Into the Woods Introduction/Bakers Costume Design

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway on November 5, 1987. Into the Woods won several Tony Awards, including Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress in a Musical (Joanna Gleason).

The musical has been produced many times, with a 1988 US national tour, a 1990 West End production, a 1991 television production, a 1997 tenth anniversary concert, a 2002 Broadway revival, a 2010 London revival and in 2012 as part of New York City's outdoor Shakespeare in the Park series. The musical intertwines the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and follows them to explore the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. The main characters are taken from "Little Red Riding Hood", "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Rapunzel", and "Cinderella", as well as several others. The musical is tied together by an original story involving a childless baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family, their interaction with a Witch who has placed a curse on them, and their interaction with other storybook characters during their journey.

My first reaction to the play was great i loved the story line and the combination of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and i instantly was thinking what we could do with the play and how we would portray the set and the characters. The songs are upbeat and happy and i am excited to start 'Into the Woods'. I researched into the play and looked at what others had done and how they portrayed the set design, characters, costumes etc. 

We have been given an assignment to design a main characters costumes. I have chosen the Baker. For this in preparation to this i was given a costume design to design for an eccentric chef and within this i made an over the top children's theatres hat. I made the hat myself and thought this could tie in nicely with the baker in Into The Woods. I looked at other theatre productions of Into the Woods to see how they stylised the Bakers outfit and most of them did intact have a chef hat incorporated in the costume. On the right  is a image of the hat i made from scratch. It is oversized which will capture children's eyes. Usually in children's theatre costumes are brightly coloured and bold however i wanted to stick with the originality of a white chefs hat and may be striking against the set or colours used in other characters costumes. 
The hat is constructed with white card, white material and plastic. 

The Baker should also wear a white apron this reflects his occupation of a Baker as it protects his clothing from cooking i think this should be slightly worn with some stains on to show its not brand new and portrays further his job. The Baker in the script wears a scarf i thought the scarf could be the centre piece for colour in his outfit i thought this scarf could be yellow as its a colour that isn't linked to other characters for example i wouldn't put the scarf as red as little red riding hoods outfit will be red and then this colour could over power the stage. For his shirt i think it could be a pale colour because i didn't want a bright shirt to detract away from who he is.