The objective of this thesis was to design costumes for The Addams Family musical. Musical, a production of Uniarts Helsinki Theatre Academy’s open campus. The Addams Family is a musical comedy, and its premiere of the musical was at Theatre Academy in Helsinki in June 2022.

The aim was to create a functional costume design using circular economy and use the costumes of the well-known Addams Family characters as reference. The aim of this thesis was to make observations and to study how to design costumes that work or this production and describe the characters successfully. The thesis examines how to effectively use circular economy in costume design.

The main literature for this costume design is Michael J. Gillette’s planning and problem-solving model (2008) developed for theatre work. The design process has seven different steps that are used to proceed in the costume design. The screenplay and characters were analyzed using the analysis methods of Rosemary Ingham and Liz Covey (1992) and Michael J. Gillette (2008). Other research methods in this thesis and semi-structured interview and observation.

The result of this thesis is a finished costume design for The Addams Family musical using circular economy. The costume design describes the characters’ personalities and appearances successfully. This thesis could be beneficial to costume designers who are designing costumes using circular economy.