Communication, Media & Theatre Arts

Biography

Melanie Schuessler Bond 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 and Scotland. 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 The Rivals, Pygmalion, Twelfth Night, and Tartuffe for Michigan Shakespeare Festival; Art of Murder, 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.

• Melanie Schuessler Bond's portfolio

Education

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

Courses

• EDT 153 Technical Theatre: Costume and Makeup
• EDT 256 Costume Construction and Crafts
• EDT 353 Digital Design for Theatre and the Entertainment Industry
• EDT 363 Stage Costume: History and Theory
• EDT 364 Costume Design
• EDT 365 Costume Draping
• EDT 366 Advanced Stage Makeup
• EDT 663 Costume I
• EDT 664 Costume II

Advising

• Entertainment Design and Technology, majors and minors
• Theatre Arts, majors and minors

Professional Affiliations

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