Costume Designers: Ollie Otou-Branckaert + Raven Shamoo
“In our production of 1984, we very quickly made the decision to represent the concept of Big Brother with eyes throughout the clothing of the party. The prevalence of the eyes, as well as their simple nature, lends itself to portraying a more uniform appearance as well as an unsettling awareness of a silent watcher. Rather than simply utilizing the traditional overalls for the party members themselves, we decided to create a uniform appearance by creating the costumes out of an entirely blue palette rather than colors to represent the lack of variance throughout the population. By doing this, we aimed to put a new twist on the common uniform and ultimately accentuate the style of the costumes rather than draw away from them. The clothing of the party itself has been used to represent the personalities of the characters through how it is worn with the more rebellious characters being less strict in their dress. We ultimately decided that the style of the clothing itself would be reminiscent of both the 80s and of a strict uniform to emphasize both the time period and standards of the world that they are in. These two elements create a careful balance, lending an anomalous feeling to the play and characters themselves without provoking a feeling of absurdity.”