A few days ago, I woke up with a production concept in my head. I don't know why, but this just happens on occasion. Sometimes I just wake up, or I'm driving, or whatever, and I have an idea for sets or costumes for a play.
I should clarify that this isn't an idea of a NEW play that I'm going to write. This is more "if I were directing X show, if I were the costume or set designer for Y show."
Back a year or two ago I had some ideas for costumes for R2D2, C3PO, and Yoda for William Shakespeare's Star Wars. A while ago I had an idea to do Chicago with Billy Flynn played by a woman and how her costumes would look.
Last week's dream was a production theme for the stage version of Little Women. It started with the set - a bare stage with a wooden back wall. A clothesline is strung across the wall. A grip - a woman in dark period dress - comes out and hangs a stocking (as in, a single leg long sock, not a Christmas stocking) on the line for each of the girls - something plain and practical for Meg, either a bold color or stripes for Jo, black lace trimmed for Beth, and delicate pink lace for Amy. Each act change or scene change, the clothes line gets changed out - vintage "tin type" style portraits, bunches of flowers for Meg's wedding, photos of the 1870 New York skyline when Jo visits the city... and the hook designated as Beth's stays empty after she dies.
It's a simple set. Going with the idea of the "wild theatricals" the girls put on in the attic, it's the sort of set teenage girls during the Civil War could cobble together - trunks, crates, a few simple props - and all brought out by either the actresses themselves, or costumed grips.
I haven't been involved in a theatrical production since I moved back to Georgia in 2007 (unless you count the Christmas pageant I wrote for my parents' church around that time). I majored in theatre but, aside from ghost tours and children's story times, I haven't done anything with that major. But sometimes the theatre creeps back in.
I guess you can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can't take the theatre out of the girl.
Time for that ever-fun game, “Can I Costume a Show Using Only Stuff from My Own Closet?”