In the process of designing costumes for Quantum Voyages, the characters’ personalities and functions in the play were the major deciding factors. While the capricious Terra wears a buoyant and romantic ensemble, the pragmatic Akash is more dapper and primly attired. As a spirited adventurer with a penchant for 1920s science, their guide, Sapienza, is part flapper and part Amelia Earhart. The trio is accompanied by the omnipresent and enigmatic Quantum Ensemble, whose costumes are loose-fitting for ease of movement and reflect the high-tech metal-and-glass environment in which Bose-Einstein condensates are created and studied.
Cassandra Yuhui Zhao is a senior studying Engineering Physics at the University of Illinois. She makes up for her lack of formal costuming training with long-held enthusiasm for fashion design. Though she has never acted in a play before, she exerted her best effort to portray the chaotic and whimsical nature of the Quantum Ensemble. She once fronted a metal band and operated an international shopping service.