Seamstress caters to those who love Bard

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- It wasn't even hemmed, yet the plain brown smock Susan Day spotted in a Springfield High School classroom transformed students who wore it into couplet-spewing, swashbuckling Shakespearean heroes.

A third-generation seamstress, Day knew she could turn out something even more befitting Romeo and his Juliet. Then she could snare young learners with the lure of a good costume.

She scoured Renaissance history books and designed her own authentic patterns, making simplicity her goal, she said, because "high-schoolers don't want to mess up their hair."

With the help of a used industrial sewing machine, she whips up sheer, sparkling fairy bonnets; rugged, leather-look capes; and 10 kinds of caps. All are done in rich fabrics meant to gleam under stage lights.

Today her business, Shakespeare in Costume, sells outfits for four of the Bard's best-known plays: "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and "Macbeth."

She single-handedly runs the cottage industry from her Victorian home, churning out the costumes, assembly-line fashion, while listening to National Public Radio.

It looks like a niche market.

"I saw Susan's work, and I went insane," said Leila Christenbury, president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and a professor of English education at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "I don't know of a soul who does anything like this. It's an English teacher's dream."

Excited teachers

Christenbury first saw Day's work in Illinois and invited her to a national teachers' conference in Baltimore last November. It was attended by some 7,000 educators.

"Teachers were trying on the hats and taking pictures of each other," Day said, laughing. "I think they looked at them and saw lots of possibilities."

It's the transformative power of the costumes that Christenbury loved.

"The glory of it is that she makes the part represent the whole -- it's just a little thing that you purchase and use, but it's enough," she said. "It's like with any actor, it gives you an entree."

M.J. Peters, head of English at Springfield High School, said the caps and capes give kids a nudge to get past a psychological barrier that has them saying: "This is hard, I can't do this."

And with a growing emphasis on performing, not just reading, Shakespeare, the teachers said Day's timing is perfect.

Her business is growing slowly, but steadily, Day said. She has filled orders from Texas, Montana, Kansas, New York and other states. Even a mother from Luxembourg requested one of Day's caps for her son, who was to be Romeo.

Prices range from $20 for a diamond-print flat cap to $65 for a reversible gold cape. Day also does custom work on request. Interested instructors can find her in Shakespeare magazine or on the Web at www.shakespeareincostume.com.