The 39 Steps
November 2021 Zeeland High Players
Director: David Miller
Scenic and Lighting: David Miller
Costume: Ellie Van Engen
Hair & Makeup: Hannah Vanderkooi
Sound: Jayce DeBoer
Photos: Annabelle Pedersen
The 39 Steps is a play written as a farce based on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930’s film by the same name. My goal was to create a muted and realistic costumes for the show so the humor and gags came out throughout the show instead of over dramatic costumes. Another goal I had was to make sure stock characters were easily recognizable to the audience.
I head designed the productions costumes and lead our costume crew to organize, create, sew, distress, and order all of our costume pieces. I also created Pamela’s dress from scratch. This show had over 30 costumes.
Pamela’s Dress
Rendering: To start designing this costume a began by researching the period, reading through the script, and doing character analysis. To help Pamela stand out to the audience I decide to put her in a shaded purple that would make her pop out while still remaining in the shows color palette. I also decided to go with a strong shouldered jacket (to emphasize her independence) and a-line skirt both to enable her to do a vast number of stunts throughout the show. After completing my research I drew up a rendering.
Gathering Materials: My next step was to find the materials best suited for the design. Due to time constraints I decided it’d be best not to make the blouse and instead buy one on amazon and switch out the buttons. For the bolero and skirt, I bought the appropriate fabric, lining, interfacing, and notions. To create this I used Simplicity pattern 8462.
Construction: Before cutting into the expensive fabric I first made the costume out of the cheaper fabrics we had lying around our costume shop. Being able to test out the construction made it so sewing the actual garment went smoothly with very few errors. My next step was to cut out my pieces and sew the garment. Techniques included in this were darting, adding lining, hemming, sewing seams together, zipper, hook closures, making buttonholes, and adding decorative notions.
Final Product: My Final Step was to fit the garment to the actress.
Production Photos
