When 克里斯托弗环保联合会 ’22 was asked to create costumes for Concordia’s 剧院 展示塞缪尔·贝克特的《终局之战, 一部二十世纪中期的反乌托邦戏剧, he confesses to having been “scared out of my wits because it’s such a hard piece of 剧院,他回忆道.
But rather than emulate what other designers had done over the decades, Aceves “went offline” and pushed himself to come up with “something completely original and uniquely my own.”
The result is that Aceves became the first student 在欧文的康考迪亚大学—and possibly the first at any Concordia—to ever win a national award from the 肯尼迪中心美国大学戏剧节. “我感觉简直不可思议，”Aceves说. “看到即将到来的东西让我很兴奋.”
Aceves actually received two awards: the KCACTF National Costume Design Award, 哪一个可能是全国最高的大学生服装奖, and the National Partners of the American 剧院 Costume Design award. No Concordia student before Aceves had progressed to KCACTF nationals, let alone won the top prize.
戏剧教授说:“他获奖的消息还是让我有点震惊。 Lori Siekmann. “他为康科迪亚创造了历史. Some of the other nominees are in graduate programs for costume design. This makes it even more of a feat that Christopher’s work was deemed exceptional over students who have graduate-level training.”
Aceves, 来自博伊尔高地, 也是一个天才的素描艺术家吗, actor, 和作家, 但直到去年才开始专注于服装设计.
“我喜欢亲自动手设计服装. Every little stitch, anything I can paint on my costumes, I can go full force,他说.
但是设计服装 结局 提出了一个重大挑战. The somewhat nihilistic play depicts a group of people trapped in a basement for years and too afraid to go outside because “outside is death” and perhaps the remnants of a global armageddon event. They desperately—and futilely—search for meaning in their underground existence.
“We do these classic works of literature because we understand people [like playwright Beckett] lived through really difficult times,Siekmann说. “这是一个挑战, 存在主义玩了很多深, 哲学和隐喻的东西在发生.”
此外, 结局 已经建立了, 西克曼称之为“穿着破睡衣的人”的标志性形象, 他们衣衫褴褛，愁眉苦脸，就像一直在那里消磨时光一样.”
Aceves eschewed any input from the past and instead studied the script and decided the characters should personify pieces in the game of chess, 反映象棋术语, “结局.“他让国王这个角色看起来严厉而强壮. He used the rook’s and bishop’s lengths to make them appear ghostly and pale in color—“otherworldly but rooted in the same reality as each other,他说.
“Chris brought his idea and it meshed really well with what faculty director 托尼Vezner 想要在这个节目中做些什么，”西克曼说. “Chris subtly incorporated the look of different chess pieces based on what the character was in the show. 设计中的思想层次实在是太疯狂了. It was a great collaboration in terms of subtle, metaphorical things he did with his design.”
Costume design requires students to closely analyze scripts and answer questions such as, 我们处在什么时期啊? 发生了什么?? 这些人在哪里?? It also requires understanding the characters and what they would choose to wear.
制作服装是阿维斯最喜欢的部分. “There’s a process to destroying things,他说 somewhat gleefully. “I had to think about the fact that they’d been in a bunker for 30 years. 人体对衣服有什么影响? 衣服对汗水有什么反应? 我想过那个地堡里可能有什么东西.”
他还加上了30多年的腐烂效应, sweat, 食物污渍, dirt, 雨水, 天气, 昆虫伤害. An airbrush tool helped convey the look of layered sweat that had built up over time.
Then he considered the nuclear blast which might have forced the people into hiding, and imagined every character on a scale of how far away they were from the blast. 用打火机和喷雾瓶, 他还加上了大大小小的烧伤, 加上煤烟烧焦的痕迹还有胶水和木炭的混合物, 是什么使它看起来像压实的灰烬.
设计中的思想层次实在是太疯狂了.
“Christopher was very successful at making these things look like they had been around forever, 破旧不堪, by intentionally ripping things and stitching them back together crudely to reflect that the character who did the stitching didn’t have the right tools or didn’t know what he was doing,西克曼说. “He was in the costume room dyeing things with tea, using bleach for treatments. He experimented with different ways to make the fabric match the level of distress he wanted.”
令人惊讶的是, 他在大约100美元的预算下完成了这一切, 主要使用剧院项目现有的服装.
Aceves说:“我只是对它进行了加法和减法. “你可以用你拥有的任何东西做任何你想做的事情. You can win an award on a shoestring as long as you know your limits and challenge yourself to go past them.”
他还说，服装是完全干净的, 尽管他们看起来“非常恶心和混乱”.他说，证据就在表演中.
“只要我听到有人大声喘气，或者看到他们睁大了眼睛, 我心里知道我做了我的工作,他说. “有一种感觉，‘我做到了. 我不敢相信我做了这件事.这感觉很神奇.”
演出结束后, he submitted his work to the KCACTF competition and made a presentation to judges at the regional festival. Siekmann says such competitive endeavors are vital to career development.
“设计师需要用语言表达他们头脑中的想法, 简明扼要地向导演和制作团队解释, “这就是我做出这些选择的原因,’”她说。. 他说:“克里斯口才很好，知道如何很好地展示自己. We encourage students to go through this process because it forces them to present to people they don’t know, 这就是你找工作的方式. 这就像一个面试过程.”
Aceves赢得了地区比赛, advancing further than any Concordia student had in any KCACTF contest. He then made his presentation to the national judges and happened to be attending his twin sister’s graduation ceremony when KCACTF announced that he’d won.
“I was completely unprepared when I was one of the first to be announced,他说. “这是一个很大的打击. 我非常高兴. My parents and I were freaking out and celebrating in a crowd of silent people.”
他的母亲, 一个老师, 还有他的爸爸, 谁在联合太平洋铁路公司工作, 一直鼓励他以艺术为职业吗. 康考迪亚大学的戏剧学院提供了帮助.
“I could not have done this without 托尼Vezner, Lori Siekmann, and Andrew Sierszyn, head of the 设计和技术生产重点 在康考迪亚大学的戏剧项目中，”Aceves说. “They continuously pushed me once they recognized how much I loved costume design. 他们是对的. 我很幸运能和他们一起工作, getting to see what the field is like and prepare myself for what’s to come.”
Siekmann says Concordia has launched students “who have gone on to highest level in their fields as professional artists. 克里斯完全有机会这么做.”