This year’s Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a cocktail of southern Republican politicians, vampires the ‘80s and the border debate. The original play’s fairies have been replaced with vampires, and Theseus, the Athenian duke, is a Texas senator.

With such a plethora of character types, costumes strongly influence the performance and development of the characters, according to senior Cindy Liberman, the play’s head costume designer. Liberman worked on the costumes for last year’s Shakespeare, freshman, Emerson, States and Student-Directed Festival plays.

According to Liberman, she and the rest of the costuming team go to thrift stores and outlets to find clothing and accessories that will speak to the personalities of the play’s characters.

“We look into what we want the clothes to say about the characters,” said senior Katherine Sadovnikov, an assistant costume designer.

The vampires, for instance, will be dressed in the style of the period in which they died.

Sophomore Tal Scully, who plays one of the vampires, emphasizes this point.

“My costume’s weight and style is definitely going to influence the mood of my character,” Scully said, “If I have a heavy, bulky costume, I’m probably going to be more aggressive, but if it’s more petite, I might be more elegant.”

Senior Sally Yoon also finds this to be the case. She plays the Changeling, the 10-year-old orphan of one of Titania’s friends.

“What Cindy chooses for me is going to affect the way I act,” said Yoon. “If she gives me a lot of accessories, I’m going to be playing around with those while on stage.”

According to Yoon, her character loves to dance, so her costume also needs to be comfortable.

“There’s a lot of freedom, especially in the shows we do here,” said Liberman.

Yet Liberman still finds it important to first do research on the style of the era being presented in the play, which, in this case, is the 1980s.

“Once you figure out the guidelines of what needs to be there,” said Liberman, “you can take artistic license and figure out what looks good on stage and what’s good for the actors.”

She explained that the border patrol officers will be dressed in khaki security guard uniforms, but will also have aviator goggles as a fun touch.

According to Liberman, the costume team has to consider the themes of the play that they, along with director Mary Mastandrea, want the costumes to bring out.

“In this play, the color red has a lot of meaning,” said Liberman in reference to the association between vampires and blood. “We’re staying away from it in this particular show except when we want to use it to really make a statement.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens on Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 3:30 p.m. While the actors rehearse and the costume team designs their outfits, both sides encourage feedback from each other.

According to Scully, seeing and believing in her costume transforms her from herself into her character.

“It makes you think, ‘What would someone wearing this be like,’ ” said Scully.

Conversely, Liberman feels that her understanding of all of the characters and what they need to be in comes from the actors and how they want to portray the character.

All in all, the cast and crew are ecstatic to premiere the play.

“I’m so excited about every part of it,” said Liberman. “I think it’s going to be really good – something completely new and different.”

Ayesha Mehrotra can be contacted at [email protected]