Alumna Alicia Austin ’16 majored in theatre at UMW and studied costume design at Yale. Her work can be seen in shows such as Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building.’
A single garment, recently dyed, rattled around in the dryer. A sewing machine hummed, its needle stabbing into the waistline of a pair of pants. The University of Mary Washington’s costume shop was in full swing this week, as student workers – and a special guest alumna – prepared for a new production by the Department of Theatre and Dance.
Brooklyn-based costume designer Alicia Austin ’16, whose talent has contributed to shows like the smash Hulu hit Only Murders in the Building, came back to campus to dress cast members of UMW’s John Proctor is the Villain. Set to kick off tomorrow, with a special pay-what-you-can performance tonight, the play reinterprets the Arthur Miller classic The Crucible and features the kind of gritty, true-to-life wardrobes Austin has come to adore.
“With shows like this, it’s about breathing real life into them,” she said of John Proctor, which examines the coming-of-age thoughts of highschoolers in a small Georgia town. “Those clothes [most of which she snagged from Goodwill] have been lived in. You can tell they’ve got a story behind them.”
So does Austin, who enrolled at Mary Washington to study psychology. It came into play, she recalled, in a costume design course taught by Associate Professor of Theatre Kevin McCluskey. “I loved figuring out what kind of people the characters were and how we could use clothing as a language,” Austin said of the class that changed her college trajectory. “I was hooked.” Read more.