Costume Curveballs

something unexpected at the end of the rack.

A celadon shirt at the back of the rack. I wanted to call it mint green, but it leans toward pea. The costume designer put one pale green shirt behind a line up of greys and blues. He was told the character would wear blue, the actor had worn a dark blueish grey in the workshop of her play a few years ago.

Did he call the green shirt a curveball? or ‘something unexpected’? Darn it. I forget his exact words. Whether or not the celadon green curveball gets chosen - putting something decidedly different on the rack is brilliant. If you end up choosing what you thought that you would all along, then you can be sure about it. ‘Yep! We thought it needed to be a grey shirt, and we were right!’

Or, in this case, the playwright/performer and director spot the green shirt hanging at the end of the row and say ‘ooooo! what’s that!’

The designer sent the shirt to a embroiderer to make it look specific - “not just a new shirt.”