Stitching a story

This Friday, as the actors in “Metamorphoses” don vibrant colors and elaborate masks and take the stage, graduate student Erica Griese and her costume crew’s months of hard work will have paid off.\nGriese has spent the past four months working as the costume designer for IU’s production of “Metamorphoses.” The Tony award-winning play, based on the ancient Greek epic poem, presented Griese with the challenge of balancing ancient history with modern art in her costumes.\n“With this play, I wasn’t limited to designing for a certain time period,” Griese said. “I was inspired by the Greeks, but the costumes are modern and mostly from my head.”\nGriese will make her debut as a costume director with “Metamorphoses.” As costume director, she has many responsibilities, including everything from research and sketching to making sure that everyone’s costume fits and looks perfect until the last night of the show.\n“A lot of people think designers just sew, but that’s not what we do,” said Linda Pisano, professor of costume design. “We are actually collaborators in creating the world of a play. You have to know a lot about art history, psychology, fabric and all kinds of things. And we also sew.”\nIt took Griese and her crew of three graduate students and three professionals about two months to complete the costumes for the show.\n“All of us in the costume shop have been working very hard on ‘Metamorphoses’ ever since last semester,” said Lara Berich, the play’s cutter and draper. “‘Metamorphoses’ was begun in the costume shop November 26, we had first fittings the last week of classes and several people continued work over the holiday.”\nEvery article of clothing used has been specially dyed to fit Griese and director John Maness’ artistic visions. Completing the process of dying each piece of clothing by hand took Griese’s crew a grueling three weeks. \n“The director really wanted a lot of color in the costumes,” Griese said. “He was very adamant about that.”\nGriese and her design team also constructed 11 elaborate masks out of thermal plastic, the same substance used to create artificial limbs, and created two more masks made from fabric. The masks were hand-crafted to complement the costumes and to create an otherworldly vibe, reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil. \nAlong with masks, Griese created multicolored drapes, one for each of the 12 actors. \n“The actors all play about three separate roles and they can’t constantly be changing back and forth,” Griese said, so she decided to give each actor a basic costume and a drape that is worn a number of ways to differentiate the characters.\n“The drapes add so much to each of the costumes,” she said. “I’m excited to see what the actors do with the drapes to create their own characters.”\nWith “Metamorphoses” opening this weekend, Griese and the design crew have just wrapped up their hard work and finished dying everything. \n“We don’t usually assign a first-year grad student to costume design on something like this,” Pisano said. “But I am really proud of Erica and cannot wait to see her stuff up on stage.”