Graduate Studies: Costume Production: Faculty and Staff
Judy Adamson (Head, Costume Production; Costume Director, PlayMakers Repertory Company) worked for Barbara Matera Ltd. in New York for 14 years. For 10 years she was Barbara Matera’s first assistant and the workroom manager. For 4 years she was a draper working on shows such as Crazy for You, Jelly’s Last Jam, The Secret Garden, Showboat, Miss Saigon, Flower Drum Song, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Lion King and Aida. She has worked with such designers as Irene Sharaff, Miles White, Theoni Aldredge, Florence Klotz, Willa Kim, Pat Zipprodt, William Ivey Long and Bob Mackie. She has also worked extensively in dance with American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor and Elliot Feld. For the past nine years she has draped for the Utah Shakespearean Festival (Hay Fever, Born Yesterday, Mornings at Seven, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, HMS Pinafore, Lend Me A Tenor, The Musical, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Foxfire, Private Lives, and Pride and Prejudice). Ms. Adamson has been secretary of USITT-SE for the past six years. She is the editor of Survey of Costume Programs, an online resource for the Costume Commission of USITT. She is also the co-editor of a second volume of Projects for Teaching Costume Design and Technology for USITT.
Jan Chambers (Assistant Professor of Dramatic Art, Resident Set and Costume Designer for PlayMakers Repertory Company) has designed professionally and held resident designer/ faculty positions at various academic institutions, including the University of Michigan, Smith College and Duke University. Since joining the Dramatic Art faculty and PlayMakers Repertory Company in 2007, she has designed sets and costumes for When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, Crimes of the Heart and Glass Menagerie, as well as costumes for Doubt: A Parable, Topdog/Underdog and Nicholas Nickleby, and sets for Pericles and Well. Nationally and regionally Jan has designed for the Folger Theatre in Washington DC, Profile Theater Project in Portland, OR, Victory Garden Theater in Chicago, and Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA, Manbites Dog Theatre, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, Carolina Ballet and North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, among others. She is the resident set and costume designer for Archipelago Theatre, for whom she has created award winning environments such as And Mary Wept, Eulogy for a Warrior, Ten in One and Those Women. Her teaching includes set, costume and makeup design courses on both the graduate and undergraduate levels. She is particularly interested in the incorporation of sensory immersion, intuitive thinking and collaboration in the design classroom. In addition to her teaching and theater work, Jan is a painter and sculptor. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Tennessee and an MFA in Theater Design from the University of Illinois.
Jade Bettin (Western Costume History, Theatrical Design) is a recent graduate of the MFA Costume Production Program at UNC. She has a BA in Theatre Design and Production from the University of Northern Iowa. As a student at UNC, her interest in costume history led to her work with CoStar, documenting and preserving the department’s collection of vintage garments. Ms. Bettin spent a summer at the Kent State University Museum working with the museum’s impressive collection of historical garments. She will continue to be involved in the CoStar project. Ms. Bettin has draped for many PRC productions as well as for Carolina Ballet.
Adam M. Dill (Assistant Costume Director, Costume Shop Manager) most recently managed The University of Arizona Opera Theatre where he also designed productions of Postcard from Morocco, The Crucible, Il Matrimonio Segreto, and The Rape of Lucretia. In 2007 he received his MFA in Costume Design from The University of Arizona after designing productions of She Loves Me, The Who’s TOMMY, and Urinetown. Throughout his graduate work, Adam served as the Assistant Costume Shop Manager and Assistant Designer for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Once graduated, Mr. Dill joined Arizona Theatre Company to drape on The Pajama Game, Enchanted April, Jekyll & Hyde, Hair, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Over the past 2 summers Adam has draped for the Great River Shakespeare Festival (Othello, Comedy of Errors, The Tempest, and Love’s Labour’s Lost) in Winona, MN.
Bobbi Owen (Costume History, Theatrical Design) is professor of Dramatic Art and teaches courses in both Western and non-Western Costume History as well as in design. She has extensive credits for costume design with PlayMakers Repertory Company and the Indiana Repertory Theatre and has also designed at the American Place and WestBeth theatres in New York, the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco and the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival. She is also the author of five books and numerous articles about theatrical designers.
Rachel E. Pollock (Costume Crafts Artisan/Lecturer) has worked as a professional costume craftsperson for theatre, opera, ballet, television, and film since 1994. After freelancing in Knoxville (TN), Chicago, and Boston, she accepted a staff position as resident Lead Crafts Artisan and Dyer for the internationally-acclaimed American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University in Cambridge, where she served for four award-winning seasons. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to work in film and television costuming, as well as a stint on the crafts team of the LA Opera, before relocating to Chapel Hill. She has served as a crafts artisan, dyer, and milliner for such designers as Catherine Zuber, Ann Hould-Ward, Ilona Somogyi, David Zinn, Constance Hoffman, and Julie Taymor, and worked for Parsons-Meares, Ltd. on Tim Hatley's Tony Award-winning costume designs for Shrek: The Musical. Ms. Pollock is the author of Sticks In Petticoats, the only extant text on parasol history and construction for the stage, as well as various articles for trade publications such as the Costume Research Journal. She maintains the seminal costume crafts artisanship blog, La Bricoleuse. At UNC, she conducts a series of graduate seminars on costume craftwork—millinery, dyeing and distressing, masks, armor, and related topics.
