{"id":1201,"date":"2014-09-18T17:40:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T21:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2014-09-18T17:40:46","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T21:40:46","slug":"centre-alumna-kayla-higbee-returns-to-costume-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/2014\/09\/18\/centre-alumna-kayla-higbee-returns-to-costume-shop\/","title":{"rendered":"Centre Alumna Kayla Higbee Returns to Costume Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

By HAYLEY HOFFMAN –\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>MANAGING EDITOR<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Centre alumna Kayla Higbee \u201814 is back on campus as DramaCentre\u2019s new Costume Shop Manager.<\/p>\n

While Higbee found costuming by accident, she has always been interested in sewing. As a child, her mother made all of her Halloween costumes by hand and showed her daughter how to stitch them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was placed in the costume shop as my work-study assignment when I first arrived at Centre,\u201d Higbee said. \u201cI think I may have checked \u2018sewing\u2019 as a skill on the sheet they send work study students and I was placed under [Charles T. Hazelrigg Professor of Dramatic Arts] Patrick Kagan-Moore, who, as soon as I walked into his office, asked me if I could sew. When I said yes, he took me to the costume shop and left me there [to sew].\u201d<\/p>\n

She first worked as a dresser on DramaCentre\u2019s production of Arcadia, where she \u201cabsolutely fell in love with being backstage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t come to Centre wanting to do drama or costuming. I was set on clinical psychology, and was actually a double major in Psychology and English for the longest time,\u201d<\/p>\n

Higbee said. \u201cAfter I went to London and didn\u2019t work on a play for a semester and saw 25 plays, I realized how much I missed it and realized that Psychology wasn\u2019t for me, and theatre had become my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

After finding her passion for the dramatic arts, Higbee worked as the Costume Shop Manager at Theatre West Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an outdoor theatre and we had a costuming staff of three, including myself,\u201d Higbee said. \u201cWe were responsible for taking care of 60 actors and four shows throughout the summer. It was one of the biggest challenges of my life, but I loved every second of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most recently, she worked as a stitcher at Porthouse Theatre in Kent, Ohio, an Equity theatre associated with Kent State University. As a stitcher, she worked from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day building costumes. \u201cPorthouse has very high standards, and my skills definitely improved from spending the summer with them,\u201d Higbee said.<\/p>\n

Now, as DramaCentre\u2019s Costume Shop Manager, she will be in charge of work-study students who build the costumes for the mainstage shows. She will also work with the costume designers to make sure that costumes are built according to what they want. Once she is settled in, she looks forward to continuing the shop\u2019s biannual bake-offs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCostuming and food go hand in hand and I\u2019ll never turn down [Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts] Matthew Hallock\u2019s focaccia bread,\u201d Higbee said. \u201cI also really love to bake myself, so this will just give me an excuse to.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also looking forward to working on the fall production of Boeing Boeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t read the play yet, but the summaries I\u2019ve read are hilarious,\u201d Higbee said. \u201cI love comedy and it\u2019ll be good to see Centre do one again. I definitely think we\u2019re up for it and I think audiences are going to love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higbee hopes that students who work in the costume shop will be part of a learning environment and ask questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never stop learning in a profession like this and I think that\u2019s what made me enjoy the shop so much,\u201d she said. \u201cI want them to realize that they\u2019re important parts of the giant collaboration that is theatre and the work they do is important, which is exactly why I became so passionate about it myself. But it\u2019s also fun, because we get to make clothes, which is one of the coolest jobs you can have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By HAYLEY HOFFMAN –\u00a0MANAGING EDITOR Centre alumna Kayla Higbee \u201814 is back on campus as DramaCentre\u2019s new Costume Shop Manager. While Higbee found costuming by accident, she has always been interested in sewing. As a child, her mother made all of her Halloween costumes by hand and showed her daughter how to stitch them. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-leisure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}