Alayna Riley

Ranked Process

 

This musical is about high school becoming dystopic to the point of kids being labeled as “Above The Average” or “Below The Average” based on their grades. To capture this feeling, I decided to have a limited color palette of just blue, green, and white. I landed on blue and green as the show makes many references to water and drowning to symbolize how the students feel. We bought almost all of the costume pieces and some of the actors provided their own clothing. One issue we ran into was that we originally wanted all the Above The Average kids in blazers. However, they were delayed in shipping and wouldn’t have arrived until after opening. So I ended up finding a bunch of matching sweaters in colors I liked at Walmart for them instead. There is a big crest with an A on it that serves as the show’s logo and was displayed through the set. I cut out small felt patches in the crest shape and cut out A’s from cricut paper by hand to complete them. Another big project I had was that I could only find white and black plaid skirts for the Above The Average girls when I wanted blue ones. I ended up dyeing them to achieve the color I want and think the result turned out well. 

Personally, I feel like this show has been my best costume design to date. I don’t think there was anything I disliked about it.