Designer's Notebook: Why We Have A Body at Strawberry Theatre Workshop

Mahria Zook as Renee and Alyssa Keene as Lili.
Photo by John Ulman.

Last night I opened my sixth show of 2017: Why We Have a Body by Claire Chafee at Strawberry Theatre Workshop here in Seattle. I was brought onto this project about seven weeks ago in a hurried conversation with director Rhonda J Soikowski who reached out to me on the recommendation of one of her colleagues. Rhonda pitched the show -- a four-hander that explores the role of gender, sexuality, mental illness, and family and was a sensation in the 1990s. Immediately images of pleated pants and shoulder pads flashed through my head.

Just a month before this call, I had made a decision to be more picky about the shows that I take on. My more stringent criteria was not about pay or working conditions but about the mission of the organization and/or the voices that would be amplified by the project. Coming off of one big musical with over 80% white or white-passing actors in the cast into a three-hander with an all-white cast and creative team, and then going into production managing and designing for Sound Theatre Company's Hoodoo Love by Katori Hall, there was a light bulb that went off in my head. I could only give my energy and life-blood (which is what we freelancer do give) to companies and shows that put their money where their mouth was and elevated under-represented and vulnerable voices in order to disrupt the white supremacy we are all now too familiar with in Trump's America. (Yes, duh.)

Rhonda's call and request for me to squeeze Chafee's non-linear, monologue-filled examination of women writing their own definition and future in a patriarchal world was my first test of my conviction. I had planned August to be a month of recuperation and preparation for the last of my 2017 shows. And yet, this was not a case of not being able to say no, which I definitely am afflicted by. This show was calling to me.

Back in my Feminist Theatre class in grad school at UNC Greensboro, I wrote a paper called "Becoming a Feminist Designer: Troubling the Traditions of Design." In the paper, I dissected traditional theatre design techniques and pedagogy using a third-wave feminist framework. It was the beginning of putting into words something I had long felt in my bones: my identity is imprinted on my designs and adds (positive and/or negative) value to them. And, by that logic, so does the identity of any designer. Thus, who is designing a production is as important as who is directing it, who is acting in it, and what it is about.

But I was only scratching the surface, struggling to apply inadequate language and theory to something much, much bigger than this.

Enter intersectionality.

Coined by civil rights activist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989 essay, intersectionality is the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect. Now, in 2017, intersectionality is being used to expand our understanding of identity, white supremacy, and white privilege.

I have a more indepth write up about what I'm beginning to coin intersectional design practices (instead of feminist design theory), but the gist of it is that, as a designer, you have to interrogate your own position of power and privilege, interrogate the expected audience's, and then, and only then, do you start to break out the design decisions that build the world or clothe the characters. (Again, more later.)

So, back to Why We Have a Body for which I acted as the costume designer.

In Chafee's stage directions, she explicitly calls out various costume needs like Mary's orange coveralls and Eleanor's bib-waders, but it is in her stage directions for Renee, the married paleontologist caught in a love affair with female private investigator Lili, that demands an understanding of gender performance of the 1990s -- because that's when the play was written (and our production was set) -- and that of 2017. While in Mexico, trying to patch things up with her perpetually off-stage husband, Chafee's stage directions read, "She gives a tiny wave. Picks up his wallet, and she picks up his watch and puts it on. She feels its weight on her wrist...feels what it's like to wear a man's watch. She stares out." In that little ellipses, Chafee is telegraphing the subtext of Renee's navigation of her identity just a few scenes after we've heard her say to Lili, "Maybe I'm a man. Is that a possibility? I feel like a man..."

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

I'm not going to do a thorough job unpacking this -- this blog post is not intended to be an academic paper -- but can you see the power of identity, gender performance, and power all wrapped up in the act of a woman wearing a man's watch? Layer onto that the very real trajectory of gender expression in the 1990s LGBTQ+ community, what was fueling Chafee's script, and this costume/prop piece is explicitly emblematic of what each stitch of clothing means in conveying character to drive the narrative as well as bring the audience along on that journey.

This stage direction is an explicit demand of Chafee that particular attention had to be paid to the costumes of these characters. As a cis-gender, heterosexual female, I knew I needed to rely on the authorities in the room to guide me. I had to unpack my privilege and experience to know that while I might think something looks right or is the right price, I am not the authority on that.

On the night of preview, I gave the actress a new watch -- we had been using a personal piece that I didn't want to risk during the show -- and while it fit as a 1990s men's gold watch, on stage it read more as a woman's watch. I saw it that way, from the other side of the audience. But, more importantly, Rhonda (the director), who had told me in my initial phone conversation about the personal connection she has with the play as a "lesbian of a certain age", told me it wasn't right. Because--and this is why intersectional design is more than just applying an understanding of the intersections of oppression and power but is in fact about navigating the intersections of the history of that oppression and power as defined by modern, regional, and generational understanding of our world--what a 2017 audience knows as an undoubtedly "heavily coded masculine" watch (which were the exact notes in a rehearsal report for the watch) is an almost comically large metal watch.

While there were so many other in-depth conversations about the costumes as they pertained to the presentation of each character that I could go into, the story about the watch is the epitome of how design must take into account everyone from the playwright to the director to the audience, and also the designer herself.

It was a such a wonderful opportunity to hone my definition and understanding of the intersectional design process with a play that demands it. I'm grateful that I said yes and I hope that, in my more curated 2018 season, these opportunities will multiply. But I am also excited to start formulating and sharing out this philosophy with the world.

--

See Straw Shop's Why We Have a Body by visiting the brown paper ticket page.