Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It's not something students typically see every day, Queen Elizabeth making a grand and dignified entrance into one of their classrooms. But when the classroom belongs to Fort Herriman Middle School Science teacher, Gayle Dowdle, it is simply part of the learning process.

On this episode of the Supercast, find out how one teacher's love of cosplay resulted in something called the “Creators Club” for students. A club where creativity is sparked by making colorful costumes and transforming into beloved characters.

We're here with Gayle Dowdle, a science teacher at Fort Herriman Middle School to talk about cosplay. Thanks for talking with us today.

Gayle Dowdle:
Yeah, no problem.

Anthony Godfrey:
For those who may not know, if they were standing here with you right now, they would know what cosplay is because you are dressed to the nines. But describe what cosplay is just to start.

Gayle Dowdle:
So cosplay is a kind of mix of two words. It's a mixture of costuming and play. So the idea is that when you cosplay, you basically dress as the character and you pretend to be the character as well. So the cosplay character that I usually portray is Queen Elizabeth I, and I do the Utah Renaissance Fair and stuff, so I represent her at those. I've done a bunch of other characters too, but lots of it is involved with like FanX and comic conventions and things like that, but also people do it as like volunteer stuff too.

Anthony Godfrey:
And I can hear that I've already mispronounced it, cosplay instead of cosplay. Which is a common mistake I'm guessing.

Gayle Dowdle:
Yeah, my dad the first time he said he's like, "Have you heard of this cosplay stuff?” I'm like, "Yeah Dad, that's what I do.”

Anthony Godfrey:
Now I am a big pop culture fan and I have seen cosplay a lot at FanX, at San Diego Comic-Con, and at other venues for pop culture. You talked about the service aspect too, but let's talk about the fan experiences that you're a part of and where cosplay comes into play at those venues.

Gayle Dowdle:
Yeah, so FanX was kind of one of the first places that I really got into some of the more major stuff of doing costuming at a higher level and that was because I got pulled into one of the cosplay competitions there. Ro is the one that runs the cosplay competition and he was like, "You should do this." So I applied and got in and won my first cosplay competition as an Elizabethan vampire. And so that was really cool. And I was like, "This is amazing. This is exciting.”

What's really cool is when you go and interact, the community of cosplayers is really close and supportive a lot of times. And so made a lot of friends through that. So it's just kind of become this huge part of my life where I've got people. In fact, one of my friends is in the cosplay called Fame and she's actually gonna come next week as a guest to help the kids next week at our cosplay clubs. But basically, just everybody comes up with the character that they love and then they build it. Sometimes it's original characters, sometimes it's characters from pop culture like you were talking about.

And there is competitions. I've competed, well, except for during CO