Playbill: One of the hidden easter eggs in the Katrina Lenk-led production of Company is on Bobby Conte’s forearm. PJ, the equivalent of the original character Marta in the gender-changed revival, has an XXXV tattoo. (In the musical, Bobbie is celebrating her XXXV birthday.) Look closely at Hades in Hadestown, too, especially in the second act. He has bricks etched onto his left arm. Characters with tattoos are becoming increasingly common on Broadway; this season, both Clyde's and Company employed tattoo designers to generate the ink art displayed on actors.
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Tattoos culture is an expansive subculture in literally every world culture. A dragon tattoo that is cool in America is a symbol of gang violence in Japan. The importance of lived and researched experience for designers is immeasureable, so I think it is so cool that shows are starting to hire designated tattoo designers for their pieces. I am a strong believer in supporting and hiring as many specialists and artists as possible to harbor diversity and knowledge within the field. This is doubly true for theatre because it is so often (in my experience) that producers find a certain number of people who are jacks of all trades instead of finding as many artists and specialists as a show actually should/could have in order to minimize costs. Not only does this hurt the industry, it also leaves artists to do a million things at once and, sometimes, create incorrect portrayals that could end up hurtful. It is just so important to hire artists who know what they’re doing.
I've been around a lot of people in my life who have gotten a lot of tattoos in their time on this earth, and I gotta say that there are years and years of history and stories within that ink, for every person. My dad is pretty well inked, and my sister is getting there too, and each piece they've gotten has had a pretty good story to it. Sometimes it's meaningful, sometimes the story simply comes from actually getting the tattoo, or the circumstances around when they got it. What I think a lot of people don't realize is that most tattoo artists see themselves as just that - artists. I've seen a lot of incredible pieces in my time, and there's a certain beauty in using your own skin as a canvas for beautiful, and often meaningful, illustrations and symbols.
I think it's a sign of the times that many older shows are being modernized with tattoo design. It's a fantastic idea, and incredibly expressive, and shows the growing acceptance of society today that tattoos are an expression of the self, and not some kind of rebellious, punk thing.
Custom ink tattoos for Broadway shows? Now that’s an idea. An idea I truly love and can get behind. For one, as the article points out, characters with tattoos are becoming increasingly common on Broadway. I must admit, I hadn’t really given it much thought. It’s crazy to think Bobby (in Company) and Hades (in Hadestown) both productions on Broadway at the moment feature this next new trick. As Kyle Krueger (a special effects makeup artist and the assistant tattoo designer for Clyde’s) points out, tattoos truly tell a person’s history. Personally, I have one tattoo on my ankle. Shockingly, I got it done when I was 14 years old (with parental permission of course). While small, it connects me to my aunt– with whom I got it done. When designing a tattoo for a character I’m sure the same thought process applies. I wonder if there is a collaboration between the individual actor developing the character and the designer.
As someone who pays very close attention to every detail on stage when watching a production, I have noticed more and more that characters have unique tattoos. This is an interesting concept because it demonstrates that this character had a life and existed before the audience was invited into the world of the play to watch a specific segment of that character’s life. I have also noticed this in tv shows and films as well and find it to really add personality and history to a character since tattoos in real life often signify a deeper meaning. Thinking in terms of the theatre industry, I was always curious about how these tattoos are placed every performance since it is important to remain consistent and according to this article, it involves a mix of hand painting and airbrush stencils. Something I wonder about is how in tv shows and films, since we are seeing these characters over an extended period of time, how precise they try to keep the tattoo when applying it. In other words, do they measure the exact location on someone’s face for example to make sure it is the same spot every time?
I absolutely love tattoos, I think they are a beautiful thing and one of my favorite art forms. I'll never forget when I got my first tattoo from a friend of mine named Hazel on her couch. The tattoo was of a wave design I drew based off of “The Great Wave off Kanagwa” painting by Hokusai. Since then, I’ve got five other tattoos all over my body, some small and others quite large. Each and everyone has lots of symbolism and meaning for me and I made sure the designs were what I wanted. I contently have been asked by not just my parents but plenty of other people too if they think I will regret any of them. In short, I don’t think I ever will regret a tattoo I choose to get, because it will only reflect a past part of me. Recently I’ve been getting tattoos abroad, as a way of remembering the trip and time whether getting birds tattooed on my chest in Belgrade Serbia, or a serpent on my leg in Berlin, I love getting these memories almost permanently affixed to me. I can't speak for others but I do know that many tattoos carry deep meaning, and adding them to a character in film and theater can truly add so much depth and beauty to them.
I was very interested in this conceptually, but it's not something that I ever realized was possible. Tattoos are so much more permanent than costumes, and the dynamics of a person's wardrobes changing against the backdrop of a tattoo remaining constant is very powerful. From where I’ve seen costumes are often pieces meant to represent the totality of a character because sometimes they don’t really have more than one, but tattoos and other piece around a character that might be more permanent can show this contrast between who they are and what matters to them the most, the stories that make them up and what they wear and present as in day to day life or for different events. That dynamic, not only in the world of costumes, is something that I should put more thought into when I am designing, especially if I do Scenic. What pieces here are the longest, why are they the most important because enot every detail might be equal in significance.
I think that tattoo design for characters is a really cool idea, and I'm surprised it wasn't more of an established practice earlier. On the performance side of things, I know that performers themselves are sometimes encouraged to get tattoos only where they could be hidden by a costume. It's interesting to see the inverse here, where tattoos are being hand selected to be seen. This also brings up an interesting question: what happens if an actor has a tattoo, then plays a character with a different tattoo? Would they go to the trouble of covering it up and then putting a fake tattoo on top? Given the argument made in this article for the power of a characters' backstory being put on through tattoos, I think the most likely answer would be yes. In which case, I feel like, unfortunately, the trend of actors having to be tattoo-less or else get tattoos in coverable places will most likely continue even as this tattoo implementation for characters evolves.
Tattoos are so beautiful and are such an incredible tool for someone to express themselves. This makes tattoos something that can be used to help tell a story in a similar way that costumes can, “when you see a tattoo, you start to ask more questions about a person.” It is interesting that Sotomayor argues that a big step taken to update certain plays is by giving characters tattoos. I had never thought of using something like a tattoo to modernize a production but it makes sense, tattoos have a certain attitude about them. Just like everything we do in theatre, tattoos are a form of expression that leaves room for character development within a show. I think it would be cool to see tattoos utilized more within the theatrical world. It is important to hunt for the things that make us human when building a show and tattoos are that. We have to hold on to what makes us human to help connect us to our art.
Tattoos are such a dynamic and interesting artform to me. I’ve seen my friends get tattoos that are really important to them, as part of an art project or representative of something or someone important to them. I love seeing that they are being used in theater; the character history that goes into choosing and designing those tattoos is immense, I can imagine. I’m glad they have tattoo designers come in to do that. To me, I feel like this use of tattoos on stage also could break the stigma that can surround tattoos. I think the use of tattoo design on stage will be something I look for more in the future, I’d love to see this in practice and see how that affects the costume design. I know we’ve seen this on TV for a long time, so I think this use of tattoos in live theater feels new, but I’m really excited to see it happening.
I love that tattoos are making their way into Broadway’s makeup designs. I don’t think I ever really noticed any tattoos on the characters on stage, and if I did I probably assumed they were the actor’s real tattoos. Most recently, I saw Hadestown and saw Hades’ tattoo, and yet it never occurred to me that it was a stencil. Now realizing and thinking about it, it definitely adds to his character. Hades doesn’t roll up his sleeve to show the bricks circling his arm until the second act of the show, when the audience finally understands how he built the wall around the underworld. It absolutely helps further the character and connects to younger audiences.
There has been a stigma about actors having tattoos and incorporating them into the character’s design is pushing back against that stigma. I remember in as early as middle school, kids talking about not being able to get tattoos when they were older because they wanted to be actors.
Now this is a fascinating development. Tattoos are a brilliant way of drawing an audience into believing a character as tattoos are so permanent, so real. I think of the ways this development could impact costuming. How do I design around a tattoo artist? Can I design the tattoos? How are they made? How often do they need to be applied? How does something like this affect my budget? I suppose tattoos and special effect makeup have always been a part of theater, thinking of Les Mis and The Phantom of the Opera, but temporary tattoo technology has developed a lot in the last few years, looking much more real and lasting longer. I'm going to keep the idea of tattoos in mind in the future, and I hope to work them into my designs down the road. I think of showing fairies in Midsummer night’s dream with tattooed wings. Or perhaps freakish tattoos for the three witches of Macbeth.
This was such an interesting article and something I would not have thought of as very important until this article presented the many amazing tattoos in Broadway shows. I think often tattoos are seen in a bad light and as things that are highly unprofessional and it’s good to see attitudes about them changing. Tattoos are really just a way to express yourself so it's a great idea to give a character a tattoo that is also very meaningful to them. I had seen some of the examples that that article mentioned, like Hades brick tattoo, which I think is incredibly cool. I also think that it is very important that they are employing real tattoo artist to create custom tattoos. An interesting fact about the Great Comet ( since we are putting it on), in the original production, many ensemble members had Russian prison inspired tattoos that were custom done for each of them.
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