On Costuming and Vibrators

With "Midsummer" open, I spent a week in New York in pre-production meetings and casting for The Red Umbrella (the short play I am directing as part DirectorFest). After a late Monday night arrival, I meet with Whitney Locher (costume designer) the following afternoon. We broke the play down into a distinct set of looks for every character, talked about progression of color and came to an agreement on key costume moments in the story. We're using a very specific color design to make the actors pop from Julia Noulin-Merat’s set, which will embody the world as Peter sees it through a sterile, insular box of monochromatic white. To achieve the maximum amount of changes and to take up the least amount of stage time, we’ve decided on multiple layers for every character for the actors to manipulate into different looks by taking off or modifying the different items. The key color element of the play is of course the Red Umbrella. This will be the only red item in the play, and it will be the most saturated of all the colors we include. The appearance of Red will be a visual keystone that will tie together all the other colors on stage into a unified painting.

Research images for two possible looks for Death:



I try to see a play a day whenever I am in New York, and I combine this with socializing and catching up with friends old and new. On this night, I had made a date with Barrett Davis and Allison Byrnes, two wonderful actors and dear friends, to watch Les Waters' stunning production of the new Sarah Ruhl play, In The Next Room (or, The Vibrator Play). We had a sense that this was going to be a production we would want to talk about after seeing it. Without a doubt, this is the play that everyone will be talking about this season! A must-see, especially for the rhapsodic final wordless scene, which had the three of us literally breathless, swooning and tearing up at the same time. I took a directing class with Les as an undergrad at Stanford, and he remains a seminal influence and inspiration. I have been deeply affected by the brilliant, passionate, image-drenched productions of new plays he has found over the years – Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine, Eurydice, Fetes de la Nuit and The Pillowman to name a few – and I look eagerly forward to what seems to be the golden summer of his vibrant career.


Above (from left): Barrett Davis, currently appearing in Mary Poppins, and Allison Byrnes, who is based in Los Angeles.
(posted by Ed)