By Liz Beavers
lbeavers@newstribune.info
managing editor
KEYSER — Imagine the task of creating — from scratch — a full lion costume, a man made of tin, a scarecrow, a good and bad witch, and almost 40 individual pint-sized colorful Munchkin costumes, and you’ll begin to understand the accomplishments of two local ladies who are the costumers for Potomac State College’s “The Wizard of Oz.”
Not only did these two ladies create costumes which are practically identical to the characters immortalized in the 1939 MGM musical version, but they managed to accomplish the gargantuan task in a little over six months.
“We actually looked into renting the costumes at first,” Laurie Clem explained recently, “but we were really disappointed in what we saw.
“Most of them looked like chintzy Halloween costumes.”
“They were pitiful,” Danise Whitlock adds.
“We couldn’t even find any Glinda dresses that were accurate,” she said of the Good Witch’s bountiful pink gossamer gown.
The two were no strangers to the daunting task of creating costumes for major productions at the college. They had previously done the costumes for “Cats” and “Pippin,” and so they eagerly jumped into the job of creating the inhabitants of the magical land of Oz.
“We knocked the lion out first, because we figured he would be the most challenging,” Whitlock said.
Made of faux fur with strips of darker colored fur for the mane, the costume for the Cowardly Lion is quite heavy and hot, but once actor Ernie Poland gets inside and pounces onstage, the discomfort is forgotten.
“The actors are really what make the production work,” Clem says.
The Tin Man’s costume, although lighter than one would expect, posed its own set of problems.
“The Tin Man is actually made out of papier mache over cardboard,” Clem said, noting that “the papier mache didn’t want to cooperate,” making that costume one of the more difficult of the lot to create.
It was the Munchkin costumes, however, that took up most of their time and effort.
“We new they would be a big undertaking,” Clem
said. “We ended up doing more sewing than we had planned. We made all their little jackets.
“We tried to fit the costume to the person,” Whitlock explained. “We tried to fit each personality.”
Sometimes, however, their idea of a good fit and the actor’s thoughts did not match.
“The boys didn’t think much of the flowers on their shoes,” Whitlock said, laughing. “So we took some of them off.”
Even the two costumers were impressed, however, when they finally got to see their work come to life.
“It was really amazing to see it all onstage,” Clem said.
“You see it in bits and pieces during rehearsals, but you can’t really tell what it’s going to look like until they all get out there at once,” Whitlock said.
“Everything just really came together.”
With all the costumes done and the play underway, however, the costumers’ job is not done.
“We help them get into their costumes, and we do all the main characters’ makeup,” Clem said.
And getting the Wicked Witch, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion into their costumes is no easy task. Since the the witch originally appears onstage as spinster Elmira Gulch, and the other three actors first appear as stage hands, they have precious little time to get into their character costumes and back out onstage.
“The Witch has 10 minutes and 26 seconds to get into her costume and get made up,” Whitlock said. “The Scarecrow has 13 minutes, the Tin Man has about 16 minutes, and the Lion has about 20 minutes.”
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my, we’ll never be able to do that,” she recalls.
With a little help, though, from Jim Corley, who does his own makeup for the Scarecrow, and four others who help get the characters ready, “everything just falls into place,” Clem said.
They give special credit to Autumn Giles, who helps get the Munchkins ready.
Once the excitement of the production is over, however, the work is still not done for Clem and Whitlock, who can be found checking in all the costumes, repairing any tears or other problems, and getting everything ready for the next show.
“If anything is missing, we’re in trouble,” Clem said.
Why do they take on such a huge, time-consuming task?
“It’s fun,” Clem says.
“I just can’t see me not doing this,” Whitlock says.
“The Wizard of Oz” will be presented for its last week tonight, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
