Dublin Shakespeare Festival - Willy's Suitcase

During the period of 3rd-8th June, myself and a few friends took part in the Trinity College 'Dublin Shakespeare Festival 2013'.

Taking part in two shows was indeed tiring as it meant double the amount of rehearsals but it was also one of the best weeks of my life! (*cue emotional music) We're first year drama students and took our production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to primary schools during the week along with a few shows in Trinity.

Four of us (Alex Christle, Colm Summers, Conor Nolan and I) involved in the play also decided to adapt and perform a selection of scenes from Shakespeare's best loved plays. As this is primarily a fashion blog, I thought I would comment on our choice of costume for our outdoor scenes, collectively known as 'Willy's Suitcase'.

on location in St.Stephen's Green

Our concept was to have a set costume even though
we were changing characters with each scene. However, our suitcase of props allowed us to portray our character changes to the audience.
For example, Alex used a hat and waistcoat to signify that she was playing a girl pretending to be a boy (Shakespeare likes his cross-dressing).
One audience member commented that you could tell that we had done a module on 'Modernism' as our costumes evoked many elements of 'German Expressionism'...basically they're very dramatic!

the sexy crew 

 From our lovely headshots here to the left, you can also see our darkened eyes and cheekbones - again to heighten the expressions in our faces. We were going to be in outdoor sigths so we wanted to stand out from the crowd, so to speak!

 

Monochrome was the name of our fashion game.
Thanks mainly to Penneys for all our classic garments! Alex, Colm and Conor all wore black skinny jeans while I rocked a black leggings/skirt combo which Alex acquired for her 'female' roles too. The guys borrowed black bowler hats from myself which we all used as props in the show and wore white tank tops with black braces.

As the great man Shakespeare said himself 'Youth is wild' and we certainly had a colourful and wild time in our black and white garments!

Midsummers stylin' to follow...