Lampasas High School sophomore Kayla Crowe’s hand-drawn costume designs have earned her a trip to Austin for the University Interscholastic League’s Theatrical Design state competition.
Crowe said she has always been attracted to costumes and developing characters, a passion she has had since she was a child.
“I would make little mini costumes for my stuffed animals or just draw characters. I made a pirate one time,” Crowe said. “Now, my family and I go to Renaissance festivals, so we make costumes for that. Also, I help my friends make costumes for Comic Con.”
When she was younger, Crowe learned how to sew to create her costume masterpieces. Although she received some advice from an aunt, most of her skills have been self-taught.
“My dad would get me some cheap second-hand fabric, because I was like 12, so he wasn’t going to get good fabric,” the student said. “I taught myself how to sew, so I would just use the cheap kind of fabrics, painting on it to make details, buttons and stuff. It was kind of trashy, but it was cute.”
As an eighth-grader at Lampasas Middle School, Crowe followed her friends into the theatre program. She decided to stick with it as a freshman. Crowe said she was swayed to be involved in theatre’s technical side.
As a freshman, she assisted with designing the sets for the high school’s performance of “Shrek the Musical Jr.,” and she helped craft the costumes for the One-Act Play performance of the “The Illusion.”
Crowe is not afraid to make her outside-the-box ideas come to reality.
“It was more of a magical theme to it, so I wanted all of the characters to look like otherworldly,” Crowe said of her designs for “The Illusion.”
“One of our characters was like this magician and had a really long cape that tapered off at the end,” she said. “It had like frills of green, and on her shoulder was like lit candles, and you see the wax dripping down.”
For the high school’s fall musical this school year -- “The Wizard of Oz” -- Crowe helped develop the animatronic head for the character Oz. Crowe created the head out of cardboard and paper mache after receiving inspiration online.
“I saw somebody make a small puppeteer hand puppet, and I thought, ‘Hey, that is really cool – let’s do one for theatre but huge,’ ” she said. “I kind of just get visions that are cool.”
COSTUME DESIGN CONTEST
UIL’s Theatrical Design competition includes several subcategories, like hair/makeup design, marketing and costume design – the division in which Crowe is competing.
All submitted designs revolved around the play, “the King Stag.” The play is a fairy-tale comedy where a king uses magic to find a truly loving bride. But his treacherous minister swaps souls with him, trapping the king’s spirit in a stag while the villain takes the throne — until love and trickery restore justice.
For the costume design contest, Crowe crafted a 150-word prompt that summarizes the costume plates and a 750-word justification paper that goes into detail on the design intentions and process.
She was tasked with developing four character plates. Plate no. 1 served as an inspiration/mood board, while plate no. 2 included colored illustrations of three or more characters in a scene together depicting a relationship. Plate no. 3 included another illustration of three or more different characters. Plate no. 4 required the most detail, Crowe said, with a full-color rendering with fabric swatches of a realized costume for one of the play’s fantasy characters.
“I changed up the main storyline just a little bit,” Crowe said. “It is supposed to be in this kingdom, but I kind of wanted them to have more of a gypsy/whimsy-goth theme. I changed the kingdom they are in into a gypsy town, and the forest is surrounding them and made it kind of fit more with the character designs I had in my head.”
Crowe went beyond the requirements for her character plates, showcasing characters in different scenes rather than in stagnant positions.
“When you are designing something, you are just trying to show the outfit,” she said. “A lot of times, they won’t even draw the face or the hair or anything, but I feel like you lose a lot of personality in the character. I feel like it makes it stand out more.”
LHS Theatre Director Greta Peterson said Crowe’s hand- drawn work reveals authenticity and showcases vibrant colors.
“It’s some of the best work I’ve ever seen, it really is,” Peterson said. “Even the stuff that I’ve judged, because I’ve judged this stuff before, it’s better than a lot of stuff that I’ve judged. And it’s not computer-generated. It’s not done with any digital art, because it is allowed in this contest now. Hers is entirely hand-drawn, which is entirely unusual.”
Crowe will mount her character plates on a poster for the upcoming state competition slated for May 15-16 at the Austin ISD Performing Arts Center. She also is preparing herself for an interview with judges to explain the purpose behind her designs. Her goal is to finish in the competition’s top six to earn a state placement.
“I think she has a great chance to place,” Peterson said.
