We caught up with Resident Costume Designer Jeni Schaefer about her concepts and inspiration for this season’s A Christmas Carol!

“Two things about the show motivated the design concepts for the costumes. One: for Patrick and I it was always a ghost story, first and foremost. So over the years that has evolved a lot of these pieces that you’ll see on the stage. The character that it says on the drawing may not be what they’re wearing because we’ve just sort of flipped around to different people every year. It’s evolved because every night after the show the wardrobe crew had a mountain of clothes that they had to sift through to put back on racks. I have spent the last 13 years getting less and less clothes back behind the set. So what the actors now have is that ghostlike feeling for every scene that they’re coming in on. All the pieces are just put on top and taken away so that it looks effortless and ghostlike and all of a sudden we have this new world that appears in front of us, not just set, but also in what the characters are wearing. Very subtle changes make a big impact so that acting can shine through, and the clothes are just there to elevate that.

“The second thing that motivated this design, is that Patrick and I were two crazy kids that grew up in very religious homes. Every show that we have ever designed together, we have been extremely motivated by different kinds of religions, different kinds of spirituality. And for this particular one, we went down the road of pagan, natural spirits entwined with these ghost storytellers. So what that means for us is that our ghosts, our real ghosts, our present, and the past and the future, they are representations from artwork that we spent time looking through, so the characters evoke this pagan sense in us of being grounded in the Earth.

“Past, she’s the winter, she’s the death, she’s the stuff that we regret—the things that we remember, the ghosts that are around us every single day. So she’s cold and she’s winter and she’s soft and she’s romantic, all at the same time. And then we get Present - who grounds us in the rebirth, the brand new, the alive! And then Future - who I had no hand in, I swear, I promise, but—he’s pretty darn cool and the kids really love this character; he gets the most questions at the talkback. But he’s the death, and yet, we get to come back to the present, and the gifts that present gives us - being able to be reborn and awakened from that scary thought of what that future could be. We’re all scared of what happens tomorrow. What tomorrow is gonna hold for us. Yet there’s a present that reminds us that today is where we belong and today is where we make a difference.

“This show, out of everything that we do every year, is so important for this community. I have been approached by people who tell me ‘I saw Christmas Carol when I was in school’. My current wardrobe supervisor, her first time in this building was for school, for our matinee of Christmas Carol. The impact of that chose her path in life. What I saw on the stage set me on my path and on my journey and I get to come back and be a part of it.

We touch a lot of lives. And it’s exhausting, and it’s so many shows back to back. But our families coming together is so important. My daughter saw this show when she was 18 months old, and my family has been here every single Christmas since. And I’m so glad you’re all a part of our gift to Hampton Roads this year.”