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(NOVA DOBREV) The designer comes in with their beautiful renderings,
and then it's my job to take their designs and figure out
how to actually create them on time and within budget.
This is the most crucial time
of the whole build, in my opinion, because I do manage the money.
So this is telling me who's in what scene and what they're wearing.
And if somebody has quite a lot of looks like our main character, Jo,
has lots and lots of looks, all of these are a different dollar amount
that my eyeballs go cha-ching cha-ching, and that's how I don't go over my budget
magically through this paperwork.
Since we don't have the time or the resources to build everything,
we find pieces that other theaters already have that
we can borrow for the show that fits within the world of the design.
(ISABELLA HARRIS) We have big pieces that we just simply don't
have the time to make in the show, but we can use our local resources.
This all came from Milwaukee.
We had another person go down and pull all of these items
and this is what happens to the stuff that we make.
It goes into stock and then we can share it with other theatres as well.
(NOVA DOBREV) Once we have the designs and we know what we're going to actually
build, swatching is the next key piece of that.
We have a freelance assistant that lives in L.A.
and we sent her the designs because Seattle really doesn't have
the fabric stock that L.A. and New York do.
So she physically cut these swatches in the store,
put it on these pieces of paper, and sent those to us.
It's old school. Yeah, it's an old school.
Hands on the ground. Feet on the ground kind of kind of thing.
I can't really do this online.
Once we have those individual pieces approved of what we're going to build,
then the actual shop staff begins their work.
We have usually just four very short weeks before a tech begins.
There is a vast community of people that have to come together
to bring a big show to life, especially a period show
like Little Women, in which there's a lot of detail in historical context.
The drapers mock up the pattern on paper and translate
the designer's drawings into something that's actually going to go on the body
drawn out in 2D to become 3D.
The first hands cut out these mock ups in the early building stages
of how we might want to start putting things together.
It's just this kind of a nice
thin muslin material to sort of start looking at shape and design.
Then we have our first fits
with those muslin mockup garments on the actors’ bodies.
We get big overview notes from the designer about shapes, style lines.
Then we have a week to do all of those notes.
That's when we
start getting into the actual real fabric the garments are going to be.
Then there's more notes that come out of second fittings.
We have to make sure the final pieces
are ready to hit the stage within one more week before tech begins.
It takes so many people to put a big show like this together,
not just the hands in the room
that are sewing clothes, but the folks building wigs, mustaches,
beards, you name it, and the crafts master who does hats and shoes, dyeing fabrics.
There's many hands that touch every single piece of any look, complete head to toe.
When we're done building the show we hand everything over to the wardrobe
and wig teams and they care for the clothes and the hair
throughout the entire run,
it's a really big job
to keep track of all the moving parts and pieces of a show like this.
In just a few short weeks, we put together a huge, huge show.
Period pieces are so much fun because they're challenging
and it's not your everyday build.
And I think the shop has accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.
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Catch Art Zone Friday nights at eight and anytime online at seattlechannel.org/artzone.