While costumes are a crucial component of every performance, many people are not aware of the level of knowledge and expertise that people like Polley draw on to create and maintain high-quality theatrical costumes.
Polley covers a range of responsibilities in her role at Albright. Her teaching responsibilities include classes covering patternmaking, costume design and advanced construction, and even stage makeup. She also runs Albright’s costume shop, developing and coordinating costumes for the college’s four main stage productions per year. As part of her responsibilities in this area, Polley oversees several paid student costume technicians who each work 10 hours per week. Jeff Lentz—senior artist in residence at Albright College and fellow Albright alum—says that, in addition to everything else Polley manages, she has also taken the lead on establishing a Dance minor at Albright. Once she heard that there was a desire and need for the minor, she put the program together and moved it through the approval process. The new Dance minor has cleared every hurdle and will begin in Fall 2025.
Remarking on Polley’s ability to fill many roles very well, Matt Fotis—associate professor of Theatre, department chair, and director of undergraduate research at Albright—calls Polley “an octuple threat.” This phrasing plays on the idea of “triple threat” performers who are strong in acting, singing, and dancing. He notes that she not only oversees the costume shop, but she also serves as Albright’s costume designer, handles wardrobe responsibilities during and after shows, and even finds the time to teach Zumba on campus. Lentz also points to Polley’s admirable array of strengths; he remembers that she excelled during her undergraduate years as a dancer, actor, and singer as well as in costume construction and design.
Costuming and Wardrobe
Costuming and wardrobe—or creating and maintaining costumes—are crucial elements in stage productions that are often overlooked and undervalued outside of the backstage sphere. A typical audience member may not know how many professionals work behind the scenes to mount a production; audience members also may not realize just how complex the acts of costume creation, maintenance, and oversight can be.
One of the many places where Polley developed her formidable skills in costume creation and wardrobe management has been the Glimmerglass Festival, an internationally renowned American opera company based near Cooperstown, New York. Major performing companies such as Glimmerglass employ teams of highly-skilled professionals to staff their costume shops. At the top of the costume hierarchy is the costume director, who oversees all costuming for the company and usually works year round. When a new show is being staged, additional professionals are hired. At Glimmerglass, each show has a dedicated costume team led by a draper who coordinates with the costume designer to create custom patterns for each performer. Drapers pass the patterns they have created to the next person on the team, the first hand, who cuts the fabric for all the costumes and does all needed prep work, such as marking seam lines, notches, darts, and so on. Once the first hand has the patterns ready, stitchers then sew the costumes together, working under the guidance of the draper and firsthand. Drapers also mentor the stitcher apprentices, who are generally college students and recent graduates who have many questions about the work. Once the costumes are finalized, they become the responsibility of the wardrobe team, who is responsible for getting the costumes onto performers in repaired and clean condition, looking as they should, throughout the run of the show.
Fotis says that Polley is a superstar, particularly in the arena of wardrobe management. In a previous university appointment, Polley developed a course in costume shop and wardrobe management, but she couldn’t find a course text to support her curriculum. Even though she had learned the ins and outs of wardrobe management without a text, she was surprised that no books covered the information. As a result, she developed her own; The Wardrobe Supervisor’s Toolkit: A Comprehensive Guide to Wardrobe, was published by Routledge in December 2024. She remarks that this practical field guide to wardrobe management is intended for young technical theatre professors as well as people working with wardrobe in community theatres and high school theatre programs.
While the book could be seen simply as a practical guide, Fotis points out that Polley’s book is actually a crash course in project management. Fotis observes that Polley essentially does what business schools teach—she is a consummate project manager. In her book, she gives readers all the needed tools to ensure that performers get onstage with all parts of their costumes being worn according to the specifications of the costume designer.
Practicing Her Craft
As a tenure-track professor in Theatre, Polley continues to pursue professional opportunities in her field. During the summer of ’24, she worked as Glimmerglass’ wardrobe manager for the season, overseeing the wardrobe work for all four mainstage shows as well as the youth opera. She and her staff of 10 ensured that all costumes were ready, repaired, in place, and on the performers for every show. She also made sure that the apprentices were fully trained to enter the field.
This summer, Polley will shift from wardrobe back to costume construction at Glimmerglass, working as a draper in the costume shop. Hinman notes that the timeline for costume development can be as much as two years prior to the show, but drapers begin their work about two weeks before rehearsals start. In all, drapers have eight weeks from their arrival at Glimmerglass to complete all costumes before the show they’re working on opens. As draper, Polley will be responsible for creating the costumes for 30 to 65 people, each of whom will have as many as six distinct looks. Polley will also be responsible for fitting any costumes that can be pulled from the costume shop inventory or that are bought for the show. Hinman points out that these positions are not just technical but also creative; the costumer supports the designer’s vision by helping to create the character through the medium of the costume.
In addition to bringing the costume designer’s vision to life, drapers must also think through how to make the costumes work for the performers as they move through the show. For example, many costumes need to be “quick-rigged”—designed for quick changes which usually need to happen in 30 seconds or less. Other costumes may need to be adjusted so that the performer can have full range of motion for choreography, perhaps with added elastic or an inserted gusset. Polley offers the example of costuming for Newsies; since the performers often slid on their knees in the show, the costuming team she worked with reinforced the knees to make the costumes last. Drapers and their teams are responsible for fitting every part of each costume, including hats, gloves, shoes, and even undergarments. With assistance from the entire costume shop team and costume crafts artisans, they ensure the designer’s vision comes to life from head to toe. Hinman observes that many costume details may not reach the audience because of the lighting or the distance from the stage, so those details really need to be emphasized for stage productions. All of this painstaking work occurs before the audience arrives—drapers and their teams are contracted through opening night; after that, wardrobe steps in.
Even after the curtain closes, costume maintenance continues. For example, Glimmerglass houses its costumes in a full, two-floor warehouse where they make sure to control moisture and light levels and avoid extreme temperatures. This careful storage ensures that the costumes are available when needed for future shows. Additionally, Glimmerglass make the costumes available for rent to other performing companies, which can rent all needed costumes for an entire show, whether they are based in the United States or abroad.
As drapers create costumes for Glimmerglass productions, they bear such future uses in mind. Each costume needs to be durable and washable, with all cut edges finished in ways that are easy to alter. Drapers’ teams also include as much additional fabric as possible in seams and hems so that the costumes are as alterable as possible. Any extra fabric left after a costume is finished is bagged, labeled, and kept with the costume, ready to for repairs or re-sizing. Polley appreciates that making costumes in these ways is the industry standard that she learned in graduate school, and she passes these strategies to her students and Glimmerglass co-workers. All of this careful attention to detail occurs out of the audience’s sight, but it helps theatrical companies of all sizes the ability to access the costumes that bring their productions to life.
Championing Theatre on Campus
Lentz was excited to have Polley return to Albright, and he has been awed by her skills in mentoring students. He particularly admires her patience and support with students who are struggling to find where they fit best. He points to the atmosphere in the costume shop as a prime example of Polley’s strengths. She has developed the shop into a collaborative, welcoming space where students naturally congregate. They are drawn to the open, warm environment where she guides students but also gives them room to fail productively. Not only is she warm and welcoming, Lentz remarks, but she is also brilliantly organized and knows exactly how much time is needed to move through the costume creation and management processes.
Lentz observes that administrators often have no idea how much student contact time is needed to bring productions to the stage. He appreciates that Polley speaks so eloquently about the process of providing this vital experiential learning to the students; she is a persuasive champion who can explain the necessity of contact time to colleagues and administrators alike. Polley states that theatre faculty often need to have productive conversations with administrators and other campus partners to articulate how theatre actually works. She is able to help them understand that putting on a show is curricular—not extracurricular; in production is where the biggest learning objectives for theatres are realized.
Fotis states that Polley, like many theatre professionals, excels at collaborative, creative problem-solving on the fly. He points out that theatre production is a great training ground for a 21st century workforce where students learn to work across and among disciplines. He further notes that arts disciplines provide experiential learning opportunities that can’t be replicated with AI tools. The entire range of Polley’s skills and expertise may not be fully appreciated by the audiences who experience the costumes that she and her team produce, but her warm guidance, powerful defense of experiential learning, and incredible depth of costuming and wardrobe management knowledge all have tangible and lasting effects on every student, employee, and colleague she works with.
