[This is one section of the article, "Behind the Scenes in Arts and Sciences."]

For Laurie Kurutz, lead costumer in the School of Drama, stress comes in the form of deadlines. But after years of working in theater, she’s used to the schedule.

Laurie Kurutz (right) explains to graduate student Erin Murphy how to fit a helmet—built for the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience—so that it sits on the head correctly. Photo by Mary Levin.

Kurutz is part of a three-person staff that creates costumes for School of Drama productions. “All of our shows are designed by students—mostly graduate students, occasionally undergraduates,” she says. “We are the technicians who build the costumes that the students design. They are the architects, we are the engineers.”

Asked about the importance of costumes in a drama production, Kurutz explains, “Theater is a visual medium. The minute the actors step on stage, before they speak, the costume conveys who they are. That revealing of character has to do with design choices, fabric choices, color choices… down to the buttons. Because everything means something.”

Kurutz realized the importance of costumes early on, as a high school drama student. “In high school, you frequently do everything—sets, props, acting, costumes, publicity—but something about costuming clicked for me.” During college she volunteered in the costume shop at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland; she was hired as permanent staff two days after graduating.

“It’s one of the largest costume shops in the nation,” she says. “The resident designer had exceedingly high production standards and she taught me. It was the old apprenticeship method. It was my graduate school.”

After 11 years in Ashland, Kurutz was ready for a change. She came to the UW in 1992. She’s built hundreds of costumes since arriving, all now part of the School’s extensive costume collection. The collection includes more than 3,000 feet of inventory hanging in six costume storerooms, plus 300 boxes of costume items.

	A detail of Laurie Kurutz working on a costume. Photo by Mary Levin.

Each costume represents a collaboration. “The designer brings sketches into the shop and meets with us,” explains Kurutz. “Then we do the Vulcan mind-meld, with the designer describing everything about each costume—how it should look, act, breathe, move.”

Kurutz’s role is to help realize the designer’s vision. “It’s challenging—in a good way,” says Kurutz. “There is often period research involved, so I can help create the vision the designer has in mind. I have to be an historian, an art historian, a psychologist who understands characters and how they can be revealed, and I have to synthesize all those things. Each production is different, which keeps things interesting.”

In addition to constructing costumes, Kurutz teaches several drama courses each year, including Tailoring for the Theatre and Pattern Drafting and Draping.

“I didn’t know when I took this job that I’d fall in love with the teaching aspect and the students,” says Kurutz. “The students’ energy and their discovery process is exciting. Sometimes they have a vision in their head, but they don’t think it can be done. I can show them a technique, and suddenly they realize that all things are possible. That’s a powerful thing.”

After all these years, does Kurutz ever tire of the deadlines, the novice designers, and the nagging details she faces daily in her job? Not a chance. Like the others with unusual jobs in the College—working with algae or piano strings or electrostatic generators—Kurutz is thrilled that she is able to pursue a lifelong passion through her work.

“I am so lucky to be able to do what I like to do, what tickles my mind,” she says. “It really does still excite me as much as it did 20 years ago.”

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[Summer 2002 - Table of Contents]