For many years, I worked as a costume designer in regional theatre. Occasionally I would do a modern dress show, but my preference and my skill set both led me towards period plays. Shaw, Ibsen, Chekhov – these were my dessert, as well as my bread and butter. Therefore, it was quite a stretch when I got a call from a friend at American Girl Place in Chicago. American Girl was about to release a series of small stuffed animals along with coordinating books. A script had been written, and they wanted to mount a show for three to five year olds that would tell the story of Bitty Bear, Bitty Puppy, and Bitty Kitty. We were to assume that the young audience had never seen live theatre before and it was important for the children to make the connection to the toys (this was a commercial venture) and not to be scared by the size of the “animals,” who they would meet after the show. It seemed like an interesting digression from my usual work, and they promised they did not want pod costumes, something I had never tackled.
Of course, two weeks after I signed the contract the decision was made to put the actors in pod costumes. Theatre doesn’t teach you how to say no, so I researched mascots belonging to sport teams and adjusted and adapted. Most mascot uniforms are a furry jumpsuit with a huge head. My animals needed to be proportioned like the dolls, needed to be able to speak and hear each other, needed to be able to dress and undress themselves onstage, and they needed to do a forty-minute song and dance under stage lights without fainting. We didn’t have the budget to install fans like Walt Disney’s parks use, but the animals wouldn’t be able to flop on their bellies onstage if they wore fans, so it was a moot point.
The three animals each had a distinctive head shape and a distinctive body shape. Bitty Puppy’s head was tall, Bitty Kitty had wide cheeks, and Bitty Bear’s head was squarer. I purchased sturdy head blocks and padded them out with clay to mimic the shapes of the dolls’ heads. After covering the expanded heads with foil, I assumed I could use Celastic to shape the heads, but Celastic, the go-to theatre product in the 70’s, was taken off the market due to the toxicity of its solvents. Research led me to Varaform, a 
thermoplastic mesh which, when heated, becomes soft; it retains its new shape when cooled. A few layers, overlapping, made a good stable base and I reasoned that the open property of the mesh would keep the actors from overheating. This was true for the most part. We did have one particularly active puppy who sweated so much he softened the Varaform each performance. The theatre bought a small freezer to stock with cooling packs, which we inserted in the pod bodies. I also bought a keep cool hard hat liner for Puppy’s costume head and he had a healthy run.
To pad out the actors’ hips curves and shoulders to mimic the dolls, I made baskets from the Varaform, as shown on the rendering. We discarded them as impractical when the director incorporated somersaults and rolling on the floor into the Bitties’ actions onstage.
For comfort, the layer closest to the actors’ skin was a wicking unitard that could be laundered after each performance. Each toy animal had a different body type, but their arms and legs were similar, so they all wore a similar jumpsuit, feet, and hands under their pods. The fur of the jumpsuits needed to hold up to lots of wear and frequent washing, it needed to dry as quickly as possible, the color and texture needed to look like the dolls, enlarged to scale. Most imitation fur was too loosely woven to stand the abuse. I found a supplier of fur for teddy bears, Edinburgh Imports. Their alpaca was the perfect color for Bitty Bear; it wore well and was soft enough for a three year old to hug. A curly longer synthetic was perfect for Bitty Puppy’s ears, and a ginger colored synthetic was washable and sturdy enough for his body. Kitty was made of a grey ¼” synthetic with guard hairs and a plush curly white for her tummy, inner ears, and paws.
Doing all I could to keep the actors from overheating, I bought stretch mesh from Spandex House for the chest and back of the jumpsuit, areas that would be covered by the pod. The fur sections of the jumpsuits were flat-lined with washed cotton chintz to help them to keep their shape.
The characters had many additional costume pieces. For instance, Kitty played a princess, two grandmothers, Bitty bear’s cousin, a ballerina, a flapper, a mother, and a clown. She had to dress herself onstage while wearing her paws. We went through a few paw designs, settling on mittens with opposing thumbs.
The actors needed to wait until they had their makeup on to snap on their hands, so the hands were attached with hidden snaps on 3-inch elastic straps, allowing the actors to do gymnastics without discomfort or ripping the costumes. The soles of the feet, which attached to the jumpsuits with Velcro, could be replaced with new dance rubber as needed.
It was time to tackle the dreaded pods. I used 2-inch foam, with a tightly woven chintz liner for stability. Puppy’s belly was low slung, elongating his body. Kitty stands like a toddler, and Bitty Bear has the most solid build of the three. I draped the pods on my dress forms and herringboned pieces together, patching where necessary. Subsequent fittings with the actors determined how high the hips cut in. Kitty had a ballet routine that required her to do a grand battement and Puppy put his foot up on a box, so their pods had to be cut high at the hip. Bitty Bear flopped on her belly and her stomach needed reinforcement to bounce back. Three cold packs were strategically placed to keep the actors cool. They stepped into the costumes and snapped one shoulder closed with whopper poppers.
This show was definitely outside my comfort zone, but it was a lot of fun and it led to jobs, including a seven-foot tall dinosaur mascot for a children’s hospital. I’m not sure what the moral to this story is. Maybe it’s just… Don’t be afraid to say yes.
