Camille Gray works on creating costumes for Theatre Bristol's production of "The Little Mermaid."
Ballet, tap, ballroom, square dancing, folk dancing and more keep feet moving in shows like“Oklahoma,” “Into the Woods,” “The Wizard of Oz” and“Fiddler on the Roof.”
The challenge is how to keepfinsmoving when you’re the choreographer for“Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” A good place to start is to also be the costumer, so you can design costumes with sea creature movement in mind.
Fortunately, Camille Gray, who has also made clocks and feather dusters dance, is well suited for the task.
Gray shares that her inspiration for the iconic looks first honors expectations. “It’s really important to me when I’m designing a well-known show, like‘Disney’s Beauty and the Beast’or‘The Little Mermaid,’ that the audience feels fulfilled when they leave, but I also give them something unexpected and surprising. Every character feels recognizable, but it’s Theatre Bristol’s 2024 production of‘The Little Mermaid,’ not any other version.”
Gray, who has been costuming shows for 12 years feels it is very important to share that ability. Hers began with her grandmother teaching her how to make a skirt at the age of 8. “I went on to formal training and work, and then costuming in college, but I want to recognize my start was with my grandmother.”
For this show with 39 actors playing more than 60 characters, the first costuming skill is organizing, says Gray. “Costuming is more than it might seem. You have to be ready to do the math, work in the shop with nontraditional costumes and problem solve. This is where organization comes in because you basically get one shot.” So, before cutting any fabric, Gray takes the research she does and organizes information related to the show period, aesthetic, notes from the director, practical scenic breakdown and details about the role each actor plays.
The colors used illustrate the beauty of each world, with the sea vibrant and colorful, and the land world in softer pastels, princesses in creams and golds.
The specific intention for the mersisters began by looking at fish and seeing a deeper blending between human and fish. Rather than dressing mermaids in shells as clothing, for example, shells are ornamentation. “It’s more like an Eve in the garden concept. Triton’s disdain for humans informs how the mermaids look.” Each mer person is created from scratch, embodying a creature that is its own species rather than half and half, which translates into a gradient of scales from their toes to their shoulders. Inspiration for the mer people also stems from the 2023 “Peter Pan” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.” This concept carries through to Ursula where she’s blended between human and octopus. “I feel passionately that her tentacles should not come directly out of her waist,” says Gray.
“Under the Sea” has many cute sea creatures, each designed after a specific animal, and the lagoon animals are costumed in loving pairs. The sea creatures have fins that move to correspond to their dance in under the sea, like the flying fish with organza fabric fins.
Gathering much of the same information for choreography as she does for costumes, Gray takes her 13 years of ballet, and years of tap, jazz, character and musical theaterdance study, with choreography of more than 20 productions, and plans the entire dance on paper, down to timestamps, counts and formations, and it’s all subject to change in the rehearsal hall.
Long before getting to the rehearsal hall, Gray will spend months listening to the music just to receive it, capturing a few specific moments in her notes. “Strong storytelling through dance comes through being prepared.” Once the show is cast, Gray is prepared with thoughts about the strengths of the actors, some who may be dancing for the first time, and how she can help them shine.
In “One Step Closer,” for example, “the ballroom music is mostly waltz, and it’s something I’m very familiar with and I could just come in just make up on the spot. It would have been a fine dance, but what makes it so compelling is it’s very specifically structured so we see the first moments of Eric and Ariel getting close to each other, from making that first meaningful touch, to seeing them start to have fun together, becoming more comfortable, starting to trust each other more, and then following the music as the song progresses, we see them start to fall in love. The dance draws to a beautiful moment where they’ve become vulnerable with each other and are about to kiss.”
In the tap number, in contrast, “Positoovity” is about trying to get Ariel up on her feet and go get what she wants. “It’s a little goofy, a group of dancing seagulls is entertaining, with a dance that features the original costumes with ‘scuttlebutts.’ This dance sequence features things birds do to lend to the ‘birdieness’ that you don’t usually see in tap dance,” she says.
Dancing mermaids? “I knew that they had to have a mermaid shape, and without legs, the choreography is more challenging. In ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘She’s in Love,’ they use their arms, of course, and there are a lot of hips and isolations. To help, in rehearsals, the mersisters each have an elastic band around their knees to remind them to keep their legs together. One of the biggest inspirations is voguing meets Larry the Cucumber from Veggie Tales, because Larry doesn’t have legs, or arms. And it works,” she says.
Gray is quick to point out that she has had wonderful mentors over the years in dance, costume design and directing too. In working with“Disney’s The Little Mermaid”director Glenn Patterson over the last 10 years, she said she haslearned more from him than “any other director, teacher, professor, or mentor about theater, developing the directing craft and creating compelling theater.”
“Glenn is an excellent creative and collaborator, a brilliant actor and musician, and a wonderful friend. He consistently transforms casts and productions to their highest quality, astonishing the actors and designers themselves with the art he can reveal in them of which they did not know they were capable.”
Working with Gray, director Glenn Patterson says, “Community theater’s strength is that it is a community of dedicated people who do it for no other reason than their love for it. The love of people like Camille make up for a lack of resources, and she does what she does so well and so effectively I find her a marvel. No one else should even attempt to do what she is doing on‘Disney’s The Little Mermaid,’ and I would never have agreed to it with anyone else, but she is pulling it off to her usual uncompromising standards.”
“Her choreography makes non-dancers look good, and dancers look great. She knows how to use choreography to entertain and how to tell the story. Her costumes are beautiful and bring vision to reality. This show has forced her to plan, revise, experiment and refine because it’s fantasy. She’s done it so very well. All along the way, her organization and creativity, in equal measure, have enhanced and enriched the experience for me, the cast and everyone on the staff.”
