Behind the Scenes of Costuming ‘Once Upon a Mattress’

As we all know it takes actors, directors, and technicians to put on a show. However, no show is truly complete without the wardrobe that brightens the stage and adds to each and every character. With the fall musical, Once Upon a Mattress, West has assembled a creative-minded team to help the world of a prince and princess come alive in our own auditorium.  

Once Upon a Mattress takes place at a medieval castle with a King, Queen, Jester, Wizard, and many princes and princesses. One unusual Princess, Winnifred the Woebegone, tries to win the hand of Prince Dauntless the Drab but only can if she passes the impossible test made by the selfish Queen Agravain. To present the medieval time period, Glenbard West’s long-time costume director, Mrs. Hajny, started before the cast and crew was even chosen, hard at work researching to get a vision for the step.

Mrs. Hajny explained, “The first step is typically to do research on the time period, to get the historical aspect of it.”

Many of the costumes for the show include fancy doublets with big poofy sleeves, corsets, and loads of color. Luckily for male cast members, Mrs. Hajny made appoint to avoid any tights. After researching the time of the show and collecting basic pieces to provide for it, Mrs. Hajny then makes the costume fit the characterization for each person.

“As far as characterization,” Mrs. Hajny shares, “it’s a lot of intuition.  I uses color a lot and the symbolism of color to present the mode of a character in a particular scene.”

One of the particular challenging scenes in the show is Princess Winifred’s introduction with Sir Harry.

“It’s challenging because Sir Harry needs armor, and another challenge is Winifred and making her dress look swampy,” She says.

The characters in the show all have very different personalities, so it’s up to the costume workers to present them on stage.

After all the research and planning of the costumes, the construction begins. For this show, the costumes take “about a day each” for a 37 person cast. In order to cut down some of the work, Hajny takes shortcuts by making some costumes reversible or adding accessories to costumes instead of fabric pieces. Once the costumes are made, the cast will start costume fittings a couple of weeks into rehearsals. Hajny’s costume assistants, sophomore Maggie Pasterz and junior Sierra Shields, help take measurements of the cast members and inform them on any pieces they need to provide for themselves. During the show they help with quick changes and any emergency costume fixes.

For Mrs. Hajny the best part of costume making is “the very end, seeing it all together, to see all the costumes on stage with the talent in them.”  

You can still catch Once Upon a Mattress tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m.!  See the beautiful costumes for yourself!