Rendering and Collage of Nurse

Drawing of the nurses costume from Medea Myth with fabric swatches and photo references. There are photos of women from different cultures as well as from the 1940s. A drawing with black and pink makes up the actual costume design.

Rendering and Collage of the Nurse, 1996

This is a picture of costume designer Myrna Colley-Lee’s in depth drawing of the Nurse from the 1996 production of the play Medea Myth. 

The play is a culturally reimagined version of Euripedes’ Greek Tragedy Medea that follows the story of Medea as she helps Jason and the Argonauts obtain the Golden Fleece, as well as the abandonment she went through leading to her killing her children. Different characters in the play represent different cultures including Indian, Egyptian, and African.

She combines the use of fabric swatches, paper cut outs, and her own drawings to bring the costume to life. She also uses images from different time periods and cultures to bring more depth to the character design. She uses the space she is given to show what she wants and how she envisions a character, using any means necessary to get the job done. Because of the multicultural lens the play is set in, the rendering shows women of different cultures such as Indian depicted. Her ability to take ideas from different cultures and time periods and bring them together to make a cohesive piece is astounding.

In the rendering different cultures can be seen contributing to the costume design, and her resourcefulness in creating the different costumes shows her great talent in the field of costuming. She can take a piece of trash and recycle it to make something beautiful and worth putting on a stage.

From Myrna Colley-Lee Papers Sub-series 1.2 Renderings MSU Archives and Special Collections