Melanie Schuessler

Associate Professor of Costume Design

102 Quirk

734-487-0032

mschuess@emich.edu

Degrees

• MFA - Costume Design, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1998
• BA - History, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 1995

Professional Associations/Memberships

• Costume Society of America
• The Costume Society (Great Britain)
• United States Institute for Theatre Technology

Representative Courses Taught

• CTAR 153 - Technical Theatre: Costume & Makeup
• CTAR 256 - Costume Construction and Crafts
• CTAR 353 - Digital Design for Theatre and the Entertainment Industry
• CTAR 363 - Stage Costume: History and Theory
• CTAR 364 - Costume Design
• CTAR 365 - Costume Draping
• CTAR 366 - Advanced Stage Makeup
• CTAR 664 - Costume II
• CTAR 677 - Research Techniques

Advising

• Theatre Arts, majors and minors
• Theatre Arts, MA

Biography

Melanie Schuessler brings years of experience as a professional costume designer, costume technician, and costume history scholar to Eastern. Though her passion extends to all periods of fashion history, her research focuses on the clothing of 16th-century England.  Recent presentations include “Deconstructing and Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Clothing in Film” and “Cloak and Dagger: Treason and Clothing in Tudor England” at the International Medieval Congress. Recent publications include “Costume Design for the Stage in the United States” in Documenting: Costume Design, “Fashioning the Middle Ages: Teaching Medieval Culture Through Clothing,” in the online journal The Once and Future Classroom, “French Hoods: Development of a Sixteenth-Century Court Fashion” in Medieval Clothing and Textiles, volume 5 and “’She Hath Over Grown All that Ever She Hath’: Children's Clothing in the Lisle Letters, 1553-40” in Medieval Clothing and Textiles, volume 3. Professional design credits include Tartuffe for Michigan Shakespeare Festival, Five Course Love, Flyover, U.S.A., Talley’s Folly, and Flap for Williamston Theatre, Williamston, MI; Southern Comforts for Tipping Point Theatre, Northville, MI; One Flea Spare for Planet Ant Theatre, Hamtramck, MI; Lucia di Lammermoor, Lady, Be Good, and Ain't Misbehavin' for Skylight Opera Theatre, Milwaukee, WI; The Caretaker, Steam Bath, and Twelfth Night for Bialystock and Bloom, Milwaukee, WI; and Macbeth for the Milwaukee Shakespeare Company. On the technical side of costuming, she has worked as a professional Cutter/Draper for dozens of shows at companies including Skylight Opera Theatre, Pine Mountain Music Festival, Next Act Theatre, and Madison Repertory Theatre. Her portfolio appears online at: http://www.faucet.net/costume.