Professional Design Process

Costumes for a School Production

Every play wants a different font.

Paula Vogel said that. In a 3-day playwriting workshop, she dedicated the second start-of-day lecture to fonts, paragraph spacing and cover pages. I was a little surprised that a detail like left-alignment was part of this prolific playwright’s process. My take-away that day was that everything having to do with a show should look like the show. Over the years I have used it as validation for my reinvent-the-wheel every time process. In my fourth decade of theater-making I realize how important it is to reset your brain before tackling every show. If the show is going to feel real right now, you need a fresh page and a fresh font every time.

Instead of outlining what a typical design process should be, or talk about “best practices”, I am going to give a process that would work for a school production of Gloria: A Life by Emily Mann. If every play wants its own font, it definitely wants its own design and production process.

We will call this the fall…