What’s That Thing? is a series that looks at the behind-the-scenes things of Arts Commons and the extraordinary people who use them. 

When you go to the theatre, you usually don’t spend too much time thinking about how those eye-catching costumes got to the stage, you just think that they look amazing. But the tools and artistry that go into creating those costumes is unique to Arts Commons. Did you know that we have our own dye vat that our wardrobe experts use to create the looks you see on stage? Read on to learn more about how our custom-made equipment helps our costume teams bring the stories you see at Arts Commons to life. 

Let’s face it, dyeing costumes is one of those nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes things we just don’t consider. When admiring a costume, we may look at the design or the needlework, but we often forget that fabric is the unsung hero holding everything together. That’s where the dye vat in the Joint Venture (JV) Costume Shop, the costume creation workshop nestled in the heart of Arts Commons comes in. The dye vat is a custom piece of equipment that allows the Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects creative teams to transform nearly any kind of fabric to the colour and shade required. It helps the wardrobe department create whatever can be imagined. 

It’s also a big hunk of metal that requires careful maintenance in order to work properly.  

At its most basic, the dye vat is a steam-powered, stainless-steel double-sink about the size of a family-sized couch into which dye and fabric are plunged in order to customize the colour of a fabric to a show’s specifications. Consisting of a boiler, a blow-down mechanism (to cool the steam), and the vat itself, the dye vat at Arts Commons is completely one-of-a-kind. “This is a custom piece of equipment, not too many places have it,” says Operations Supervisor Jason Nieskens, observing that special care has been taken to account for Calgary’s hard water. “If we don’t treat the water and take the scale out of it, it plugs everything up and it turns it to rock.” A good dye job isn’t easy, it requires pipes, tubes, and considering of the surrounding environment.

So why does Arts Commons have their own dye vat? Can’t they just send the costumes out to be dyed elsewhere? As it turns out, no one else can do what the costume shop does. “There’s nowhere to send it. There is no other facility that I am aware of that has the capability that we have here,” says Michelle Latta, Head of Wardrobe at Theatre Calgary. For Latta, having the ability to dye fabric in-house is not just about having the capacity to handle large-scale productions, it’s also about the technical skill that goes into costume production. “There’s a handful of people that have that level of expertise to do that style of work at the level that we expect it,” she says. With so much at stake, it’s no wonder that Arts Commons keeps the process in-house. 

But the dye vat is more than a piece of equipment, it's an integral part of the costume team’s daily operations, one that helps them bring an artistic vision to life. At Arts Commons, the sky is the limit. “A designer can come in and say ‘I really have this idea in my head’ and they can conjure up this wonderful thing...we can do it because we have this facility, we have that expertise that can come in and do that for them,” says Latta.  

For the audience, the result is a performance that transports you to another world, one where the costumes are seamlessly integrated into the bigger story. “I think a lot of people watch costumes on stage and don’t realize the kind of things that we go to in order to complete a look,” Latta says. “Dye work is one of them.” Despite the effort that goes into a production, Latta is most happy when her work goes unnoticed. “People should look at it and not think about it,” she says. For her, the audience should be absorbed in the story, not the process. The dye vat makes that job that much easier.