West Virginia University theatre student Megan Mahoney entered the world of film and television, as well as a little-known part of American history, when she served as a wardrobe intern on the PBS miniseriesThe War That Made America,a documentary that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War.

Co-produced by WQED , Pittsburgh’s public broadcasting station, the film will air nationally on PBS in two-hour segments on Jan. 18 and 25 from 9-11 p.m. EST .

The documentary was filmed in southwestern Pennsylvania , including Ligonier and other areas of Westmoreland County , as well as in Fayette and Somerset counties. Some of it was filmed on the very battlegrounds depicted in the documentary.

Mahoney, who is a junior studying for a degree in costume design in the WVU Division of Theatre and Dance, worked as an intern with the film during the summer of 2004, following her freshman year.

As interns, we helped prepare costumes for the actors and made sure they knew how to put them on correctly,said Mahoney, of Springfield , Va.We made repairs and helped to organize the massive stock of costumes.

She also worked as part of a small crew that waited out of camera range to make quick repairs or add additional distressing or �€~dirtying’on a costume and took archival photos to keep track of which actors played which characters in which scenes.

Being on set was less predictable than being in the shop, but also more fun,she said.Each day was a lot of work, and we learned a lot. I also learned a great deal about the fascinating historical period in which this special was set.

Perhaps no other event in American history has had as much impact and is as little known as the French and Indian War, which took place in North America from 1754-63. The British victory over the French and American Indians in the war established English control of the settled regions of North America, including the Ohio Valley .

Among the British officers was an inexperienced young colonel named George Washington, who joined in the fight to secure the confluence of three rivers that would one day become Pittsburgh .

Although the British victory meant a great expansion of British territorial claims, the French and Indian War is often seen as the source of much of the resentment between the English government and the colonists that eventually led to the American Revolution.

Mahoney said she was very pleased and excited to work with several WVU Theatre alumni on the series, including Virginia Johnson, head costume designer; Clinton O’Dell, assistant costume designer; and Marjorie Baer, costume supervisor.

It is incredibly rewarding to see that our alumni are achieving great success in the profession,said Margaret McKowen, chair of the Division of Theatre and Dance at WVU .I particularly appreciate their loyalty to and support of our program. The alumni frequently call me with available internships and job opportunities for our students.

Bernie Schultz, dean of the College of Creative Arts , echoed McKowen’s sentiments.

I am so very pleased that a current student and three of our distinguished alumni

played significant roles in this national PBS production,Schultz said.The ability of our students to gain professional experience during their undergraduate years is, more and more, a distinguishing feature of education at West Virginia University .

Johnson has been the head of design in the drama and dance department at Tufts University for three years and works extensively in the Boston area as a costume designer, including work forNovaon a documentary about Typhoid Mary.

Her company, Maganda Designs, won the Heinz History Center bid to construct Washington’s uniform, based on the painting by Charles Willson Peale in 1772 for the Pittsburgh International Airport exhibit. She also worked on the WQED seriesJohn&Abigail Adams,a two-hour PBS special based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bookJohn Adams,that will air onAmerican ExperienceJan. 23.

Historical authenticity is Johnson’s primary goal when she sets to work to create costumes that reflect the look and feel of the time. Costumes forThe War That Made Americahad to be accurate to a painstaking degree. However, very few artifacts remain from the period of the French and Indian War.

The costume designer does a lot of research,Johnson said.I start by going back to period paintings and portraits, and also, because we’re working in early America , primitive artwork on plates and earthenware.

She spent several months visiting museums, reading historical texts and consulting with experts before she was ready to begin re-creating the clothing worn by soldiers and Native Americans 250 years ago. She also assembled a crew of theatrical costumers to help with the 500 costumes needed not only for the film’s main characters, but for hundreds of extras.

Johnson’s chief design assistant was O’Dell, a native West Virginian who received a bachelor of fine arts degree in scene design from WVU . He currently lives in the Boston area, working as an award-winning costumer, and has also worked across the country as a scenic artist.

In 2005, he received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Tennessee . While there, he received the Zelma H. Weisfeld Award for Costume Design and Technology at the 2005 Conference of the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology.

Baer also received her bachelor of fine arts degree in theatre design and technology from WVU and recently finished her master of fine arts degree from California Institute of the Arts, where she was a costume design fellow. Her latest projects include on-site work for an MTV shoot and her acceptance into the Los Angeles Costumer’s Guild as an assistant designer and illustrator.