Dressing for the Descent: Costume Designing Eurydice

Authors

• Hannah Olivia Schoen, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Jamie Bullins

Committee Members

JD Madsen, Michelle Harvey

Date of this Version

3-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts

Major: Theatre Arts

Under the supervision of Professor Jamie Bullins

Lincoln, Nebraska, March 2026

Comments

Copyright 2026, Hannah Olivia Schoen. Used by permission

Abstract

During the early spring of my second graduate year, I was assigned to be costume designer for the upcoming production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Eurydice is a retelling of a narrative that had been mostly given spotlight to the male hero in past iterations. Now we as a design team were going to tell the story from Eurydice’s point of view. After doing an analysis and research into details that would give me ideas on how I wanted to present these characters, I was able to present initial ideas to the director at our first design meeting.The design process started in the spring semester of 2025 in which discussions with the director and the design team would commence.During these discussions,the design would be refined and finalized before the end of the semester which ended in May. Everyone in the production team came back in August 2025 to build and block the production to be ready for the viewing public. After the orders of costumes arrived on campus, we had the cast come in for fittings to check if alterations or adjustments needed to be made to the piece in order to fit their choreography and the envisioned characterization. During the later half of the process, we had to finish the remainder of builds and alterations without our costume shop manager as they were out for health reasons. We also had to test the stilts for the Lord of the Underworld track and adjust height to fit the actors needs and comfortability. Once blocking was complete, we created a wardrobe track for the wardrobe team to go off from during the show's run which was included with the additional paperwork to track our pieces and orders. Eurydice opened to the public on October 2, 2025 and the final performance was on October 12, 2025. We ended with cleaning and restocking all pieces used during the production. This production was a chance to tell a unique story about choices and how those choices affect our lives.

Advisor: Jamie Bullins