Laura Parker is University Theatre’s costume designer and costume shop manager, and she began working at University Theatre in 2010. She has taught classes in costume design, fashion history, costume construction, stagecraft, and stage makeup design and application. Her interests are focused on the intersectionality of historic clothing, fashion history, theatre, and education. She was previously the resident costume designer and instructor of costume design at William Peace University, and she has designed costumes for many area theatres, including Honest Pint Theatre Co., Sweet Tea Shakespeare, BARE Theatre, NRACT, and South Stream Productions. She holds a B.A. in anthropology from Georgia State University and a J.D. from North Carolina Central University.
Jeremy Clos was first exposed to a life in the theatre at the tender age of four, appearing as one of Rabbits many friends and relations in a production of The House at Pooh Corner. Over forty years later, he still loves working to bring the magic of theatre to the public.
While studying Theatre Arts at Appalachian State University, he was assigned an internship under the tutelage of Ms. Douglas Haas Bennett, owner of the former Raleigh Creative Costumes and the first professional costume designer hired by RLT. He later went to work for “Miss Doug” for over 15 years, costuming countless productions through the stock from her shop.
He branched out and started his own company in 2001, selling historic reproduction garments to production companies around the world. Items from his collection were featured on Glee (FOX), Imagination Movers and Jessie (The Disney Channel), True Blood (HBO), Longmire (A&E), and General Hospital (ABC).
Concurrently with running his own company, he also served as the Costume Designer for Raleigh’s Bare Theatre between 2005 and 2009. His design for Titus Andronicus was named as Raleigh’s best by the Independent Weekly in 2005. In 2016, longing for a change from the busy-ness of business, he sold his shop and entered a four-year distance education program in Ministry through the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. He also began to work part-time in the Raleigh Little Theatre costume shop.
He’s now thrilled to be on the full-time staff at Raleigh Little Theatre and energized to be helping tell important stories through the art of costume design.
Hear what NCSU University Theatre’s Laura Parker has to say to Raleigh Little Theatre’s Jeremy Clos about designing, acting, studying the law, and more.
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