Animalesque
for
Broadway
Once Upon A One More Time is a Broadway jukebox musical, where classic female fairy tale characters – Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella and more – embark on a journey of feminist enlightenment, rewriting their own stories, inspired by Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, and of course aided by the songs of the mighty Britney Spears!
In collaboration with the show’s costume designer Loren’s Elstein, Animalesque designed and created the Cinderella Mice and Bird headdresses for the dancers. Working from Loren’s beautiful costume designs, these wonderful characters were brought to life in my studio in Cornwall through a combination of paint, screen print, applique and embellishment, and posted to Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, Midtown Manhattan, where they performed last summer.
As Zachary Stewart wrote in his review of Once Upon A One More Time on ‘What’s On Stage’, the costumes would need to, “hold up under the immense strain of Olympic-level movement from some of the best dancers in America.” So as well as finding the perfect aesthetic combination of character, fabric, colour and textures for the pieces, the build and structure needed some adaptation too. The whole process of collaboration with Loren and the team was such a joy!