TCR Playbills Shakespeare in Love AND Ada and the Memory Engine | Page 52

COSTUMING ADA
Designing costumes for a small period
production with character-driven roles is one
of my very favorite kinds of projects. Ada
and the Memory Engine has been a fun
labor of love for me as a costume designer
and has also been a wonderful opportunity
to utilize the talents of my students at Cornell
College who have helped to build several of
the costumes.
The play design centers on Ada, and while
she rarely leaves the stage, we wanted
to see her make subtle changes over the
course of her journey from reluctant socialite
to wife and mother to mathematician and
scholar. Ada's costumes reflect the periods
of the 1830s to 1850s and beyond.
Because the play is a memory play and
Ada's story, the other characters are dressed
in the ways in which Ada knows them from
the beginning, fixed in her memory, so they
do not change much over time.
I wanted to be true to the time period of the
play but also touch on some small details
that feel very contemporary, as Ada is very
much a woman of our time stuck in another
time. The women wear the corsets and the
men wear their trousers up to their belly-
buttons, which helps the actors to physically
embody people of a time different from
our own. I played in some bold colors,
especially for the strong women in the
script.
It has been a lot of fun working with "Team
Ada" on my first production at TCR. Thanks
for coming along on this journey with us.
JENNY NUTTING KELCHEN,
Costume Designer
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shakespeare in love / ada and the memory engine • theatrecr.org