Doctor Faustus
By Christopher Marlowe
Associate Costume Design by Hagan Harkins
Creative Team
Director: David Coley
Scenic Designer: Shelby Burgess
Costume Designer: J. Theresa Bush
Associate Costume Designer: Hagan Harkins
Hair and Makeup Designer: Izzy Christensen
Props Artisian: Gia Vainisi
Lighting Designer: Shelby Ashley
Sound Designer: Chance Beck
Dramaturg: Natalie Bowers
Fight Choreographer: Caitlyn Herzlinger
Clown Coach: Mark Swift
Production Stage Manager: Georgia Leming
Photos Courtesy of Mark Swift, and other members of the production team
My Process
As an associate designer, I was given the opportunity to design the Demon Ensemble. I was responsible for a large portion of the paperwork, as well as an active participant in the design process. This show had its challenges; the designer was doing a large portion of our build window remotely, bestowing me with the tasks of running the first round of fittings, pulling from stock, sourcing/ordering whatever had not been ordered before the designer's departure, attending production meetings, and being part of the wardrobe training process.
The Design
An essential element of this show was the way the Demons existed in this world. The Director was interested in illustrating the systems that were in place, and how no matter how hard we try - we will never escape from the inevitable.
Our imaging process resulted in the culling of geometric patterns, reveling in the cosmic nature of the piece, and a plethora of anachronistic aesthetic elements.
Faustus Final Presentation 9.18.23.pptxThe show lived in this territory of medieval meets fantasy; the Angels and Demons all worked in the same office in a sense. Theresa designed this world of color-shifting materials and exaggerated silohuettes to really heighten the world of magic we were in,
My responsibility as the Associate was to take the world that we as a design team created, as well as the costume design and conventions set by Theresa and build a squad of Seven Deadly Sins that would cleanly exist in this universe.
As part of my process, I matched each sin to a demonic or toxic character in pop culture. David, our director, is a big film and comic book buff, and we spent a lot of time discussing systems and different apocalypse stories. Each of the character inspirations brought forth some type of apocalypse (whether personal or literal) in their original media, and that played a guiding role in their design. These inspirations, combined with drawings from the Atlas Obscura, embodied elements of the sins that gave me an axis on which the anachronisms could spin.
Pride, inspired by multiple Spider-Man Villains, particularly Carnage, wore textures meant to feel sticky, wearing shiny gold shoes and pants painted with bleach
Covetousness, inspired by Mazikeen from the Vertigo Comics, wore black holographic pleather pants to shine and shimmer just like their gold.
Wrath, inspired by Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rocked a lot of sharp lines and angles to mirror her rapiers. She was meant to feel like the angriest teen.
Envy, inspired by Dark Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is wearing elements of each of the other Sins' looks; every piece of her wardrobe is something she stole from other characters' personas, my favorite example being her asymmetrical skirt stolen from Lechery.
Gluttony, inspired by the Static Man from Archive 81 and Elliot from Euphoria, is heavily inspired by skate and stoner style. Clashing patterns and Cheeto dust stains on his clothes were used to really lean into the vibe.
Sloth, inspired by Wiggog Y'rath from Black Friday, is meant to be the coziest, comfiest person you've ever seen. A fun easter egg in her costume is that she is in a New York Yankees t-shirt, a loving allusion to my favorite Faustian adaptation, Damn Yankees.
Lechery, inspired by Jules from Euphoria, was meant to feel as though she was given the instructions on how to dress promiscuously but read the instructions wrong, leading her to wearing the lingerie on the outside.
Renderings
Paperwork
DF Costume Pieces List.pdfThis show was massive, with a cast of 24 and an average of 4 costume pieces per person, culminating in the 21-page pieces list above.
Doctor Faustus Dressing Charts.xlsxHere are all the dressing charts. Our wardrobe team - Phoenix Luke, Madison Dabney, Erica Smith, and Isaiah Watkins - were instrumental to keeping everything accounted for and well taken care of. They were especially important in our most major change - the horse courser water sequence.
Working Through It All
Pulling and Fittings
While Theresa was working remotely, my main task was finishing the sourcing, pulling, and going through the fitting process. I would take all of the research, pieces list, order information, and the design package to then go and collect all of the needed items to make them achieve the design. Whenever possible, Theresa would join the fitting via Zoom and give feedback, a great example of this process is Robin's costume.
Theresa would give me a slide with pictures of research or items from our rental and one of her sketches. From there I would collect the missing pieces. It was like building a puzzle; I'd do my best to get it as close to the sketch as possible, ask questions and get notes - then modify accordingly.
You can see the results of my puzzle solving below.
Wardrobe Training & Working With Water
What this show lacked in terms of quick changes, it made up for in wardrobe tasks. Petron, our Faustus, rarely left the stage and was progressively taking pieces off throughout the show as a way of showing his journey into chaos as he explores magic. We also had a first-time hurdle for me in the form of working with live water.
Most of the preshow work was getting everything in order to successfully use water in the theater, however there was a plethora of steps to be taken to make this process function.
To best illustrate the process I have used our production's ground plan and mapped out the journey the Horse Courser would take. Wardrobe would preset 3 paint buckets worth of water at the top of the show, the actor would run through the path shown here, and sit in a big tub with a towel underneath to soften the sound of the water hitting the bottom of the bucket. From there wardrobe would dip his hat in the water, then pour the buckets on the actor.
Before
After
Let's Play Spot The Easter Eggs In Pride's Pants
A big discussion we had when in the initial stages of design is about the use of Latin in the show, how most of it was just Latin gibberish that sounded scary but meant absolutely nothing. This was a reflection on Elizabethan views on conjuring and witchcraft - Marlow couldn't use real spells in the text because then real bad things would happen. When detailing Pride's pants I took that inspiration and covered them in "sigils" that weren't actually anything but references to different content that came up in my research.
The detailing was done very carefully with a paint brush and a capful of bleach on black denim, it was done intentionally only on the front to make it seem like Pride had been doodling on his pants instead of paying attention to whatever he was supposed to be focusing on. Here are all of the references hidden on the pants, and some pictures of the pants! How many of the references can you find?
This Otto Octavius quote
These symbols from Wizard101
These symbols from Archive 81
EPCOT Logos
The symbol from the Dark Zodiac at Halloween Horror Nights 2023
I have also hidden the words left, and right (in Nordic runes). The actor playing Pride, Shrijal Thapa's, and the person that inspired the drawing on the pants/our dramaturg, Natalie Bowers's initials are also tucked away in there.
Additional Production Photos
