Shadows of a Christmas Carol

2020 was strange for everybody

At Baylor University Theatre, it was no different. The faculty got together and devised a project that could adapt to changing times. The result was a designer-led, highly collaborative, and fluid interpretation of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. As an added twist, the piece would be performed outdoors at the historic village behind the Mayborn Museum. As a design team of students and faculty, we met over the course of months and sifted through the tale, choosing the themes and images that struck us.

I was particularly drawn to the themes of shadow, greed, and a type of haunting that comes from within. Perhaps I was simply in the Halloween spirit, but my imagery tended a little dark and spooky.

Next step? Turn our amalgam of ideas into designs. We were joined by a cast of actors who immediately got to work writing monologues and turning a novel into stage directions. After meeting with the shop manager, we decided to pull as much as we could from existing costume stock and focus our crafting energy on unique accessories and props for the ghosts.

In lieu of traditional renderings for each character, I designed neutral base costumes that could be accessorized to accommodate the multiple characters each actor portrayed. I also made color palettes to act as guidelines when assembling the pieces.

I was particularly interested in the colors found in vintage Christmas advertisements. I was aiming for a palette that was warm, rich, and utterly festive.

The Ghosts

These were some of my favorite characters to collaborate on during my time at Baylor. The ghosts carry with them intense themes of time, regret, and grief. My collaborators and I spent hours discussing what kind of effect we wanted to have on the audience and how best to achieve it. We decided doubles, human shadow puppets, and a 12’ tall puppet made the most sense (despite how it sounds).

Image_1 2020-12-10_20-52-52.jpeg — The Ghost of Christmas Past

My solo project, I took the original description of the Ghost as a fae-like, eerie being with light shining from their head and distilled it into a single costume piece. An added challenge, two actors would portray one ghost, popping in and out of the oak trees. For more information on that process, click here. To the left is my original rendering and below are photos of the realized design.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol