In connecting with this year’s PLACE theme, the theatre department has decided to reuse materials to create the costumes and the set.

Behind these genius costumes is Visiting Costume Designer Alethia Moore-Del Monaco.

“It’s very intuitive. Costume designing is very intuitive. You kind of read the character, hear what they are saying, and break down their character backstory and history,” explained Moore.

“From there, it is a huge part in intuition. What an audience expectations for what they think the character would be, what portrays that physically would be. So a huge part of that is intuition,” said Moore.

She talked about how the costumes of the Islanders contrasted Nobles in terms of reused materials.
“There is a huge difference between the world of the Islanders and the world of the Nobles. The world of the Island people is defiantly promote raw materials, raw trash, and recycled trash. The world of the Nobles is more recycled clothing.”

She even shared a little bit of one the character costumes. “For Caliban specifically, we are using chip bags as his cape and cloak,” Moore said.

The genius who designed the magical trash island for these characters is Professor Ty Marshall, the scenic and lighting designer for the productions at Linfield.

“The hardest thing was to figure out the concept of the show. Once we figured out that we wanted to go the route of a magical trash heap rather a magical island … than everything comes into place,” explained Marshall.

He talked about the research that went into the creation of the trash island.

Everyone in the designing team researched trash barges and examined photographs to gain inspiration for the set. Instead of a magical island the audience would’ve seen like in the original set of “The Tempest,” they would see a magical island made of trash that was created by all the trash discarded from places.

Marshall and Moore-Del Monaco had to make trips to the local recycling center in McMinnville to find parts for the set and electronic piece for some of the costumes.

Marshall was surprised to find computer and electronic parts, along with many different materialized garbage.

He described it as a “collection spot” because of how each type of trash was organized into different spots.

“It was interesting to get a dumpster. This is the first show I ever designed to have a dumpster on stage,” explained Marshall.

“The Tempest” opens Nov. 5th and runs Nov. 5-7 and 12-14.