Asu Libraries Hidden Treasures - The irene corey collection

I'm Daphne Gill from the ASU Libraries I'm here at Hayden Library to discover one of our Hidden Treasures The collection of stage costumes from designer Irene Corey Irene literally changed the face of costume and makeup design For over 50 years she designed Costumes sets and makeup from theatre classics to theme park characters Her innovative animal characters influenced CATS and The Lion King She also designed the costumes for the television show Barney and came up with his trademark purple color I'm meeting with Theatre Archivist Kathy Krzys Kathy collected costume and design materials representing Irene's entire theatrical career Let's go on inside! Hello Daphne! Welcome to the Child Drama Collection Hey Kathy I see that you met my friend Job (Daphne) I sure did! This is a wonderful costume designed by Irene Corey for the play The Book of Job which is a show that toured for 22 years throughout the entire world In the 1950's Irene became nationally known for The Book of Job featuring 10 amazing costumes based on stain glass windows and the mosaics of medieval cathedrals Before designing a costume Irene would do research in books while visiting historic sites or observing animals in zoos She would adapt characteristics of what she saw into her makeup and costume design Irene was really into process When you look into her collection you're going to find just little ideas on the back of menus on the back of envelopes For example she designed the show The Sly Fox and each one of the characters was a bird of prey She went to the Audobon book and drew a sketch of what she saw and then incorporated the features of that bird into the character and then she wrote something really cool notes You know like living coprse That way it gave her an image of colors that she wanted to use And just to cap it off she designed a scarf that looked like the carrion that it might have flown away from the corpse with And it's also really hard when you are in the theatre to know what the costumes are going to look like throughout the whole show So she came up with this great idea of doing little sketches or costume plots One of the other innovative things in her book in her book that she wrote is she talks about her theory and process and I've used that word process before but I think that's the most important thing this collection can tell you Well when I was looking through the books The ideas that popped out to me were innovation and inspiration, and guidance The costume doesn't end at the neck [Kathy] Exactly So there's no separation between costume and makeup If she was here in the room with us right now She would pat you on the back [Kathy] And I'll do that for her [Daphne] Laughs Lot's of time there's a separation in the theatre where the costume designer just does the costume Someone else comes in to do the makeup and the hair and it doesn't match With her it always matched [Kathy] I have much more to show you [Daphne] Great! Next, Kathy showed me the unique costume designs for Shakespeare's The Tempest Irene set the play on an island under the sea Daphne, this is Propero from The Tempest We have all of Irene's costumes from this play [Daphne] Wait you have all of the costumes? All of the costumes, headpieces, wigs This is the most innovative piece from the play The Tempest This Prospero head piece was one of the first times an off-stage radio controlled light was used in a costume So one of the areas of expertise for Irene Corey was the masks and I see that you have one right here I do And Irene made masks from paper which very few theatre designers ever did By coming here you can see exactly how she made it And we also have slides in the collection that show the entire process for creating a paper mask Very cool! I want to know what your favorite Irene Corey production is Hands down, Alice In Wonderland She created them for a mime troupe in Dallas to perform outdoors in the summer so she had to come up with all kinds of innovative ways to create all the things that happened to Alice The growing, the crying the Jabberwocky After 40 years of stage design Irene opened her own design studio making angel wings for church pagents theme park costumes and foam characters for commercials The Irene Corey Collection is part of the Child Drama Collection documenting the international history of children's theatre back to the 16th century Visit the library on the web and use our information guides for each of the unique collections or schedule an appointment with Kathy Thank you so much for inviting us to the Irene Corey Collection But I think there's one thing you haven't experienced yet I think you need to try on one of Irene Corey's designs Ok! You are gorgeous! Thanks for coming today And thank you for joing us at another Hidden Treasure