SD: Last summer must have been a real challenge for you. Not only were you moving, but Music Theatre Louisville staged Cats and The Wiz as well as the world premiere of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
DL: It was a massive undertaking. There really is no time when we’re dark anymore. Since the merger, we’re going fifty-two weeks a year, so we knew there would never be a good time. We did an equally big show for Stage One, Treasure Island, before we even got to Willy Wonka!
SD: What are you working on right now?
DL: We are working on my eleventh incarnation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever for Stage One. We’re also getting ready for the radio version of It’s a Wonderful Life for Music Theatre Louisville, although it will be on stage at the Bomhard Theater. We are in pre-production for Brothers of a Common Country – a story about Abraham Lincoln that opens in January. That’s one of the many cool things about the merger of Stage One and Music Theatre Louisville – we do shows that are very, very different. The scale is different, the outlook is different, the budget is different. In the summer you get to do something like Mame; and in the fall, it’s Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse!
SD: You are probably one of the few people who has worked for both Stage One and Music Theatre Louisville in the past.
DL: I’m currently the only living specimen. I’ve done seventeen seasons at Stage One and fifteen for Music Theatre Louisville. Nancy Beranek, who is in the props department, has been with Stage One longer than I. Some people come and go, but I’m the only one who has been crazy enough to stay with both organizations.
SD: When you are doing a show like It’s a Wonderful Life, set during World War II, are you looking primarily for vintage clothing or do you build replicas?
DL: I use vintage clothing whenever I can. Even with my incredibly gifted and wonderful staff, there is a certain “snap” to the men’s tailoring from that period. It’s hard to fully achieve that look, partly because of the fiber content of modern materials. I love getting something on eBay® and seeing the tag inside: “Made for John Doe, 1941.” That’s a thrill. We also have some fabulous vintage stores in Louisville; Nitty Gritty has saved my keister more than once. Almost everything in that show will be vintage. I think we’re building two dresses for the back-up singers.
SD: Tell me about the Abraham Lincoln show. Is this a realistic portrayal of the nineteenth century?
DL: In terms of the costumes, it is extraordinarily realistic. We’ll be dressing seven actors who play characters from two stages of Abraham Lincoln’s life and two stages from Frederick Douglass’s life. There is a slave, a teacher and a plantation owner in the script, but each actor will play myriad roles.
SD: Approximately what time frame are you studying?
DL: From 1820 to 1860. There won’t be any vintage clothing in this one; my shop will build it all. Even if we could find it, clothing that old couldn’t stand up to daily wear and tear, body oil, sweat – all of the things that are part of staging a play and ultimately cause real clothing to disintegrate.
SD: Have you kept costumes from other shows that might work?
DL: Sure, we’ve done Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, so I’ll be able to pull some pieces upstairs. But we have a responsibility to be as historically accurate as possible.
SD: Where do you draw the line between historical accuracy and theatrical shorthand? If you dress a person in a white suit, string tie and panama hat, people will know immediately that this is supposed to be a plantation owner, although I’m sure most did not wear that ensemble.
DL: There are some iconic costumes. You don’t want to do Annie without the red dress and you can’t do Charlie Brown without the orange shirt. For the plantation owner, we will choose one piece that will portray that particular character. The research helps me answer questions such as, What kind of tie? and How would he wear his tie? But I also have to find those one or two pieces that will help the audience immediately answer the question, Who is this? If you hold up a short, shiny jacket with harlequin on one side, polka dots on the other and a number on the back, people will know it’s a jockey. We have to be very careful in our choices because we only get one shot at it. This is living art, and it’s gone in a second.
SD: So you are not going for ultra-realism because plantation owners wore all kinds of clothes?
DL: No, the ultra-realism will come in with Abraham Lincoln. He was one of the first American presidents to be photographed, so we know how he wore his collar and we know what his suit looked like. Artistic interpretation from drawings is often misleading; costume history is sometimes inaccurate. In fact, I did a monograph in college about the costumes in Gone With the Wind. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s Cleopatra, the lines had nothing to do with costume history. Clark Gable’s suits in Gone With the Wind are all 1940s styles because that line looked much better on him. He was slope shouldered, had a small neck and a big jaw. It was all about making the man look good, and they did because Walter Plunkett was a genius.
SD: Fashion in this decade has been pack-aged for easy consumption. Programs like Project Runway, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Tim Gunn’s Guide to Fashion and What Not to Wear have introduced people to the idea of draping, silhouette, the importance of fabric choices, etc. They also talk about the difference between fashion and costume. Where is that line for you?
DL: It’s hard to define. When we do shows like Hello, Dolly!, I don’t want you to notice the people in the background – unless they are a character who will do something later. They should be wearing something that looks like street clothes, that gives you the layering and sense of “height.” Height in this case refers to the process of emphasizing the importance of a character through use of color or the elaboration of their costume. But a show like The Diary of Anne Frank is more of an ensemble cast, meaning that everyone has approximately the same level of importance. Designing a period show and having it look real is much more difficult than doing a show that is fantastic and crazy. That line can be crossed so easily – sometimes it’s just a piece of trim. You might have a gorgeous evening dress, but a sequined trim will push it over the edge into “costume.”
SD: There are periods in the past, of course, when costumes were de rigueur.
DL: I’ve got some pictures of corsetry that would frighten you. People actually had 13-inch waists; they couldn’t breathe or eat and they died young, but they had a 13-inch waist! When you look at some of that, it seems unnatural to us today, but it was truly the fashion of that time.
SD: Even with heightening, I imagine you still have to work to keep the clothes from becoming a distraction.
DL: Everybody knows the red dress from Hello Dolly! when she makes her staircase descent. But if you notice what the waiters are wearing, something is wrong.
SD: A few years ago, I had the opportunity to talk with William Ivey Long, who has won five Tony Awards for costume design. He was telling me about the challenges in creating the simple yellow dress that the director used as a connecting icon through the three acts of the play Contact – the point being that sometimes it’s the simple pieces that are the hardest.
DL: So true! Andrew Harris is directing our production of The
Best Christmas Pageant Ever that is set in 1968, and I’m having trouble finding clothes
for 32 kids. So we decided to cheat a little and use clothes from 1970-71
without crossing the line completely. I’ll know that some of the dresses
are actually from 1970, but I hope the audience will just be caught up
and accept them as true to the period. It’s a lot easier to fool an adult
than it is to fool a kid; kids will catch you every time. That’s why
the children’s theatre costumes are so incredibly important and, sometimes,
difficult to create. But the fleeting nature of the art and the fact
that your visuals are what stay with people when they leave are some
of the things that make theatre so exciting for me.
Donna Lawrence-Downs’ costumes can be seen in the upcoming Stage One production Brothers
of a Common Country: A Story of Abraham Lincoln at the Bomhard Theater January 22-February 13. For tickets and more information, go to www.stageone.org or call 502.584.7777.