Seamstress creates costumes for actors, dancers

MAT-SU — Claire German had no idea her daughter’s dance classes would lead to a life of theater for both of them.

When her daughter Emma started taking classes at Sonja’s Studio of Dance in Wasilla about 15 years ago, German was asked if she would be interested in sewing ballet dresses for the dancers’ performances, such as the Nutcracker.

“I looked at (the dresses) and I thought, ‘I can make that,’” German said.

As a child, she said, German had little interest in the work of her seamstress mother and grandmother. But after she married and began doing leatherwork by repairing horse saddles at the outfitter where she worked, she really got into sewing, she said.

Decades and many dresses later, she got hooked on costuming.

In the last five years, German has helped create and build hundreds of costumes for performers in Colony Middle School, Colony High School and Valley Performing Arts productions. Her work has transformed actors and actresses into Disney princesses, military men, a stage-long dragon, an ugly duckling, and more.

She has spent countless hours at sewing machines in contribution to shows such as Colony Middle’s “Little Mermaid,” “Cinderella” and “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as Colony High’s “Shrek” and VPA’s “Wizard of Oz” and “South Pacific,” which opens this weekend.

With Shrek, onstage at the Glenn Massay Theater last month, German said the students’ involvement in developing the costumes exceeded her expectations, teaching her as well.

“There was some stuff we already knew we were gonna do,” she said. “But some of the kids had really great ideas, and we just went with it.”

Some students, such as those who played the knights of Duloc, showed up in the costume shop after school or during study hall to work on their helmets and tunics, she said, deciding on their own to create individual emblems for their outfits.

“A little bit of ownership goes a long way when they take care of their costume in the dressing room,” German said.

Although German and her fellow costumers do some research of past productions to design their pieces for the local shows, there are often no printable patterns to follow, which calls for a lot of improvising. The flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, German said, were particularly challenging for her and head costumer Roxann Benbow to develop for that reason.

What they ended up with was apparently impressive enough to catch the attention of other people in show business, outside of Alaska. Benbow's and German’s work in the show was strong enough to ink a deal with McCall’s Patterns, which now sells patterns of the costumes for the Mayor of Munchkinland, the Munchkinland town fathers, and Munchkinland teachers.

Costuming also calls for improvisation based on the performance of the actors, German said. In South Pacific, for example, German, her mother, Rebecca Jensen, and assistant costumer, Cheri Lou Trask, had developed some grass skirts that worked great while the actors and actresses were standing still. But as soon as they started to spin, sway and shimmy about the stage, it became obvious that the skirts weren’t going to stay up without a more functional belt.

“It has to look good from the outside, but it has to be functional onstage,” she said, of costumes in general.

Sometimes the full function of a costume is not always apparent at first, however. German said she was shocked to learn that, as the lights dimmed on the dragon in Shrek, her tennis-ball eyes glowed in the dark.

“We didn’t know that was going to happen. We had no idea,” she said.

In developing Cinderella’s dress, German noted that Broadway designers had used a spring-loaded mechanism to transition from rags to a ball gown, which a middle school production crew couldn’t afford.

What they came up with instead was a tear-away vest and a skirt that unrolled over the rags, which sparkled in a way no one expected when the fabric was purchased.

“It looked like magic,” German said. “You just don’t know what something’s gonna do until the light hits ’em.”

But one thing German does know about the materials she chooses is that they should be recycled whenever they can be.

“I try to be as thrifty as possible,” she said.

And the second-hand stores haven’t let her down so far. From a $12 wedding dress for Fiona, to a surprise influx of blue, collared shirts in bulk for a group of sailors, to an oversized pair of yellow pants for Humpty Dumpty, German said she’s been fortunate to find just the right pieces for the show — at a fraction of the cost of building everything from new materials.

All of these aspects of costuming roll together in an art that is more than just a hobby for Claire German.

“I really enjoy trying to figure something out like that, the creative process that goes into (costuming) is really interesting,” she said.

Her next new endeavor, she said, will likely be “cosplay,” a type of performance art in which costumed participants represent a theme or specific character.

In the meantime, German can be seen volunteering at the Colony High School Upbeat Café to support the Colony music department, teaching sewing classes at Sonja’s Studio, and watching her daughter choreograph whole dance acts around the Valley and beyond.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

What: Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”

Where: Valley Performing Arts, 251 W. Swanson Ave., Wasilla

When: Weekends, March 20 through April 19

Tickets: Purchase online at valleyperformingarts.org, or 373-0195.