For IU Theatre’s production of “Mr. Burns, a post-electric play,” however, the bin is filled with computer chips, wires, pop tabs and a plethora of plastic bags.
Because of the show’s post-apocalyptic nature, Nichols said her role as the costume designer is to interpret what materials the characters might actually have on hand in a futuristic wasteland without electricity.
“My initial thought was people are leaving their homes, they’re only going to be taking what they can carry with them and things are going to stop,” she said. “It’s going to start to get harder and harder to get materials.”
“Mr. Burns” is set in a futuristic America, where a group of survivors’ recount of a popular “Simpson’s” episode progresses into a budding civilization.
The third-year costume design MFA said she came up with the concept for “Mr. Burns” costumes in February. From there, she began her sketches and renderings.
The costumes are primarily made of “up-cycled” and unconventional materials such as tutus made from layers of plastic shopping bags.
Nichols said she focused on using plastics because they melt, making it more realistic for the characters to have fused them together for patchwork.
She said it is crucial to dig into the world of the play in order to start designing its costumes.
“When you’re designing a show, that’s the first thing you have to think about is the world that the characters are in,” she said. “What kind of resources do they have? Who are they trying to impress? What do they have to do in their daily lives? Because all of those things will form what we put on our bodies.”
Nichols has designed costumes for shows with fantasy settings before, including “The Comedy of Oedipus” and “Into the Woods.”
With costuming for “Mr. Burns,” she said she was able to gather donated materials to up-cycle into the pieces. These include about 40 empty chip bags donated by Frito Lay, she said.
“Normally, you have to go and hunt down your fabric, but I feel like for this show my fabric has been coming to me,” Nichols said.
“Mr. Burns” Director Jonathan Michaelsen, said the show starts in a more realistic setting and grows as it moves through a span of 82 years in three acts.
“(Nichols has) been really great at taking all that in,” he said. “She’s really invented some really creative things.”
Michaelsen said the costumes in this show not only define the characters but also define the world of the play.
They are a progression between acts and help take the audience on the journey, he said.
For her final year in her master’s program, Nichols said she is looking forward to her costumes coming together in “Mr. Burns” as well as starting work on her thesis show, Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in the spring semester.
“I promised them I’d use real fabric on that one,” she said.
