Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2012 - 61

strict rules that nineteenth century society embraced. The more
uptight the court, the more exciting the transformation to the
freedom of the forest becomes, creating "the best expression of
upside-down ness." Ashley left it up to his costume designer to
pick the exact silhouette that would work best for the scheme,
and after some experimentation at the drawing table, Woolard
decided that the early years of the era, the 1840s, would best
serve the topsy-turvy scenario. Another plus of this time period
was the Victorian interest in fairies, and Woolard drew some of
his inspiration from fanciful period illustrations.
The distinguished design team (Woolard, costumes, Neil
Patel, sets, Howell Binkley, lights, Mark Bennett, sound, and
Basil Twist, puppets) together created a court that transformed
in front of the audience from an elegant Victorian setting into
the upside-down fairy world. Ceiling lighting fixtures became
magical trees growing out of the ground, and a woman appeared in an upside-down dress, the bodice around her thighs
and the skirt covering her face. She then pulled the skirt down
so that the ruffles of the petticoat became her bodice, and the
skirt hung inside out over her legs. Most of the actors played
dual roles: Hippolyta doubled with Titania and Theseus with
Oberon, so the rulers of the court were the same in both worlds.
The servants in the court became the fairies. Woolard created
the continuity between worlds in two ways; he had aspects of
the servant uniforms carry over into the fairy designs, and he
also played around with using clothing shapes upside down, to
see which human clothing pieces could create the fanciful fairy
silhouettes he desired. For instance, he discovered "what a tail
suit looks like if it's worn upside down, it looks like beautiful wings." The design Woolard created for each of the fairies
combined the Victorian pieces with "some sort of leaf motif or
flower motif." One fairy skirt was "kind of like a ballerina tutu;
it's layers of chiffon but on all the layers of chiffon are flower
petals. Some of the corsets and whatnot are vines wrapping
around, and then leaves on top of that."

Being based in New York, Woolard had used M&S
Schmalberg many times, but Midsummer was the first
production where he had needed something other than
conventional, realistic floral blooms. At the workroom, he
found himself inspired in several ways. Seeing all the diverse
options available in terms of shapes, veining, and molding, and
the dye techniques as well, set his mind spinning. He asked
himself, "How do we actually use these? We don't necessarily
want to create flowers as they're doing. But we're using that
idea and trying to make that work to create fabric."
After a brief meeting with co-owner Warren Brand, Woolard simply roamed around the workshop, looking at the molds
and the display samples. "It was so fun to go over there and see
all these stamping kits. I picked up one and said, 'This is the
leaf I want,' and he said, 'Oh, that's an angel wing, but it can
be a leaf.'" Woolard selected about a dozen shapes and chose
which fabrics would be made into which shapes. The designer
had a clear idea of what he wanted, and with his fabric
choices was able to create a range of visual
qualities, from fluffy to sharp. The folks at
Schmalberg were able to advise him on
which fabrics would give a nice crenellation at the edge, and which would be fuzzy.
"Whenever I'm dealing with something like
that...I am always going to defer to their expertise," Woolard noted. He had expected to
have to limit himself to relatively stiff fabrics,
and to fabrics that would hold up well during
dry cleaning. Typically, a flower on a costume
would be removed before a trip to the cleaners, but for these costumes the petals and
leaves were too integrated to come off. But
he learned that there was a way to process
the fabrics to make virtually any type work,
"which was great because it freed me up

Costume design sketch for
"Fairy" by David C. Woolard.
Designer David C. Woolard in his New York studio, with his sketches for A Midsummer Night's Dream behind him.
spring

2012

theatre design

& technology

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