Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of our Halloween monsters? Tom Hammond does. From a rough story line and a few beastly names, Tom and his colleagues in the art of costuming sketched, selected, and sewed the outfits and accessories for an assortment of ghastly characters.
Many favorites from last year will return. (You won’t want to miss Blackbeard or the Coffin Gang.) But there’s a new script for The Curse of the Sea Witch, and that means many new costumes.
A surgeon butcher, the bone collector, demon rum, and a straitjacketed ghoul are some of the fiendish souls who will spring to life to haunt DoG Street next weekend.
A few months ago the Halloween planning committee sent Tom, our supervisor of Research and Design at the Costume Design Center, a list of characters and the scenarios in which they would be placed. Additional inspiration came in the form of images and ideas stuffed into a three-ring binder.
Beyond imagination, the costuming work began with sketches of the characters. Based on the scenarios, we generated different possibilities. (A previous blog post covered the development of the stars of the show, the sea witches.) Our design staff decided to keep a fairly simple look, rather than an over-the-top Hollywood presentation. Staying as much as possible within 18th-century style was a practical and aesthetic goal. We have a lot of appropriate material and expertise, and this is the colonial capital, after all.
Take one example, “the bone collector,” who will be haunting the Raleigh Tavern. With little but the name to guide him, Tom sketched out a couple of possible looks for the character. He approached his vision with the same types of questions he usually asks. What’s his backstory? How is he occupying himself in the tavern?
The first sketch was a sort of raggedy pirate, with a sash and a headband. He tried adding a staff topped with a skull, but dismissed the idea because it would be harder to employ effectively in the tavern. Tom then considered making him a warped version of an 18th-century gentleman.
He has been saving distressed clothing all year for Halloween. Worn-out shirts and pants will get new life in being worn by the creepy and undead denizens of haunted Williamsburg.
The Bone Collector will wear period shirt and trousers, ripped, patched, and sprayed to achieve the desired look. Since it’s going to be dark, Tom’s not too worried about special footwear. Hey, even 18th-century creeps need to be able to walk reasonably comfortably.
To live up to his name, the Bone Collector was adorned with… lots of bones. A bone crown on his head, a couple of bone necklaces, more tucked into his belt.
“Then I thought,” said Tom, “why not give him a whole skeleton?” So now the Bone Collector will haul a complete set on his back, a constant companion that may be both a cause and effect of an unsteady mind. (The character’s, not Tom’s.)
The bones are accessories, and that’s where the alchemy really happens. “The more detailed the costume is, the more real it appears,” says Tom. “If you put a guy in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, it may be entirely appropriate to his wardrobe, but if you add sneakers and a certain kind of socks and a ball cap, and maybe a chain, you’ve more specifically defined him. Details just make it more real.”
The details are fleshed out by our accessories team. They outfit our interpreters with basics like stockings, shoes, and hats, as well as ladies’ caps and kerchiefs, jewelry, and a few military items like epaulets.
A lot of time is spent fitting shoes and lining and cocking hats in various ways, or putting ribbons on women’s straw hats. Additionally, there’s some miscellaneous work: a new uniform for the Marquis de Lafayette, another for Comte de Rochambeau, a summer riding habit and hat for Martha Washington. “The things that need a little more attention come in here,” says Melissa, the accessories team leader.
And now this.
For Halloween, says Tom, “I gave them a few drawings to give them a start and they took off from there.” He holds up a necklace, with “dragon toes,” “shark teeth,” and an actual animal skull. He found it in the woods.
“You collect stuff, what you need,” says Tom matter-of-factly.
For next week, that means things like, staffs, pouches, aprons, and bones. They’ve assembled a number of fun pouches from material around the shop, which will be worn be various characters.
A sea witch’s crown, which was put together by Melissa from pieces crafted by Tom, features shark teeth (carved wood), barnacles (molded clay), “sea pearls,” and seaweed (no idea what that was made from).
Michael is putting the finishing touches on an item for the witch who lures children into the sea. It’s a twisted turn on Mother Goose, with the familiar wide flat-brimmed hat.
Elyse is working on the hat for the “Innocent Witch,” the youngster in the coven, who hasn’t quite graduated from witch school and may be a little ditzy. It’s bright green with a grassy texture, festooned with seashells and starfish. Tom suggests stitching some starfish to the underside of the hat.
Meanwhile, Melissa sews ruffles for the Innocent Witch’s jacket. They were white when they started. They’ve been frayed and dyed a seaweed-y blue-green. Melissa is also our master dyer. That means she gets to play with color, she says.
Outside, she applies her skills to one of the witch’s cloaks. It’s an ombré effect, which, I’m told, is the word for the gradation in tones of color, going dark to light. Melissa sprays streaks of blue and green, which muddle together to create a pretty persuasive found-this-lying-on-the-ocean-floor effect.
Costume work will likely continue on our ghoulish cast of characters up until late next week. They’re hoping to have success developing a new a monster, which you can see part of below. Any guesses?
We have been spent the week here with my large, extended family and my younger children have been genuinely frightened by the skletons that are all over the end of DoG street. When the week was drawing to an end, I tried to nicely express our disappointment to a staff member. She told us that we could “avoid that end of the street.” I know that the staff member was trying to be helpful, but we didn’t come to Williamsburg for a week to have to avoid a big part the area so that my younger children wouldn’t be be traumatized.
We booked this trip months in advanced to celebrate another daughter’s birthday. We have been here before in the Fall and it is gorgeous. Because of the macabre theme and skeletons in surprising places,this visit was disappointing. My youngest spoke every day about how frightened she was. This is not what a young child should remember about her visit to Williamsburg or what a mom wants to deal with every night in the hotel after the day there.To finish the week, on Friday evening, a coach road by my children. The coach driver was dressed in a scary costume and shouted at my children (who were already standing to the side) “Get to the side, or I’ll send you to your grave!”This was a shocking and inconsiderate thing to shout at young children. We were told scary events did not start until 8:00. This was at 5:00 and not in the section of Williamsburg were the Haunting was supposed to be taking place. It was a very scary way for my little ones to leave Williamsburg. We were intentionally on a back street before the scary events should be taking place and would have appreciated some consideration.
As a mom, let me assure you that what may seem amusing to adults can be very frightening to a child.
Lisa Scott says
I think this looks like so much fun, both to put together and to attend!
Robert A Massey says
I think programs such as this are terrific. It enhances Williamsburg’s reputation as a living experience. It bridges the gap between the history of the time and the interests of today. Children will learn the most about our historical past from repetition of exposure to places such as Williamsburg. I liken it to going to church;; who wants to go back to a church with a “fire and brimstone” preacher who makes you feel worse about yourself than when you entered the house of worship? Incidents such as displaying the ghost costumes creates an entertaining environment that our young people and aduls alike look forward to visiting time and again.
I have commented on the Halloween program in other blog articles. I am not a big fan of Halloween and said that there.
BUT, I think this effort is okay.
I am looking a pictures of engaged employees expanding their skills. They look like they are challenged by doing something different from the day to day. They may just invent and discover ways to present the day to day historical presentations. They look like they are being “stretched: and in general that is a good thing, especially if they are able to let off a little creative steam. To me it looks like a win-win for the employees of Colonial Williamsburg.
I have said before that this only last a couple days. It will likely draw a good number of people who may not have thought Williamsburg folks could be fun, and who might be enticed to come again some time when it is the regular 18th century again.
Children and teens, (adults too), might find out that developing a love of history, even to the point of really researching it, portraying it, making it a livelihood and lifelong pursuit does not doom one to blandness forever. That such people can lighten up and have fun too.
Frankly, I can’t imagine myself making that weekend one that I would visit. My wife and I make the effort to take two vacations a year in CW. We will be there the week before Thanksgiving and were last there in late June. Personally I would feel it a wasted trip for me to go at Halloween. I definitely go for the regular CW programs, sites and events. They are plenty exciting and interesting enough for us. But I am fine with the employees bustin’ out a bit and having fun and helping those who like such things to have fun. I think that is okay.
A lot of people are going to be mad at me for this comment. I understand needing programs to bring visitors in to keep CW viable. I confess to being uncomfortable last year with turning CW into a city of evil ghosts and whatever, and my discomfort with this year’s program is much higher. Is this all in keeping with CW’s mission: “that the future may learn from the past”? Are the kids involved going to learn from the past through fun activities, or are they going to just remember CW as a dark and scary place? And this has gotten so elaborate that I have to wonder what the budget is - and if CW is hurting for money, how can such an elaborate production be justified? A little fun is one thing, but I think this program is going way overboard. “Overboard” may be an appropriate term, given the nautical theme, but I don’t think it’s appropriate in terms of use of CW resources. I really, really think you can achieve the goal of a fun time, without going so dark and scary, and without such elaborate and expensive preparations!!!!!
This is not a free event for those adults who participate! Hopefully the $25 a ticket more than covers the expenses involved and aids the overall budget, rather than stretches the the budget, detracting from normal programming. My understanding is that the town will not turn “dark and scary” until after the kids trick or treating is completed and they have been encouraged to leave the area! I picked up a lot of these details by spending a large portion of the day at the Costume Design Center Annual Open House, an event that I would encourage everyone to partake of!
I visit CW many times during the year, loving history as I do, and think that it’s okay to cater to many tastes, particularly if it helps to bring dollars in to support the primary mission of the foundation. The Christmas decorations that will go up next month are not historically accurate but they do bring a lot of visitors to town, exposing them to the historical aspects of CW as well!
The Haunting on DOG Street is not something that I would normally plan on going to …. but my 53 year old big kid asked me to go with her, so being a good dad I said “sure”! But it is not unusual for her to want to just spend a day in CW doing the historical stuff (as I do too!) that we started enjoying doing there together about 45 years ago, whether it be just she and I, she and her mother, she and one or both of her sons, their whole family or our combined families. The whole point behind that dissertation.is that we do spend a lot of time in CW and are not bothered by, and are sometimes attracted to, the new programs that are tried. Some will come, others will not …, but it is important to not become stagnant, presenting the same programming day in and day out, if CW is to grow or even maintain their numbers!