A SUBTLE ART: ‘Good design is almost unnoticed,’ Howard says. |
It could be as simple as a power tie or stiletto heels, but what people wear conveys the first impression we get, subliminally or blatantly, about the kind of person they are.For eight years, costume designer David T. Howard has been a backstage blur at local theaters, working busily behind the scenes to give actors a head start in helping us understand who their characters are. An exhibit of his work, “David T. Howard: Gilding the Shoestrings,” is on display at the University of Rhode Island Providence Campus (through September 29).
Spread out along the ground-floor corridor, the exhibition has plenty of space for nearly three dozen mannequinned costumes, mostly period gowns and dresses. Sketches of how they were originally envisioned are at the foot of each.
The variety is equally expansive, from plain to fancy. But mostly fancy, in many modes: demure elegance in shades of brown for Anna in The King and I; brazen beauty with red sequins and cape for the “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” number in Anything Goes; goofy fancy with sheer green organza over fringed red plaid and big pink roses for a gaudy character in Dames at Sea.
Sometimes there is wordless editorial comment. For a production of Damn Yankees at Theatre-by-the-Sea, Howard provided subtle impact for Lola, of “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets” fame: an underlayer with orange fringe suggests flames licking the bottom of her black side-slit dress.
Walking among his costumes, Howard is as energetic as most of his designs. The smallest things about them can matter, he notes, saying that a skirt that’s too long or even buttons that aren’t right can throw actors off their character. Pointing out one example, he stops in front of an ornate 17th-century French court costume that Fred Sullivan sported in La Bete at Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre this spring. Only a sash remains of the baby blue costume that he wore at the first dress rehearsal. Walking around in it, Sullivan was displeased. In his typical droll fashion, he said that he felt like a living bassinet.
“Fred said, ’It just doesn’t fit with the character,’ ” Howard adds. “That was Monday night, and on Tuesday photos were being taken and I had to have something good. So I just went back to the shop and started building.”
Howard doesn’t sound annoyed at the recollection, saying that criticism is the nature of the collaborative game that is theater.
“You keep your ego in check and try in some degree to be accommodating without upsetting the flow of what you’ve tried to achieve through the whole production,” he says.
That flow can be impeded in various ways. For example, if actors want to use an item from their own closets, he tells them no. “One of my main philosophies is that [the costume] needs to be the character,” he says. “So when they start pulling stuff from their wardrobe, the actor psychologically will bring things with it.”
