The sparkling red and purple sequins filling up in the theater workshop makes this year’s musical stand out from the rest. The walls of the sewing room tacked on with sketches of costumes, especially of the horns of a dragon that would later be showcased into the show that show the development of each costume, especially the main challenging prop of the show, later on, proved to be this year’s technical challenge.

Theatre department tackles on Shrek the Musical to create a recreation of the beloved story of Dreamwork’s production on stage. Eye-catching pieces of vibrant yellow and sequins of black and purple achieve the colorful aspect that was surely enjoyable to the audience. Incorporating a plot onto one stage is just as important as having the design elements that would help make the story more believable.

“It was a bit self-taught and then the other costume people also helped me out a lot,” senior Isabel Dial said, explaining the work put into all the several colorful set pieces in the show.

Using not only fabric but also molding pieces to create a form and adding color changing lights to the eyes of the dragon.

Having a start in design in the past year on costumes, there are hopes for the future of where “[I] would actually like to go into costumes for theater as a career path,” Dial says. As graduation is coming up, Dial’s path is to go into Northern Arizona University into technical theater with the prospect to set a stage in New York.  

“I like doing timepieces because it’s always fun to go back and look at all the different time periods and what they would wear and then recreate the costumes for the stage,” Dial says going back to how she got into technical theater first. As musicals have set the stage for her new passion to work beyond.

“[It is] always a fun aspect of it and then just seeing the costumes that we’ve been working so hard on actually being used,” Dial says as she then further mentions the dragon costume was something that had never been done before. The teamwork is evidently shown in technical theater as the costume department also include Kristian Campbell and Beth Wisniewski. With a daunting task, the group worked hard to finish the dragon that included several elements. The skeletal body of the dragon is made up of PVC pipe and hose piping that is then draped over with black and purple fabric and hand painting scales on themselves paying attention to the littlest detail.

“The costumes and the sets…  they’re all very colorful, extravagant [that is] really exciting,” junior Matthew Pitman expressed. Being the main lead in the musical, noteworthy to the production were the costumes themselves.

“We had a professional come in and help us,” Dial comments where the whole costume department itself has had help in creating the vibrant pieces shown on stage. The costumes taking approximately a month, the overall amount spent on designing has about three racks completely full of costumes that were shown on stage.

“Shrek has one of the most magical sets where it pulls the audience’s eyes from scene to scene,” junior and a part of technical theater Joyce Poon says. Explaining the excitement that the audience could look forward to and how the costumes would enhance the setting of the play.

“It pulls the audience’s eyes from scene to scene,” Poon comments to complete an enchanted stage.