Costume Design (2026)
Performance: Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm (1812)
Group project designed for Wimbledon Common Park
Have a look at the full project (I highly recommend!) :
https://freight.cargo.site/m/P2970106877574133166284749556676/Hansel-and-Gretel-group-1.pdf
This was a multidisciplinary group project, combining three Masters courses among Wimbledon College of Arts. This includes MA Theatre and Performance Design, MA Puppetry, and MA Theatre Making.
The brief was to create a performance based on the famous Hansel and Gretel tale, in a site specific area: Wimbledon Common.
My group decided to create an immersive trail experience, followed by a puppet and actor show in the ‘witch’s hut’, located on a pond. Audiences started by following a trail through the woods, encountering oversized insect sculptures, lantern puppets, roaming little Hansel and Gretels, and mysterious forest creatures before arriving at a pond for the second act of the story, wgere the show takes place.
My primary contribution was the design and development of the costumes.
For Hansel and Gretel, I first thought of keeping the traditional German clothing, but thought better when the project bloomed into something much more nature-focused. I then started imagining flower-children, and finally scratched that for butterfly children, because that made more sense with the look of the house (a mushroom. Butterflies are attracted to mushrooms, just like bees are to pollen!) that meant is was much better for little butterflies to be lost in the forest and lead the audience to a giant mushroom house.
Inspired by the natural environment of Wimbledon Common, I explored how the witch could embody the forest itself through layered textures, organic forms, and found-natural aesthetics. The final design combined materials such as raffia, jute hessian, synthetic grass, flocking, and distressed calico to create a costume that appeared overgrown with moss, foliage, and woodland debris. Through sketch development, material testing, and iterative design, I focused on creating a character that felt both magical and unsettling, blurring the boundary between creature and landscape. The witch takes off her grassy cape when she enters the rusty house, revealing a matching rusty and dirty looking costume.