Push A Limit [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 16, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

In one of the more absurd chapters of my life I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to a graduate program in costuming. As an undergraduate student in the theatre with a focus on acting and directing I’d spent a goodly amount of time in costume shops, sewing buttons, repairing shoes, badly hemming pants. It is fair to say that anything that involves fabric makes little to no sense to me. Many dear and patient costumers kept me busy during my required costume hours with tasks that I could not bungle. They found my level of competence (very low) and helped me succeed there.

My capacity to draw opened the door of costume absurdity. While interning at The Walden Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, the director cast me as Oberon in a production of A Mid Summer Night’s Dream. She also asked me to design the costumes. She’d seen my drawings. I was delighted and drew characters with absolutely no idea whether or not my drawings could be translated into actual garments that people could wear. The very gifted head of the costume shop recognized my vast limitations and gently helped me make fabric decisions. I learned the art of the question from her. She knew what was best – and I knew nothing at all – so her questions were precise with the correct answer baked into the framing of the question.

One day a man came to audition actors for a graduate program. The audition room was lined with my costume designs. After the auditions he found me and asked me to interview with the tech faculty of the university. It was a crazy idea, a wild hare, but I did it anyway. At the time my ship had no rudder and there was nothing on my horizon following my internship. Plus, I believed there was no way, given my very very low costume competence, that they’d offer me a spot. But they did. And I accepted.

When Kerri resurrected her box of clothes-patterns it surfaced my long forgotten time in graduate school as a costume designer. I could draw and design everything. I couldn’t construct anything. More than once I reduced my professors to tears of laughing-disbelief at my attempts to sew. More than once I stopped them in their tracks with my capacity to imagine and paint. I began that year believing I was on the wrong path – I knew I was never going to be a costume designer – and I ended the year having learned that there is no such thing as a wrong path. Those good people, the incredible artists that surrounded me each day, helped me see and embrace my gifts. They helped me laugh at my foibles. They helped me understand the great creative power – and necessity – of pushing on a limit and stepping into an unknown. They helped me find my way.