{"id":266169,"date":"2025-02-12T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/?p=266169"},"modified":"2025-02-13T15:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:20:12","slug":"alumna-breathes-real-life-into-costumes-for-umw-theatres-new-john-proctor-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/2025\/02\/12\/alumna-breathes-real-life-into-costumes-for-umw-theatres-new-john-proctor-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna Breathes \u2018Real Life\u2019 Into Costumes for UMW Theatre\u2019s New \u2018John Proctor\u2019 Show"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Alumna Alicia Austin ’16 majored in theatre at UMW and studied costume design at Yale. Her work can be seen in shows such as Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building.’<\/figcaption><\/figure>

A single garment, recently dyed, rattled around in the dryer. A sewing machine hummed, its needle stabbing into the waistline of a pair of pants. The University of Mary Washington’s costume shop was in full swing this week, as student workers – and a special guest alumna – prepared for a new production by the Department of Theatre and Dance.<\/p>

Brooklyn-based costume designer Alicia Austin ’16, whose talent has contributed to shows like the smash Hulu hit Only Murders in the Building<\/em>, came back to campus to dress cast members of UMW’s John Proctor is the Villain<\/em>. S<\/em>et to kick off tomorrow, with a special pay-what-you-can performance tonight, the play reinterprets the Arthur Miller classic The Crucible <\/em>and features the kind of gritty, true-to-life wardrobes Austin has come to adore.<\/p>

“With shows like this, it’s about breathing real life into them,” she said of John Proctor<\/em>, which examines the coming-of-age thoughts of highschoolers in a small Georgia town. “Those clothes [most of which she snagged from Goodwill] have been lived in. You can tell they’ve got a story behind them.”<\/p>

So does Austin, who enrolled at Mary Washington to study psychology. It came into play, she recalled, in a costume design course taught by Associate Professor of Theatre Kevin McCluskey. “I loved figuring out what kind of people the characters were and how we could use clothing as a language,” Austin said of the class that changed her college trajectory. “I was hooked.” Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A single garment, recently dyed, rattled around in the dryer. A sewing machine hummed, its needle stabbing into the waistline of a pair of pants. The University of Mary Washington’s costume shop was in full swing this week, as student workers – and a special guest alumna – prepared for a new production by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":402,"featured_media":266232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"umw_cb_additional_links":[[]],"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webarchive.umw.edu\/eagleeye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}