Rachel 3/16/10

I'm completely the new kid on the block around here (please note how I am hangin tough), so I guess I should introduce myself first.

I'm Rachel E. Pollock, resident costume crafts artisan at the regional/LORT theatre PlayMakers Repertory Company of Chapel Hill, NC. I also teach a series of four crafts artisanship classes in the Costume Production MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Millinery/Wigs, Dyeing and Surface Design, Masks/Armor, and Decorative Arts), and have been blogging about the field of costume crafts at La Bricoleuse for over three years now.

I have two random connections to A Sketch A Day. I worked with Kyle in the crafts shop at Utah Shakes a couple-few summers ago, and we've stayed in touch online. And, though I've never met Jen Caprio, her tutu sketches from back in January were rendered for two of my grad students, Randy and Amy!

I've followed this blog since Kyle began posting about it on Facebook, and really love the concept, and now I have the opportunity to participate! Exciting!

This season, as part of the adjustments PlayMakers made to economic cutbacks, some of us on the production staff were asked to expand our responsibilities into design, to help the company stay afloat. I trained as a designer and have done a fair bit of design in the past, so I was glad to take on a show. As a result, I'm currently in the midst of the design process for I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me By a Young Lady From Rwanda, by Sonja Linden, which is going into tech this coming weekend and will close out the PRC second stage series (smaller plays in our smaller house, as opposed to the mainstage programming).

It looks like I'm going to be designing at least one show next season as well, possibly two, so I thought I ought to start stretching my sketching muscles now, just to be safe!

So, I present my first sketch, from the show I'm working on right now: Juliette's first costume.

Juliette is the "young lady from Rwanda," a refugee living in London who has written a book about the Rwandan genocide of which she is a survivor. At the beginning of the play, she is going to meet Simon, a writing teacher, whom she hopes will help her get her book published. The show takes place in 1999, five years after the genocide.

This sketch depicts Juliette's basic first costume, to which she adds pieces (such as a scarf or a cardigan) to indicate the progression of time or change of location. She's dressed up nice to go to her appointment. She is very neat and respectable, and her clothes and hairstyle are just-so. But at the same time, she is a refugee with nearly no means--all her clothes are second-hand and she's putting her outfit together from the nicest things she could find at the Oxfam, basically.

Juliette is described in the play as being very slim--she can rarely bring herself to eat as a result of her past trauma--and the actress who portrays her, Joy Jones, is tall and willowy. As such, I've drawn this sketch taller and more slender than I typically draw my renderings if I've no idea who's playing a part.

I've posted about the color palette and color selection and research process for this show over on my other blog, in case the play sounds interesting and you'd like to read more about the design process. That post is here..

Honestly, other than computer rendering of garments on croquis in Illustrator for a CAD class I took last summer, I've not drawn a costume design rendering in six years. I'm a bit rusty and it shows, but i'm very excited about an excuse to sketch again. It feels good to do this again, and I'd like to thank Eric, Kyle, and Jen for opening up their blog to one more sketchy designer! :)