You come out of it in a different way, depending on the space. You can’t say, “This is the way to do it.” But I can guide them and say, “These are the things I think you should do.”. I’m not only dealing with different plays, but with different directors. As a not-for-profit theater artist, what I think is a crime is the funding, the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts). Awards Susan Hilferty , John Lee Beatty ... of the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award and Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design, respectively. We have to know about history and its relationship to the world, whether it’s about the sciences, war, or politics; we have to know about literature, because almost every great play references other great plays before it. Susan Hilferty: In Wicked, I was drawn to the relationship between the two vastly different central women, but especially to the character of Elphaba, who is ostracized by her community … For Uncle Vanya at the Center Stage in Baltimore, Hilferty used silhouettes from the play’s period (sketch, above left) and worked with a clean surface to which she added some small, reduced patterns and simple gestures such as a flower or a brooch. “Athol had been talking about a different approach to writing this play,” Hilferty says. Hilferty grew up in a big family in Arlington, Massachusetts, where her greatest source of joy was the library. Oh!” It was eye-opening. Winner Costume Society of America for CSA Costume Design Award … And that whole  body of work is what influenced me in terms of being a costume designer. $400.00. “What we’re doing,” she explains, “is creating a world, and the audience is looking through a window and observing a specific element of that world.” To this end, all choices need to be specific and clearly thought out. “We didn’t have a television,” she says. When people ask me, “What kind of play do you want to work on?” I wouldn’t want to do Hamlet just for Hamlet’s sake; but if Joe Mantello directed Hamlet, then I would want to do it. Translating this is the hard part. You can’t have good costumes and a bad production. So you’ll do something and then your job is to respond to your own work. Awards. Set design by Susan Hilferty (Photo: Scott Suchman) But I would say ultimately, the design really focuses on the House of Atreus. Because everybody has been working on the same journey. So you have to keep thinking about the universe, and the manners and mores of the universe and how they affect it. Joe Mantello is directing Glen Garry Glenn Ross, and most people would say, “That’s just a bunch of shirts and ties, so why would you want to do it?” But I would love to do it—those characters are so complex. I understood what directing was about. To me, that becomes an important element: that you have somebody who is a prince, and a king and a queen, so the culture of this world has to have a “kingness.” There also has to be a place where we understand the crown will be handed over, and there’s a weight to this crown. Feb 4, 2014 - Costume designer . Willows even permed one half of his hair while bleaching the other. Spring Awakening "Melchior" Costume Print 7/50 By Susan Hilferty. So I worked as a scenic artist, in all the different shops. Eventually, she enrolled in the MFA program at Yale. “I don’t think it’s any accident that my most recent plays have been bold experimental efforts,” he says. And you can constantly ask them really hard questions in terms of their work. And I approach each play differently, so I wait for the script to give me, not information, but inspiration. I almost always begin the exploration of a play in my head in the time that it’s written. Susan Hilferty Biography Awards Tony Award for Best Costume Design for Wicked. Susan Hilferty. And I would describe it as a brutal facade which should feel like an oven or a reliquary in that you should have the sense constantly that it might explode, and it does. Hilferty seems as adept at grappling with the barest of details as she is working with the more unusual productions. I hope that reading critically is a learned experience. Susan Hilferty is an American costume designer for theatre, opera, and film. Susan Hilferty, Chair of the Department of Design for Stage & Film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts gives an overview of the program. You can’t teach it to students, but you can question them. “In costumes, I always start sketching,” Hilferty says. So if you look through Hamlet, there are outside scenes. And it just goes on and on. That’s what I believe—I believe that is the essential. John is basically what I would call the dramaturg of the department. So actors have to trust that I will not make them look bad. In contrast to the more eccentric concepts of such works are productions that audiences are not apt to think of as designed, like La Jolla’s Two Rooms , directed by McAnuff, and many of Fugard’s plays. Two separate costumes, one made of gold lamé for the goldsmith, the other of black leather for the merchant, were literally cut in half and sewn back together. She makes all 200 costumes in the show and individually tailors them for each particular actor. It’s been done, but I really believe that it’s got to feel as if it’s all coming from the same place. I don’t see what happens in commercial plays, because that really is separate. One of the big issues that I see in the future is people’s use of the Internet—they don’t understand that it doesn’t allow you to browse. Hilferty was randomly assigned as costume designer to Fugard’s production of A Lesson From Aloes . You just never know where it’s going to lead. Susan Hilferty Bio, Photos, Theatre Credits, Stage History - Has designed more than 200 productions for theatres across America and internationally. “I had the sense that we were almost illustrating a children’s book.”, For Coastal Disturbances (sketches below), Hilferty grouped her preliminary sketches to give herself an overall view of the relationships in each scene and the way the cast plays together onstage. There were leaps in there and overlaps, but the viewer said, ‘I’ll buy that.’ It didn’t feel forced.”. — at Artur & Tailors Ltd. I believe that every designer has to think holistically. For Tooth of Crime’s Crow at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Hilferty used animal imagery and luxurious, unusual fabrics to fashion the look of the “post rock ‘n’ roll bad guy.” For Crow’s robe (sketch, above), which could be pushed back to hang off the shoulders, she used velvet hand-painted in mineral colors. Susan Hilferty Hewes Design Awards - 2002. Sort by; Costume Design; Costume Design Broadway; Costume Design Off-Broadway; Costume Design National Tour; Costume Design International; Costume Design Dance; Costume Design Opera; Costume Design Film & TV; Costume Design Regional; Set Design ; Directing; Upcoming: Aida . For Luce in the Flying Karamozov Brothers’ Comedy of Errors at Lincoln Center (sketch,below right), Hilferty “tried to make her a combination of the adorable and the grotesque,” with a French maid’s outfit, blood-spattered apron, and torn fishnet stockings. Has the new king given an easy-going, casual air to the court since the death of the older king? Wicked "Chistery" Flying Monkey Costume Design By Susan Hilferty. Once you step into the play, everything that you do, you start holding up and asking, “Is this right?” That’s why research for students is critical, in order to expose them to everything. Susan Hilferty. She also has about 400 shoes and hats with a unique, eccentric design. Roles (23) Present Laughter (2017) Opened Apr 5, 2017: Costume Design ; Lewis Black: Black to the Future (2016) Opened Sep 12, 2016: Visual Consultant ; … We literally built and designed throughout the rehearsal process. “It let the audience focus on what I wanted them to see and nothing else.”. One of the things that’s exciting about teaching is that you have to keep challenging yourself about what it is that you’re trying to teach. And I like that it builds slowly within the idea of the production.”. She majored in painting and with a minor in fashion design at Syracuse University. “It was stylized sense of writing that had been rubbed out,” Fugard explains, “an impression, a very subtle reminder that this play was about words, about learning, about knowledge.” The device of the curtain, Hilferty says, allowed the actors to “literally move without ever leaving the stage, without it ever going to black, to move from one scene right into the next.”, The stage floor was painted a vibrant red to suggest the color of soil in the country’s Karoo region, where the play is set. Now, in another year or so I might get really bored with it. So I never really think, “Oh I’m going to set it in 1777.”. Just as an actor is trying things from the moment they read the role— it might be with an accent, or in the way they move—so a costume designer has to be doing exactly the same thing. It’s unbelievable what happened to Wicked: it’s taken off as a production, and there’s something really interesting about having a huge success. I spend as much time as I have reading. The first week, before they even start classes, we ask them questions about the text. Blood Wedding 2019. “Whenever there’s time I do a complete rendering. I never look to find another period that it might fit. I always believe that you’re exploring a play each time, instead of solving it. Choisissez parmi des contenus premium Susan Hilferty de la plus haute qualité. I remember Garland Wright once did this beautiful production of Medea, and he said he was laughing at himself because he was in a bookstore and saw this book, Susan Faludi’s Backlash, and thought, “Oh no, I’ve already done Medea, I don’t need any of that.” He just laughed at himself. The costume designer’s job is very complicated, because not only do you have to know (which is a whole job in itself) how to design clothes, color, fabric, and construction, but the second part is to understand real history so that you can actually identify what you would do in 1776. So I would never go into a meeting saying, “It has to be set in the Twenties.” I wouldn’t even know how to get there. I’ve always been able to live with that. The most influential production that I ever saw wasn’t a single production. $250.00. And this one, well I think it"s my favourite. St. Ann’s Warehouse Brooklyn Boesman and Lena 2019. Recent work includes: Set and Costumes for Hamlet (Gate Theatre, Dublin, Ireland; nomination for Irish Times Theatre Awards for Best Set Design), Salomé (Olivier Stage National Theatre London and NT LIVE); Costumes for Sam Shepard’s Buried Child (London and New York); Richard Nelson’s three play cycle THE GABRIELS: Election Year in the Life of One Family (Public Theatre, … I mean just look at it. For instance, “In what text is this important prop: a purple flower?” Immediately somebody gets it, so we get them to look at Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have had an unbelievable list of experiences, and almost every one has been rich and fantastic. There is no set route for me in terms of what I talk about with a director. Is it about movement? Nomination Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Set Design Hamlet. Hilferty helped to translate the concept visually by having the characters shed and add articles of clothing as time marched forward. I’m much more fluent in the specifics of the craft of being a costume designer than a set designer. So I was actually using pictures of Queen Elizabeth II, moving her from this innocent woman to somebody who’s got her hair pulled back, structured and powerful. Hilferty says she uses such sketches “the way a set designer would use a model.”, © 2021 Susan Hilferty. Juggling, for example, requires tight fitting sleeves; juggling of fire limits the range of fabrics that can be used. Hamlet is also one of those plays that’s really driven by one character, seen through his eyes. Gershwin Theatre New York The Oresteia 2019. What does it represent? “That’s an impossible question to answer. I prefer theater to opera. And in terms of who’s occupying it. There are always things that are vestigial—that, when you did it the first time, needed to be fixed. I think that’s the secret. Does he just creep on? “They always seem completely attuned with what the direction of the scene and what my intent was. Not about a style, but about ideas.”, Collaboration took full force in Comedy of Errors , a production full of bizarre and imaginative images that featured the acrobatic antics of the Flying Karamozov Brothers. That gathered … Signature Theatre (New York City) New York Wicked 2003. He is also wearing galoshes. I’m one of the luckiest people I know. Students hate that question: why? Winner TDF/Irene Sharaff Award for Lifetime Achievement . Light is one of the other ingredients that I use in terms of trying to understand what the design elements are about. What happens? For me, that’s the trigger to almost every design: the timing, the rhythm; trying to understand what that rhythm is, and then including silences—great moments of silence used correctly, like punctuation in the course of storytelling. Hilferty … Susan Hilferty. $400.00. And when I worked in San Francisco, at each of those places I really felt as if I was a part of a community and doing work within it. Everybody imagines that we know where Ophelia has drowned, but we’re actually not out there when it happens. I thought, “This is it.” Hilferty returned to the U.S. to work at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and then spent several years designing productions in New York. Although her distinctive approach to designing costumes is hard to teach, design students at Parsons School of Design in New York, where Hilferty is an instructor, do learn about her views on more practical aspects of the craft, like drawing. Website by tinymill.com. But at that point I had never really seen any professional theater. So the impetus on us, as designers, is always to create a world. What’s its importance? “It was ravishing in its simplicity,” Fugard says of the designer’s handiwork. Is it somewhere war is present, and so everybody is armed and ready in some way? 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