Backstage Pass with ‘Snow White’ Costume Designer Annie Cady
Children’s Theatre Company is thrilled to welcome back the extraordinary Annie Cady! Snow White is Annie’s 5th production with us. She costume designed The Hobbit last season and her other CTC design credits include The Snowy Day and other stories by Ezra Jack Keats and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Annie has always enjoyed making things and telling stories. She believes that costume design is a way she can be a part of creating stories and bringing characters to life. Annie enjoys the collaborative process of working in theatre that includes working closely with the entire production team — director, designers, actors, and technicians. She says working together to bring a piece to new audiences is “the best part” of her job as a costume designer and “the reason why I was inspired to choose this career path.”
Before embarking on her design work for Snow White, Annie closely read the script and then attended a reading of the play where she was able to hear actors Joy Dolo and Dean Holt read it aloud. She knew that the actors would be switching characters very quickly and they would need a base costume so that small tweaks could be made to swiftly transform them into each character throughout the show. Annie thought about the character of Snow White and how she had to be creative when she started living with the dwarves. She researched images of re-purposed clothing, miner’s clothing, nature craft, and dye techniques to help her gain inspiration and create design renderings. After her extensive research, Annie was able to create visual boards, pictured below, to present her ideas to the rest of the production team.
Annie’s unique style of design centers on ensuring that the costumes look lived in. The most important thing to her is that the clothes reveal something about the character to the audience. She doesn’t have one specific style or period that fits for every show, so she endeavors to look for innovative and exciting ways to bring the costumes to life. For Snow White she incorporated texture, patches, paint, and dye to help create dimension and depth.
Annie’s advice to anyone dreaming of becoming a costume designer:
“See plays — lots of them. Learn how to sew. People watch. Carry a sketch pad. There is not a specific path to become a costume designer, but watching and participating in theatre in any way will start you thinking about how the stories are told and who works together to make them breathe on stage.”
Annie is a faculty member and designer at Normandale Community College where she has costume designer over 30 productions. Some of her favorite credits include: Circle Mirror Transformation, Hedda Gabler, Prometheus Bound, and Noises Off. At Normandale she teaches Introduction to Theatre, Introduction to Theatrical Costuming, Stage Makeup, Introduction to Cinema, Drawing and Rendering. Annie earned an MFA in Design and Technology from the University of Minnesota: Twin Cities and a BA in Theatre Arts from Simpson College.
Expect the unexpected in this fabulous fairy tale with a (spoiler alert) you-won’t-see-it-coming twist! Don’t miss this hilarious two-person play now through December 8. Get tickets today!
— Article by Tyler Quam
