Senior Olivia McAllister has been involved in Theater Tech since her freshman year, and is now the head of the Costume Department. Olivia said she enjoys the creativity that goes into designing and creating costumes, though with this current production she struggled to keep up with the size of the cast — “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has many characters. She’s excited to see the performance and all her hard work come to life this weekend. 

What went into creating the ’70s themed costumes? 

Well, it starts with the research. We make mood boards. All departments have to make a mood board for what they do, so I had to make separate mood boards. I made a separate tech world mood board, a fairy disco mood board, and then I made a separate mood board for specifically disco makeup, because that’s just hair and makeup and is kind of a whole other thing. I didn’t want to make it look like cheap ’70s Halloween costumes. I tried to make it more realistic. 

So what would you say was the most challenging part about creating this play?

Well the first thing that was really challenging was definitely that cast, because it’s so big. It’s just a lot to organize. And then aside from that, the donkey head — we had to make a donkey head from scratch by hand. I spent four hours hand sewing part of it. 

Can you tell me a little bit about how the ’70s theme is reflected in the costumes and the set in general?

For the costumes, the whole theme is the tech world versus ’70s. So one of the main things I focused on to get the divide between the two groups was color palettes. So, the tech world is mostly black whites gray, really boring. They have branded Athens hoodies, which is really cool. And then the fairies are super bright rainbow colors that stand out, they have shimmery fabrics and very fun colors.

How has it been working under the new Theater Tech teacher, Mr. Dillard? 

Everyone’s still kind of figuring out how everything works, because there’s certain systems and certain aspects of tech that’s different for each theater that people are still figuring out. There’s certain traditions that each group has; we have to teach the directors the tradition. 

What are you most excited about?

I’m just excited to see it happen because we’ve been building up to this since the first week of school. So, I’m just excited to see everything come together.