Kasey Hafer probably won't read this article. The sophomore costume designer is in the midst of tech week, that special time before a show when rehearsals are late, long, and nightly. Finding time to interview for it was difficult enough.
As assistant designer for the Drama Department's spring major, "Monster," Hafer spends much of her time hidden away in the costume shop in Aidekman, far from the spotlight as she designs, stitches, and organizes.
During tech week, the separate projects of the actors and the technical and design team meets for the first time. And though audiences may often take certain aspects of a character's dress, accessories, make-up and hair for granted, each specific facet is deliberately calculated to coincide with the vision of the show and to evoke a specific response.
"People don't realize that everything that you see, somebody put there. Someone made the decision that it should go there," Hafer says. "A hat, a piece of jewelry, a handkerchief - they're there for a reason."
So if a shirt is left untucked or clothing is frayed just so, look a little closer - a costume designer is at work. While the actors convey and shape the audience's perceptions, a costume designer will make sure that the actors' appearances coincide with an audience's notion of an era or cue a subconscious recognition.
For example, audiences don't really want to see authentic medieval time period clothing, according to Hafer, because they wouldn't recognize it. Instead, popular cultural notions of what the medieval time period should look like - from movies or books or plays - affects the audience whether they realize it or not.
The actors must look the part or, more importantly, what the audience thinks that part should look like. Hafer says that these cues help to form the audience's connection with the production. "It's not just designing costumes; it's being a limb of the body," Hafer explains.
Every aspect of the production must be taken into account even while the separate production teams - light, sound, costume, and actors - work separately. Though the divide between what goes on behind and in front of the curtain can cause some friction, Hafer finds that the drama community is tightly knit.
"Sometimes there is tension. The climate changes between behind-the-scenes people and actors. As people learn how interdependent the two are, a lot goes away," Hafer says.
Hafer speaks from experience, having spent most of her life involved in theater, both onstage and off. Her grandmother taught her to sew in middle school; since then, Hafer has made her own clothing and jewelry as well as myriad costumes.
The Malvern, Penn. native made her design debut in a 30-person show in which she also appeared as an actress in her senior year of high school, Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." Almost three years later, Hafer estimates that she will have designed roughly ten productions once this semester has ended.
As a work-study student in the shop, Hafer is involved in every major departmental show and helps to organize the chaos of behind-the-scenes theater under the guidance of Professor Virginia Johnson, head of design tech in the Drama and Dance Department. Hafer also pursues her own projects; this summer she will be designing a community theater production of "Twelfth Night."
Though theater is a passion, Hafer ultimately wants to take her art into the realm of civil service. The perks of her job may be enviable (ripping clothing off actors for quick costume changes, for example), but Hafer is dedicated to using her work in theater to positively affect society.
An international letters and visual studies major with a concentration in theater, Hafer plans to do a senior thesis project exploring theater for social change. She has experience with this, as she helped design the costumes for "Corpus Christi," last spring's 3Ps major which recontextualized the story of Christ as a gay man set in Texas, something Hafer feels gave a voice to a repressed community.
"Art is a really good way to go about broadening communication between dissimilar communities," Hafer says. "The most important thing for me is reaching people."
