A handmade costume for Halloween — UI Theatre Department will sell Halloween costumes this week

The University of Idaho Theatre Department costume shop will present a Halloween costume sale from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday in the Hartung Theatre lobby.

The shop will sell hundreds of dresses, shirts, hats, shoes, sashes, corsets and accessories in various styles. Students and community members will have the opportunity to buy Greek and historian clothes and Tiger Lily’s dress from prior UI show “Wendy and Peter: Into Neverland.” Costumes are reasonably priced, and suitable for people of different ages and genders, said BreAnne Servoss, a UI theater student and the primary organizer of the sale.

People cannot buy these costumes from other markets and grocery stores because most of the costumes were not manufactured by production lines. Each one is unique, said Ginger Sorensen, the costume shop manager and the costume technology instructor at the UI Theatre Department.

“We make our own costumes,” Sorensen said. “For example, we have students who are taking the Theatre 104, Technical Theatre II, which is our basic costume class that all the theater majors are required to take. And then we also have the Theatre 311, Costume Pattern Development Studio, to teach the more advanced skills.”

The students that have classes at the costume shop make a piece of clothing every semester. They use different cloth materials, such as melton, denim, thick leather, and cotton to make the costumes, Servoss said.

However, the costume shop also buys some clothes for their modern shows. For instance, they purchased the bottom-down shirts from the Old Navy for “ROOF!” which is being performed in the Hartung Theatre this week, Servoss said. The shows indicate what materials and fabrics the costume shop will use, she said.

“We mainly have the costume sale because we have limited storage space, so we can’t save everything,” Sorensen said. “If we don’t sell them, we are not able to use the space for our present shows.”

Sorensen said the sale also brings in money for the theater department that goes toward repairing machines and buying new equipment, such as sewing machines, and costume materials, Sorensen said.

“Half of the money will go to the student costumes, to make new costumes,” Sorensen said. “And the other half will go to the (United States Institute for Theatre Technology), the student chapters, so we can go to the conference.”

Servoss said she is a member of the student chapter of the USITT, which is an organization for students to study technical theater skills and knowledge together. The theater students will use the money from the costume sale as the fund for traveling to the national conference in the spring.

“This (coming one) is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so we have to find the fund for ourselves in order to get our students there. The national conference is a professional conference. A lot of students from the universities had gone to the USITT and that’s where we get our summer jobs and internships,” Servoss said.

Sorensen and Servoss both said people who come to the sale will be satisfied and amazed by their Halloween costumes.

Jinrong Lei can be reached at [email protected]

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