Saturday, April 26, 2014
Arianne Phillips Talks Dressing Hedwig and Her Angry Inch
style file | Style.com: Broadway is no stranger to men in drag (think Kinky Boots, Cabaret, and, soon, Casa Valentina). But it has certainly never seen anything quite like the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The transgressive, transformative, transgender title character first stomped onto the underground scene in the late 1990s, the surly brainchild of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. Creating not only the singing, dancing, wisecracking East German ingenue, Mitchell played her in off-Broadway productions and in the cult-hit film of 2001. It was on the big screen that, along with her angry inch (so named, as she comically hisses in one song, for the proverbial chop she hastily underwent in an effort to flee East Berlin), the stubby star was born.
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4 comments:
I knew nothing about the costume designer Arianne Phillips prior to reading this article, but she is a lovely costume designer. Her working is incredible and she gets to work with some of the best people. Designing for drag adds another obvious challenge of trying to make women's clothes look good and be comfortable for the actor. Getting to design for the Madonna would be amazing. I've always been fascinated with costume design for big concerts like that where primarily female pop stars have giant over the top costumes and the budgets are huge. Going to keep up to date with Arianne Phillips in the future so I can see what she has been up to.
I really want to see this show!!! It's should be amazing! I really liked seeing how involved Neil Patrick Harris was in costuming! I know that a lot of designers don't like when others get involved, but I think it's really important for the actors to have an interest in what they will be wearing on stage. Costumes really help create the character and each actor is going to bring something different to the table even if they are playing the same role. The designer should get the characters essence and use the actors special quality to design something solely for that one character. (I don't know if that makes any sense) I always felt that if I worked in a show and an actor changed, I would change the costume slightly (not a lot though...) only because, even if the actor plays the part as someone else, that character changes ever so slightly. I like the idea of never having a costume repeat because just like the people on the street, no character/actor is the same.
Anyway, I love how she described the jumpsuit that is supposed to blend in with the Berlin Wall, that's brilliant.
I was sort of surprised when I first heard that Hedwig was coming to Broadway. I saw it a couple of years ago at a very tiny theatre space in Providence and its hard for me to imagine it on a Broadway stage. The theatre was set up more like a club or bar space and because the performance is sort of like a rock band it seemed very appropriate. After reading this article, I think there would be a lot of interesting things to see in this production.
It was so sweet to read about Neil Patrick Harris' enthusiasm for costumes and eagerness to collaborate Arianne. Costuming someone with so much enthusiasm seems like an amazing experience.
This show seems like it's going to be really cool, and I can't wait to see it this summer. Neil Patrick Harris seems like such a great actor to work with it, and I feel like that costume designer really enjoyed working with him. The ideas that the costume designer has seem really interesting, and I really like the stuff that she's doing that's Berlin Wall inspired. I also think that it's really interesting that the same person who designed the movie is now designing the Broadway production.
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