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The Luxury of Space

Posted by DCA Theater on October 10, 2011 in July-December 2011 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Project 891Theatre Company

Submitted by Ron Popp, Artistic Director for Project 891 Theatre Company, currently working on Homefront in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

Most of our use of the DCA Studio Theater space (which is amazing if you’ve never seen it) has been dealing with costumes.

For our upcoming show Our Leading Lady, we are constructing several 1865 style hoop dresses. While this might not sound like a huge challenge, in fact it is. The problem is space. Project 891 Theatre Company, along with most storefront theatre companies in Chicago, rehearses and performs in different places and therefore does not have a “home base.”  Most of our meetings and costume building take place in individual apartments.

However, in the case of Our Leading Lady, the costumes, fabric needed, and patterns are HUGE!  If you’ve ever sewn….or, as in my case, tried to cut out a pattern in a small one bedroom apartment with a cat attacking anything you do….you can easily realize the problem.

Take a look at these costumes from Our Leading Lady to get an indication of how massive they are!

Therefore these past few rehearsals have been solely devoted to using the DCA Studio Theater space as a costume workshop. We are looking forward to the first read-through for our workshop production of Homefront, this week.