JORDYN HOLKA
Reverb Editor
Halloween is just around the corner, and most college students’ focuses, rather than being on school, have temporarily shifted to figuring out the answer to the age-old question: what am I going to be for Halloween this year?
The Department of Theatre and Dance is not unaware of this shift in focus and is, therefore, planning its costume sale for Monday, Oct. 20, just in time for Halloween.
The sale will run from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. ¬— or until it sells out — in Bartlett Theatre, and all one has to do to secure his or her dream Halloween costume is pay $5 cash for a bag. Once those $5 are turned over, shoppers are free to stuff as many costume pieces as possible into the bag that was given to them at the door.
“It’s going to be absolutely the biggest after-Christmas sale you’ve ever seen in your life,” said Laurel Walford, costume shop supervisor and organizer for this event.
Walford said that every five or six years or so, the costume shop reaches a point at which it has built up a surplus of costumes and needs to clear some of them out to make room for new ones.
“We’re constantly producing,” she said, noting that “it costs you money when you have too much stuff — getting rid of things actually saves us money.”
Jordan Fischer, senior musical theatre major and co-student organizer of the costume sale, said, “Because there is such an emphasis on the undergraduate technicians and their work in the realm of costume, they like to focus on what costumes they can build, what costumes they can purchase themselves, [and] how they can make costumes; [we] are taking this opportunity to get rid of costumes so [we] can make room.”
Walford and Fischer emphasized that it will not be just over-the-top costume pieces being sold at the event, but really anything that they have used in their shows.
“We’ve got everything from costume pieces [to] day-to-day t-shirts and pants,” said Fischer.
“It’s funny,” noted Walford, “because for weeks after these sales, I usually see things I recognize wandering around campus because it’s fun, cool clothes.”
Barbara Tagua, senior theatre arts and arts administration major and co-student organizer of the costume sale, added, “We [also] have little goodie bags made up with all kinds of cool things that are going to be sold separately.”
These goodie bags will go for $1 each.
Although the costume sale team plans to fill Bartlett with racks and tables full of costumes for the sale, Tagua said that “this is really only making a small dent in the amount of costumes we have.”
“[We have] bags and bags and bags … a small hill of bags,” said Tagua when asked about how many costumes they have to use for this year’s sale.
In previous years’ sales, the seemingly endless supply of costumes lined up sold out in less than 30 minutes, and this year’s organizers are hoping for the same results.
“I recommend anyone that’s interested, get there as early as you can, and don’t think three times about picking something up – if you like it, grab it, put it in the bag; you can always change your mind,” said Walford.
The proceeds of this event will go toward scholarships for the Department of Theatre and Dance.
“It is a pipe dream down the line, [but] we’d like to establish a costume scholarship,” said Walford.
Proceeds from costume sales in previous years have gone toward everything from scholarships to costume shop improvements, and Walford said that, when the new wing of the Rockefeller Arts Center opens, they may very well decide to put future proceeds toward some aspect of that addition.
The costume sale has a Facebook event called “Theatre Department’s Halloween Sale!” and will soon be coming out with Instagram and Twitter accounts that will build hype in prospective buyers by posting pictures of some of the costumes that will be up for grabs at the event.
Walford wants students to get excited about this sale, saying, “I’m selling you a bag, and you can put as much stuff in that bag as you possibly can. Five dollars a bag … nobody says you can’t buy two bags.”