Designing A Diamond Within: Two Weeks, Vintage Baseball, and a Whole Lot of Puff Paint

Oh my goodness, what a couple of weeks. I never summer stock, but now I know what that feels like. And I have some very clear data about how long certain costume tasks take when the timeline is not so much “compressed” as “folded into an origami crane and set on fire.” About two weeks ago, I received an unexpected email from a small theater company in Detroit. They had lost their costume designer for reasons I still don’t fully understand, and they were looking for someone who could step in quickly.

The project was A Diamond Within, a new work about the baseball player Roberto Clemente. I had some flexibility in my schedule, the fee was reasonable for what was initially framed as a one-week commitment, and there was enough of a budget to support renting a car and bringing on an assistant. The goal was straightforward: get clothes on stage for an opening that was only eight days away.

We had to compress what would normally be a three- or four-month design and production process into a little over a week. The script was in solid shape, so I was able to read it closely, do a scene breakdown, and identify the major costume needs. The next day, I met with the director to talk through the script, the world of the play, and the costume changes, especially since several actors were playing multiple roles.

I sent my assistant to Detroit to take measurements and look through the company’s costume stock. This turned into its own tiny adventure. The keys to the storage area had gone missing, a locksmith had to be called, and once they got in, the lights were burned out. So my wonderful assistant spent a Saturday afternoon rummaging through boxes in the dark, trying to find anything useful. Yea live theatre!

Meanwhile, from Friday night through Saturday afternoon, I essentially did three phases of the design process simultaneously. I built a research packet, figured out how we might create vintage baseball uniforms from the 1960s and early 1970s, made a pieces list, and ran the budget before spending any money. I wanted to make sure the whole plan was actually possible before we started buying anything. By the time my assistant was in the storage unit, she had a targeted list of things to look for. As it turned out, the stock was mostly a storage unit with a few usable pieces: some T-shirts, socks, and a pair of shoes that were too small. Not exactly a treasure trove, but we tried.

That evening, I went thrifting (and found the CUTEST sheath dress in the Pirates uniform colors!!!). Sunday morning, I placed a flurry of online orders because we were aiming for fittings on Tuesday night, which meant everything had to arrive almost immediately. The biggest challenge was the baseball uniforms. Reproduction uniforms were expensive, not guaranteed to arrive in time, and often bright optic white, which was not what we wanted under stage lighting. Fortunately, I found blank baseball uniform pieces — knickers, stirrup socks, and short-sleeved jerseys — in an off-white that felt much more appropriate. The plan became: order the jersey blanks, get hat blanks, and create our own logos and patches. By Sunday afternoon, after another round of thrifting for non-uniform costumes, we were surprisingly close. I genuinely could not believe how much we had managed to find in such a short amount of time. Uniforms and shoes were on the way, and the show felt possible.

Then Monday morning brought a major shift: a cast member had to leave the production for health reasons. Because of the recasting, the opening was postponed by a week. For the show, this was absolutely the right decision. It gave the production the breathing room it needed. For me, it also meant recalibrating. Work expands to fill the time allotted, and I knew I could not let this project fully consume the following week. Still, the extra time helped. The uniforms did not actually arrive until Tuesday and Wednesday, so we pushed fittings to Wednesday. Those fittings went remarkably well; I had bought multiple sizes knowing we could return extras, and the thrifted pieces ended up working beautifully.

One track in particular shifted several times. At one point there was one actor who was to play the mother, (who fortunately didn’t need a uniform), but then (reasons)…her understudy was going to do it, and then eventually the performer playing the wife, who just kept showing up and was thoroughly prepared, ended up covering both the mother and the wife. We fit her in what we had, made the necessary adjustments, and moved forward.

Then we became a tiny baseball uniform factory. The uniforms were unadorned when they arrived, so we created custom patches with Wonder-Under and used paint in squeeze bottles to make borders, outlines, letters, and logos. I bought old tshirts to cut into strips for banding. They came out really beautifully…definitely not film worthy, but absolutely great on stage. The Cardinals uniform, in particular, looked great — even though, in the end, that specific look became one of those moments where different collaborators had different ideas about what the scene needed. Historically, the character probably would not have been in a baseball uniform at that moment, but theatrically, there had been a strong impulse toward seeing him in one. Those are the kinds of conversations that are much easier to navigate when everyone has time to be in the same room together.

That desire for a true collaboration became one of the biggest takeaways from the process. With a new play, especially one the playwright has lived with for a long time, there may be very specific visual ideas that have been developing in the head for years. Some of those ideas were excellent, but I did not hear them until fairly late. Had the playwright been in that first (only) design conversation, we could have incorporated some of those thoughts much more easily.

The same was true for quick changes and actor tracking. The playwright was open to small script or timing adjustments that could help make the changes possible, which is an incredible gift in a new-work process. But because he was not in the room when we were solving those problems, we had to make decisions with the information we had at the time. It was a useful reminder that in an ideal collaborative process — especially with new work — it matters who is in the room, who has the authority to adjust what, and who knows which questions need to be asked.

On Friday, what was to have been the original opening night (hahahaha) we went back to Detroit expecting some kind of stumble-through with clothes. That did not quite happen, so we used the time to work through the remaining notes, finish some quick rigging, and make progress on anything that could be done by hand. At the end of the night, just when everyone was exhausted, we talked through the entire show to set presets and plan where costumes needed to live. It turned out to be a very good use of time. Everyone agreed that having a clear plan made the next steps feel much more manageable. Over the weekend, we pushed the uniforms very close to finished. Monday morning, I dropped off a batch of completed pieces. Tuesday, the company had a day off, but I still had a few small tasks to finish — the glamorous realities of literally waiting for paint to dry and then heat-setting it.

Wednesday was a full day in Detroit. What was scheduled as a dress rehearsal was, in practice, more of a tech run with full costumes. From a costume perspective, it went remarkably well. We figured out the remaining tracking issues, the actors were in clothes, and the world of the play was finally visible. I never did get to see the end of the show, but I had been very clear about my availability and transportation limits from the beginning. While I was there, I did everything I could. And of course, I remained available to answer questions. And now, they open tonight.

There were still a few last-minute adventures, including a panicked note about a broken zipper that turned out to just need a little encouragement. Classic. Looking back, there are absolutely things I would have done differently with more time. There are methods I would have tested for the uniforms and a few looks I would have refined. I would have loved a deeper design conversation at the beginning, especially with the director and playwright together. There simply was not time for the kind of research and development that makes a process feel artistically satisfying. But given the timeline, I can honestly say we did the best we could with the time and resources we had. And sitting there on Wednesday, watching the actors in the clothes, I felt proud. I was also incredibly grateful for the people who made it possible. My assistant was amazing — organized, calm, and game for anything from dark storage-unit archaeology to uniform assembly. We kept careful track of everything, which was essential because at various points we had costume pieces in Detroit, in the costume shop, in transit from 2-day shipping, and in my rental car. I also had two terrific crew members jump in on Wednesday and get up to speed immediately- pressing shirts, steaming, organization, and all the practical magic that makes costumes function backstage.

And the cast was lovely: gracious, patient, and appreciative of the work being done around them. That matters so much, especially in a process this fast. I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle-solving part of this kind of challenge. There is something energizing about looking at an impossible timeline and figuring out how to make it work. But from an artistic and process perspective, I am reminded that I value time: time to talk about the play, time to collaborate, time to test ideas, time to make thoughtful choices rather than simply necessary ones.

Still, A Diamond Within is opening. The uniforms are on stage, the story is being told, and a whole lot of creative problem-solving made it happen. I hope people come to see it!