The Secret Garden
Costume Designer • Arts Express • Spring 2019
• Production Photos • Renderings • Research •
When designing the classic The Secret Garden, my primary challenge was to communicate to the audience who was real and who was not. The team had a storybook idea for the show, where most of the scenery was based on a pop-up book. Based on this, I costumed the dreamers (all of whom are memories, and not real) in muslin which has been painted and drawn on to match the storybook look of the background. This contrasted the real characters, all of whom were in traditional costumes of the period.
Costume Design: Mae Berg
Director: Nancy Davis Booth
Scenic Design: Tom Benson
Lighting Design: Alex Alegria
Photos: Ben Wiese
Renderings
Pen and
Alcohol Marker
Research
My research for The Secret Garden began with the detangling of this complicated timeline of dreams and death. From there, I used the history of Cholera outbreaks and British occupation of India to establish the "Present" as 1910, and the rest of the timeline from there. My inspiration included historical clothing from these periods, as well as illustrations and conceptual research for the "drawn" aesthetic.