Meet Claire, the Cosplayer Artist with a Creative Soul of Pure Gold
Claire as Circe, Photo Credit: @nerdriot_photo
Like a number of 90s kids, trained actor and talented cosplayer Claire Koleske, known online as Shakespeareandme, credits Wishbone for her desire to read at a young age. It may come as no surprise that The Tempest episode is her favorite. “It was the first time I heard Shakespeare and I was six years old, and I flipped out…it was the coolest thing…the moment it's like, ‘Oh, heaven on earth bear witness to the sound!’” she shares with a huge smile.
She’s been a Shakespeare fan ever since, and also had a high school theater teacher who nurtured that love. “He was adamant about the fact that teenagers can understand Shakespeare; everybody can understand Shakespeare,” she says. “I did Shakespeare all through high school. And then I was going to be a Shakespearean actor. And then I was going to be a Shakespeare professor.”
She started answering phones in the box office at Seattle Repertory Theatre and thought she’d spend a short amount of time there, but wound up being there for seven and a half years, and became the Director of the whole department.
“I was in charge of all front-facing staff at Seattle Rep. It was a great job,” she says.
But she realized what she wanted to be doing was marketing full time, and was able to land an Assistant Director of Marketing role at Fifth Avenue Theatre. As someone who lived in Seattle for almost nine years, and attended productions there, I know it’s a big deal. “It's a really, really big honor. And I love the team. I love getting to work on musical theater,” Claire says.
While working those initial years, she also had a Tumblr, where she posted quotes and aesthetic pictures, which was her first instance of Shakespeareandme, but she shares her username also works on another level: “My husband's name is William, and I always say he's the other half of the account that nobody sees. He's the Shakespeare part of it.”
She and her husband met in acting school and are both writers, and initially connected over The Hunger Games. It’s honestly a Hallmark movie moment. He saw her reading backstage and asked her what she was reading. She told him she was in the second book of The Hunger Games. “He said, ‘Let me know when you finish the third book.’ And he was so cute. I was looking for any excuse to talk to him. So I sped read through the third book, and I missed the plot point where Katniss kills somebody super important,” she says.
When she finishes the book, she tells him, and he asks her what she thought about Katniss killing that person, and she has to make up that she completely blocked it out of her mind. But that clearly didn’t keep him from falling for her. And he even cosplays with her now.
It was in 2018 she decided to dip her toes into cosplay. Her dad, a brilliant chemist, passed away after a year-long battle with cancer, and she shares that the one thing he always wanted to do was be an artist, but he never had time. This heavily influenced her to pursue her cosplay art.
“He just wanted to live so he could retire and start doing the things he [always] wanted to do,” Claire says.
“It’s a small way of honoring him…he introduced me to The Princess Bride and fantasy, and I remember him being like, ‘Hey, your mom's out of town. So we're gonna rent The Lord of the Rings movie,” she remembers. “So I owe this love of fantasy and sci-fi…to him. And he's got me to do all of this…I think he… would have loved TikTok, like he would have been all over it, like, goofy science dad.”
About six months after her dad passed she put together her first cosplay outfit. “The Bear and the Nightingale was actually the book that started this whole journey with me, because I got my English degree…And then I was like, ‘I have to read grownup things,’” Claire says. “I was reading whatever was on the New York Times bestseller list…a lot of contemporary books. I just didn't love them. And then I went to the library and I saw this book…and I was hooked. And it was one of the best things I've read.”
And then she googled ‘books like The Bear and the Nightingale’, and ACOTAR was the first thing that popped up.
“I went through a very, very similar journey that Feyre goes through in A Court of Mist and Fury. I ended up leaving an abusive boyfriend for the man who's now my husband,” Claire says. “I got really into it. I started looking up fanart and I found Georgia (Peachyqueencosplay)...I had this lightbulb moment in [a] hotel room…at a conference in Florida…and I was like it combines the acting, it combines the love of dress up.”
Feyre was her first ever cosplay character. Similarly to Deacon Ales, a wandmaker, Claire also began her journey at a Halloween Party.
Her first cosplay ever, as Feyre.
A more recent Feyre cosplay with her husband William, as Rhys
“I had the Blissfully Bookish ‘High Lady of The Night Court’ Tee…a tiara, and the tattoo…and then I had the ring. That was the first time I cosplayed her, and I was like, I can't look back.”
Her Feyre’s come a long way, and she even has Feyre Fridays where she cosplays as Feyre each week.
Now she creates elaborate costumes. But it was definitely an evolution. She grew up sewing with her mom, who she says is super crafty. But it was in acting school where she took her first costume class.
“When I took the class…the professors were like, ‘Do you know how to sew?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I've sewed with my mom my whole life,’ and they were like, ‘We're gonna beat you down and remold you,” she shares.
But because of her anxiety, she explains she never really got “remolded,” and for a long time she didn’t think she could sew, so initially she was thrifting everything and supplementing with Amazon.
“My initial rule when I first started was, you can't invest in a piece if you can't use it for more than three different looks. So I started off with a handful of corsets from Amazon, an old bridesmaid's dress, and a bunch of things that I thrifted–I thrifted my first Starfall dress,” she reminisces. “I love the direction of having to put together a look for a character, not necessarily for me because I felt like I could be…a little bolder.
“But then when I made the decision to do the Ever After dress, I did a warm up dress…and I did a warm up Italian Renaissance dress, which I use for Mary Queen of Scots all the time. And then I did the Ever After dress.”
It’s a spitting image of the dress in the movie, and it’s one of my favorite cosplays Claire has done. What’s next? “I'm gonna make a corset,” she says and holds up the fabric she’s going to use. “I'm going to do a 1780s corset.
“And then I'm making Roxanne from the new Cyrano movie that just came out with Peter Dinklage. It’s honestly one of the best things I've seen in years, and Cyrano de Bergerac was,” she pauses. “So I started in theater as a fight choreographer.
“Cyrano was the first show I worked on. So…that show also has a very special place in my heart…I will probably do Galadriel at some point this year…That's the costume that William has been like, ‘I think that's gonna be really good for you.’ So I'm making that one.”
Adding the Cyrano movie to my watch queue. But I can’t let her skip past the fight choreographer job. She explains she got into it when she was 15 living in Albuquerque, and a super intense, gruff martial artist and ex military guy would go around to high schools and teach stage combat, and he would tell the kids if they impressed him, he would give them an invitation to his fencing club. Guess who got an invitation?
“I had really good form because I had been a ballerina…and within about four or five months he was like, ‘I think you're kind of good at this. So I'm going to take you on as an apprentice,” she says. “So I was his apprentice the entire time I was in high school…he would send me off to one of the rehearsals and I…would supervise the choreography…My wedding bouquet was…a rapier with…a bunch of flowers in it…I love swords, which, of course, puts me in very good company with everyone on Booktok.”
Claire’s wedding bouquet rapier.
Claire choreographing a fight scene
So for those wanting to dip their toes into cosplay on Bookstagram and Booktok, what advice would she give?
“I would say one, go for it…and two, don't be afraid to start small…pick one character that you love. Maybe get a tiara…and then work your way up,” she says. “But when you are ready to work your way up, splurge for the lace front wigs. They are going to make all the difference in your look because the lace front wig is going to sit way more naturally on your hairline.”
Kryssma is one of her favorite affordable wig brands, but ultimately it’s about getting creative.
As she’s creating these cosplays, it has to be such an incredible thing for authors to see their characters come to life. So I have to ask if she’s had the opportunity to interact with some of the authors of characters she cosplays. And she’s had several opportunities, including meeting Shelby Mahurin, who wrote Serpent and Dove.
“I got to do a LIVE with her for the release of Blood and Honey, it was super special. She picked five or six cosplayers who were super into the series and we all got to ask one question,” she shares. “It was when we were in quarantine. So it was a…very hard time, but it was just so special to be able to connect with her.”
She also mentions getting to work with Rebecca J. Ross, author of The Queen's Rising on her adult fantasy book. Sabaa Tahir shared her Helene cosplay from An Ember in the Ashes series, and Tracy Deonn shared her Nick from Legendborn cosplay. Both incredible fantasy series. Book two, Bloodmarked is on both of our most anticipated reads for the rest of the year.
With so many books and movies to choose from, how does she decide which characters she wants to cosplay?
“I have three rules: It has to make current, 30 year old Claire happy, or it has to make little Claire happy, [or] three, I loved the thing so much I want other people to know about it,” she explains. “So it has to be something that I wanted when I was a child. Like Danielle from Ever After. Like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. [And] that's part of the reason why I really want to make this costume from Cyrano now, because…I want more people to know about it…which is why I had to go out and do Ildiko because…I need more people to read this book!”
She’s referencing Radiance by Grace Draven, which I 100% agree, more people need to read. It’s an incredible friends to lovers fantasy romance with an arranged marriage. You are rooting for the characters the whole time, and it’s a great duology to get you out of a reading slump. But we’re getting sidetracked.
Anything she wished she would have known starting out? She tells me she wished she had set some boundaries, and told herself it was okay to take breaks.
“When I first started I posted every single day. I didn't take any breaks for like the whole first year and a half, and then I finally gave myself one day off a week,” she says. “I am great at hustling. It was great, it gave me something to do. But I wish I had been gentler on 2019 Claire and just been like, ‘you don't have to go that hard.’”
She admits she mostly “flies by the seat of her pants” when it comes to what’s next in life. She knows she’d like to publish a book, and is technically querying. I want her to give us an inkling of what it’s about, and she obliges: “It’s a beauty and beast, but the girl is the beast…if you think too hard about it, it could be considered Manorian fanfiction,” which sets us into a fit of giggles for those who know (if you haven’t read the Throne of Glass series, you should!).
Claire admits the book and cosplay community has had a huge impact on her: “I have become a lot more confident…in myself, and in my work, and…it sounds really, really corny, but the fact that I know that there are characters…yes, it's fiction, but if I know they've done it, then I feel stronger…so that's been really wonderful getting to put on the characters for a little bit.
“Like the day that we shut down the theaters [because of COVID], I was in my Starfall jersey…That's one of the reasons why I love book merch so much, and like the little subtle book merch.”
I’m currently in the throes of designing subtle bookish merch for this site, so I can’t wait for Claire to see it. That’s been another thing Claire’s appreciated–the support and friendship from fellow book lovers.
“I love talking about books and it's so wonderful to meet other people who feel inspired by these characters in these stories and want to keep talking about them,” she says. “I want to be known for holding space and being kind and…being real.”
It all comes back to not waiting to do things that bring you joy. Claire shares in one of her TikToks about her dad, “We don’t know how long we have, and as terrifying as that thought is, that means you have to do the things you want to now.”
We’re all inspired by the characters you bring to life Claire, but I know your dad would be the most proud of all.
Rapid Reveals
Where to find Claire:
Favorite Genres to read:
- Fantasy, Romantasy, Contemporary Romance
Recent Read:
- Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
- Radiance by Grace Draven
Favorite Format to read:
- Kindle “I live in 600 square feet, living in the middle of the city, you know, it's real tight. But if I really really like a book…I will have it on my shelf.”
Anticipated Reads:
For the Throne by Hannah Whitton
A Fire Endless by Rebecca Ross
Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
Best Read so Far this Year:
- Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente “It's so good. I'm making my husband read it.”
Fictional land to Visit:
- Velaris, but also Little Palace in Rafka
Favorite place to read:
“I read on my Kindle app on my phone in the bathtub. I will just sit and pretzel myself and read a great book, and it's delightful.”
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