we
would attempt since the show was to be up in a month. I was wrong. When we had our first
production meeting of the semester I had all my research and sketches ready, but Sean wanted
there to be a slight change for each character through the show which added many costume
pieces, a cast of twenty-two is already ambitious enough but now each one will have at the bare
minimum two costumes and Carrie will now have five costumes to herself.
My worry of the expediency of this time frame proved that no matter how much prep I
did, we had to go down to the wire and a new problem would arise that I would have to take into
stride and handle. The first production meeting Sean introduced the idea that, subsequently,
made my job far more complicated. He wanted every character to go through a subtle, daily,
change to convey the passage of time. This meant that even the smallest role had two outfits, and
that meant designing roughly ten costume pieces for each character, for a twenty-two-member
cast, for me. It took too long for me to draw out the new variation and I knew that from what I
had already pulled that my design would not be easy to match with what was in stock at the time.

2. Angel Fox
Thea 499C
3/11/2016
2
Even pulling all that I could, there wasn’t a lot and that is where I hit another wall…the
costume shop’s stock had very little to pull in the ways of modern clothing, not to mention that I
had chosen a specific fashion movement, Hipster, and there were even less options available to
me. To make things even more complicated, a few cast members had to drop out, I had already
designed and begun pulling and buying costume pieces for those character and now it was a
physical reminder of a waste of resources. After, the show was up, I calculated the hours spent
on Carrie ad it was equal to five weeks of my work study hours. With eighteen credit hours
already and managing to do that many extra hours, it’s no wonder I’m behind in some classes.
I’m almost caught up though.
Scheduling a shopping day was going to be of the utmost importance but I found out
quickly that my schedule didn’t mesh well with that of Denise’s and Christine’s and I would
need them both for a shopping day if I was to pull this off. The first week of school, I had
shopping links ready to go but because of our time crunch, many of these garments would take
too long to arrive by mail so we had to abandon that plan and I pulled everything I could from
stock. I was able to attain casual clothing for the ensemble and similar pieces for the main
characters but nothing that would suffice as a full outfit.
Finally, after a scheduling nightmare, Denise, Christine and I, were able to set a shopping
date. We went February sixth and we had a lot to buy. I had created a list of thrift stores,
consignment shops and similar stores like Goodwill so that we could buy a bulk of items for a
more than fair pricing. I was lucky to find a few prom dresses in goodwill running around fifteen
dollars. After hours of sifting through thousands of items I had taken care of the majority of the
casual daily changes and half of prom. The men’s tuxes still eluded me at this point, I would later

3. Angel Fox
Thea 499C
3/11/2016
3
have to cancel my order of tuxes from Goody’s and pull business suits due to a halt in the
school’s budget.
Since the show was massive in scale, the costumes took me weeks to get together and it
was cutting it close for first dress. From stock I got the basics socks, undergarments, etc. Many
pieces were pulled from stock or bought but we ran into fitting problems consistently for a few
actors. After analyzing the situation, I realized that four people had to be re-measured due to
changes in the body since last semester or inaccurate measuring. After that was cleared up, I had
only a small list of pieces to find, but they were pieces I had issues with locating. The only order
that we could successfully and viably secure was the uniforms from Holbrook’s Embroidery.
They turned out well, even though they mixed up in shorts that caused a fitting issue, but they
arrived for first dress and they looked great.
The build of this show was to happen in only a month. Planning for this fast a pace for a
show wasn’t proving to be easy and putting my concepts to work with what resources I had was
tougher still. As I began to break the character’s costumes down it became very clear that
another shopping day was in order, but neither my schedule, nor Denise’s, permitted us to leave
town so we went to every store we could, in Morehead, to finish out the show.
Last semester, before we took our Winter break, we all met for a production meeting and
it wasn’t clear if we were going to use actual stage blood for the show yet. We had mentioned
lighting for it and maybe water but that changed when this semester began. Sean had decided
that blood was the way to go and so I had to plan accordingly. This meant that Carrie would have
two dresses and there would be pressure squibs for Margret and Carrie.

4. Angel Fox
Thea 499C
3/11/2016
4
Blood proofing is a nightmare for costumers and its always hit and miss if the stains will
come out for the next show. Many blood tests were done to assure that our methods of cleaning
and protection were effective. The blood packs consisted of a baggie filled with a specific
mixture of Ben Nye stage blood, blue dawn dish soap and water, to allow it to come out of
clothing. The blue dish soap gave the blood a darker hue and a thicker consistency. The contents
of the baggie were then collected into one corner of the bag and then twisted off to create
pressure and is sealed by wrapping thread on the twisted area. The remainder of the bag is
snipped of and you have what I affectionately call a “blood strawberry”, ready for a pressurized
burst of blood when hit by the actor.
Going into the tech run of a show is stressful enough, but the sheer work load that
everyone had in Carrie was astounding. Even now, I’m still surprised that we managed to pull it
off in the time frame that we did. Everyone was feeling to strain of such a technical heavy show.
As usual, with first dress train wrecks are expected. There were an enormous amount of quick
changes and plotting them out with the choreography proved to be difficult for first dress. After a
few blocking changes the major issues were remedies. To allow for easy changes all athletic
shoes had elastic shoe laces put in. The quick change into the uniforms took all three costume
rehearsals to successfully master but it to was managed. Carrie quick change from the water
soaked prom dress to the pre-blooded double dress was surprisingly smoother than initially
thought. It only took two tries to get it show ready. My costume crew was professional, fast and
magical. They had to be to survive the run of this show.
The design for the hair and makeup was modeled after many trending styles from the
iconic, Kylie Jenner face with dark lipstick, to the dramatic, smoky, cat eye. Both genders had

5. Angel Fox
Thea 499C
3/11/2016
5
contouring to do and the clarity of their feature read well on stage because of that choice.
Makeup and Hair purchasing was halted since it was to be bought for the second dress rehearsal,
this happened to be after the news that we could no longer utilize our budget, so some changes in
did occur in accordance with what we had in stock and what actor had on a hand. Regardless, the
makeup and hair design for the most part stayed the same, with the exception of the prom
changes, which for budget, skill set and quick change issues needed to be simplified. In hide
sight it was probably better that people used some of their own personal make up shades to best
match their complexion as well as the style is harder to convey in stage makeup shades.
When I saw it all together I was baffled that it was complete. I was so busy doing that the
revelation that I had actually pulled it off didn’t sink in until the first show began. I thought
Oedipus was hard enough but the fact that I actually pushed myself to do such an ambitious
show in this amount of time really made me feel like a fully realized designer. It was the
fulfillment I felt from this show that made it special and the fact that this was my senior show
only proved that I could, in fact design elaborate projects. Of course, there were a few things I
would have changed about the show had I gotten, more time to design, full access to funds, and
longer build time, but I am very proud of what I managed to do with what parameters I was
given.