Blyth Festival 2025: Choma brings fresh talent, vibrant creativity
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Costume designer Meghan Choma studied technical theatre production and costume design at Fanshawe College, which is where she first heard about a bustling summer stock theatre in a small Ontario village. She set her sights on snagging a costume design job at the Blyth Festival, and decided not to take no for an answer. “I’ve been e-mailing Blyth being like, ‘please hire me. Please hire me. Please hire me,” she confessed. This year, they finally hired her.
The Citizen caught up with Choma at The Blyth Centre for the Arts’ Bainton Gallery for a quick chat about what it’s like to work in the wild world of deciding what other people are going to wear on stage. Choma is working on two very different productions this year - Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion, by Drew Hayden Taylor, and The Wind Coming Over the Sea, by Emma Donoghue.
So far, Choma is enjoying her well-earned time in the quiet village of Blyth. “I’m London born and raised, so it’s a bit of an adjustment,” she pointed out. “But the theatre and the community here are amazing. The Festival brings so many people from all over together to one little area, and you just create stuff that you would never have done before… you’re bringing so many different experiences and stories and backgrounds into this area to create something really unique and magical.”
So what is this determined young designer’s plan of attack for these two productions? “Sir John A is a very modern show - it takes place in 2017, and it’s just such a funny, lighthearted way to look at these unfortunate things that are happening - versus The Wind Coming Over the Sea, which, at the beginning, is set in 1849. So, a very different approach to the time periods,” she explained.
The Wind Coming Over the Sea is also a new production, which means Choma will be the first costume designer to put her stamp on Jane and Henry, the show’s lead characters, who are working to immigrate to Canada from Ireland. “It’s a beautiful story,” she said. “And I love Emma Donoghue! I was very, very fortunate to work on the very tail end of Room at the Grand Theatre, and I love her work. I think she’s amazing, and I’m so excited to see this show come to life.”
But it’s not just about making sure everybody is dressed in period-specific outfits. Choma believes that costumes are an instrumental part of bringing characters to life on stage. From the audience’s perspective, the decisions made by the costume designer are just choices made by the characters themselves. “I just love how creative it can be, and how much it can really, personally, shape an actor, and who a character is,” she explained. “Clothes are really personal; whether it’s as a character, or a person. It’s a choice that everyone makes in the morning when they get up and get dressed. And designing and choosing what that character would wear is part of creating their personality.”
That’s not to say that the costumes should ever upstage the actors wearing them! “I think, honestly, with a good costume, you kind of don’t notice it a little bit,” Choma explained. “As a wardrobe person, I always notice costumes, but unless it’s supposed to be something so extraordinary that you look at and you’re like ‘oh my gosh!’, if it just blends in to the point where it makes sense. I think that’s a good costume.”
There are also specific challenges to costuming actors that are part of a repertory company. “It’s a little bit collaborative, because we share actors. And actors look different for every show,” she pointed out. “You’re collaborating on practical things - if it’s described in my show that the actor has long, dark hair, what do you need him to look like for your show? What does he want to look like for this show? Plus, he’s an actor and also a person - so what practicality is needed for him to live his life? So it’s collaborative, but it’s also very independent - my ultimate job is to help the director’s vision come to life, and support their vision.”
Of course, Blyth isn’t Choma’s first wardrobe rodeo - eight months of the year, she works at the Grand Theatre in London, as their assistant head of wardrobe. “I always wanted to work in wardrobe,” she explained. “So that is my main job, and it’s what I knew I wanted to do. But then, I got a job as a costume design assistant at Stratford, and I realized that I also really liked designing. I really like the creative aspect of that.”
She feels lucky to have studied the practical side of theatre at Fanshawe College - it’s an opportunity that young people today just don’t have. “Taking the tech program forced me to look outside of wardrobe, to what actually goes on in other places - it really was beneficial to me in my theatre knowledge,” she explained. “Now, I understand how an entire theatre works, instead of just costumes. Unfortunately, both those programs don’t exist anymore - the college has shut them down due to underfunding. But I will always advocate for Fanshawe - my teachers were amazing, and supportive, and it was great. I learned so much.”
The very first costume Choma ever designed for the stage was in Stratford. “I did two at the same time - there were two different blouses and a skirt,” she recalled. “It was for the understudy, so I don’t even know if it went on, but it was all my designs that I drew, and I picked out the fabric; start to finish. It was very satisfying.”
Another early career highlight came when Choma was offered the unique opportunity to be a dresser at Budweiser Gardens during a run of Cats. It’s a job that she remembers fondly. “It was so well run! I showed up, never having professionally dressed before, and then I was ripping off cat clothes and cat suits and throwing on leg warmers! It was a really fun experience,” she told The Citizen.
If anybody ever ends up designing the wardrobe for a character based on Choma, there’s one controversial fashion staple they’d need to stock up on. “This is so not on-fashion for me, but I love Crocs,” she confessed. “I’m a big Croc girl - I have this pair of pink Crocs that I got from the dollar store, and I will literally wear them every single day in the summer. And then, in the wintertime, I have black, fluffy-lined Crocs that I wear - so we are covered. I have summer Crocs, and winter Crocs.”
Choma’s one piece of advice for anybody looking to break into the world of theatrical costume design? “Be annoying - be that bug in people’s ear,” she stated with confidence. “I think that if places are turned off by you e-mailing them 100 times, asking them for jobs, you probably don’t want to work for them anyway!”