Theatre & Dance Shops

The costume shop supports a wide range of costume activities, both as a classroom and in support of the mainstage productions’ theatre and dance costuming needs. During their time at JMU all students will come through the shop for at least one class learning not only how costumes are created and who the team responsible are, preparing them for the wider world of theatre, but also gaining valuable life skills of their own. For those students who become excited at the possibilities of design and construction we offer further instruction in all areas of costume making: advanced sewing skills, draping and patternmaking, fabric dyeing and painting, millinery and crafts, and even thermoplastics and 3-D printing. Staffed by faculty designers and a full-time shop manager we also offer student employment opportunities!

The large, well lit, costume shop is equipped with a vast array of sewing equipment including a fleet of all Bernina domestic sewing machines, Juki and Bernina domestic sergers, multiple industrial sewing, serging, and coverstiching machines and irons, two large pinnable cutting tables and a very large rotary mat surfaced table, plus a wide array of dress forms. We also have a separate laundry room, fitting room, and a dye room with a steam jacket dye vat.

The electrics shop supports the productions offered in all three of our performance spaces: our mainstage, studio and Earlynn J MIller dance studio. Under the supervision of our faculty designers and shop supervisor students learn the basics of electrical wiring and theory, and how to hang, shutter, focus and gel lights for a multitude of production styles. They may also learn how to write cues, program consoles, and run lights for productions. Both as a classwork component and as paid employees students gain a strong working knowledge of how theatrical lighting is realized.

We are an ETC house including sensor sine wave dimming, with both Ion and an EOS consoles. The fixtures equipment list has a vast number of many state-of-the-art instruments including ETC colorsource PARs and ETC LUSTR+, ColorKinetics led strip lights and Altman SpectraCycs. Our moving lights include VL2500 spot and wash luminaries, Martin MAC2Ks and HES StudioBeams. We own a myriad of fog and haze effects.

The Sound designers and personnel offer support to all our productions in all our venues either in creating unique soundscapes of effects and music for theatre and dance, or in the usage of wireless mics for our musicals. Students will learn to apply and maintain wireless mics, use playback systems and sound creation software, such as QLab and ProTools, as well as our extensive library of sound effects, and train their ear as they listen to balance and volume while running our productions. As in all our shops, for those students who develop an interest there are paid positions.

Our spaces utilize and analog soundcraft 24 channel consoles in the smaller spaces and a Yamaha M7 digital console in the mainstage, with Sennheiser wireless and JBL and Renkus Heinz speakers.