Carmen Killam

MFA COSTUME DESIGNER CARMEN KILLAM BRINGS COUTURE INFLUENCE TO SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH

BLOOMINGTON , IN Anyone who saw this past spring's production of The Scarlet Letter will be familiar with the wonders Carmen Killam works with costume design. Her leather-infused production blended the world of Nathaniel Hawthorne with the present day. The combination of Puritan simplicity and an almost punk sensibility proved the perfect visual representation of the destruction wrought in that play. Now, the third-year M.F.A. Costume Design student brings her expertise to her greatest challenge to date, William Shakespeare's iconic tragedy Macbeth . The play, which will be Killam's M.F.A. thesis production, plays on the stage of the Ruth N. Halls Theatre in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center on November 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19.

Killam received her undergraduate degree from Iowa State University , where she studied apparel merchandising and fashion design, yet she was always drawn to more theatrical pieces. She says, Originally I had wanted to be a couture designer, and that tends to be more theatrical, operatic, but all that was really out there was technical design. I didn't want to work for the Gap and figure out how to put stripes on a sweater. As she realized opportunities to explore the types of design that interested her were limited, she took her first costume design course and was instantly hooked. Before I even took the class, everything I tended to like was the more costume-y, period stuff. Moving into the theatrical world proved a natural fit.

In addition to The Scarlet Letter Killam has also designed Bat Boy: The Musical and Proof for IU. Each of those three shows presented very distinct design challenges, and functioned in different ways to prepare her for the challenge of Macbeth . Killam has never previously designed a Shakespeare play, and at first count she thought she would need roughly seventy different costumes for the tragedy. Still, members of the cast have already been excitedly discussing their wardrobe, based on Killam's renderings and costume fittings. We anticipate audiences sharing their rapture.

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• MFA Thesis Projects
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  • Vanessa Ballam, Acting
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