Women’s Louis IV-style pumps, to fit men’s size-13 feet. Matadors’ capes, senoritas’ flouncy dresses, mantillas and flamenco-inspired garb from 1930s Spain. Togas and gladiator sandals befitting the ancient Roman Empire.

These are just a sampling of the tall orders Marie Natali has had to fill in the seven years since she began outfitting student actors for Bergen Community College’s theater department. Whether for the current production, Moliere’s Tartuffe (opening April 11), the theatrical version of the children’s tale Ferdinand the Bull (staged last summer), the Sondheim smash A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (last winter) or any of the other 20-plus shows Natali has worked for BCC, this veteran meets each challenge with aplomb.

“I’ve loved the opportunity to do so many different periods throughout my career,” says Natali, arranging an elaborately embroidered Elizabethan dress on its hanger. The pieces in BCC’s growing collection are acquired, on a relatively generous budget, from scouring thrift and Salvation Army stores and the occasional costume shop. “I fell in love with costume designing the first time I did it.”

Natali got her start as a fashion-design student at Ursuline College, outside Cleveland. But it was an internship at an Ohio community theater that sparked her interest in designing for stage; after trying out for the lead in a play, she was asked instead to apply her talents dressing that role and all others. Today, Natali has close to 80 productions, ranging from Shakespeare to Andrew Lloyd Webber, under her belt. She alternates between costuming for BCC’s period plays and musicals, performed in the college’s 293-seat Anna Maria Ciccone Theatre, and designing the more contemporary works, staged in intimate Ender Hall Lab Theatre, which seats just 100.

Natali relishes the process, measuring, shopping and making alterations throughout the six- to-eight-week rehearsal period for each show; she can spend up to 100 hours on a production. But, she maintains, it’s the students that make everything worth it. “Their enthusiasm and vitality!” exclaims Natali, of Hawthorne. “It’s just amazing."


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