onstagepittsburgh.com: At age 23, costume designer, wardrobe supervisor and entrepreneur Dylan A. Blussick’s resume reads like an accomplished retiree’s.
The well-traveled Washington County native boasts extensive National Tour experience that will soon include the Tony Award-winning The Outsiders. But just now, he is proving the Ozian adage that there’s no place like home.
6 comments:
Other than giving me impostor syndrome that I did NOT need today, this article showed where the interest in owning a rental set of costumes comes from. My good friend from undergrad who was the technical director at the White Plains Performing Arts Center, was in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago to pick up the Catch Me if You Can costumes that were mentioned in this very article. When he was telling me about it, I guess I was picturing some old man who had somehow acquired these costumes and barely knew he had them…I’m not sure why. Over lunch we talked about why people would just have costumes to rent out, but from what I read in this article it comes from passion and appreciation of the art and craft.
I also appreciated how much of this passion was put into the design for The Wizard of Oz. He mentioned that one of the goals for the costumes was to capture the technicolor that you see in the films, this was not only successful, but shows how much the story – and the design my extension means to him.
He definitely has a resume, and at 23 is actually insane. Not only does this article explore his qualifications, but it also explores the love and passion that people, specifically this costume designer, have for theatre. The idea that he is designing the Wizard of Oz for the theatre he grew up in and doing it because of his history with the place is just so sentimental. I say this because with his resume and recognition, most people, I think, would probably decline this job for something more commercial or that will get him a name on his resume, especially at his age. But no, he decides to design the costumes for this show and this place he grew up in. The article quoted his story, and this just makes me think about why we do theatre in the first place, and it is for the love of it. I just really liked how this article explored credits and how people still do it for the love of it.
I love when designers have the ability to explore the more unique and personal aspects of the show they're working on. And to add things that the audience might not pick up on but are very interesting or to add somewhat bigger changes that the audience is sure to pick up on that tell this somewhat different story. I have to say I love that the lion is not overdone. I think it's really cool that they just picked a really specific jacket that worked and also cast someone with the hair necessary for the job. I appreciate that they include all the personal aspects of this project and the theater that exist for this designer. I think that those influences that happened in your childhood really can elevate design work because kids' creativity is just so specific and including aspects of that in a design that you've loved for a long time is really special.
Something that I love so much about a classic show like the Wizard of Oz is that, It is more likely to be more personal to the designers and the company because of how many productions have been done of the Wizard of Oz and I feel that it pushes the director and the design team to think outside of the box and try something new and reach for something that the audience has never seen and create their version and a whole new version of the Wizard of Oz so I really liked looking at these costumes And seeing their interpretation and their own personal touch to these classic costumes that we've seen hundreds and hundreds of times. And the beauty of seeing a show hundreds and hundreds of times is that each character has its own cliché, so you can do anything with a blue-and-white picnic table dress and people will know and understand that it's Dorothy
Oh, no big deal, just feeling a little bit bad about myself and what I've achieved at my big age. This guy is 23 and has a resume this stacked? Insane. But that’s beside the point. A show like The Wizard of Oz has been done hundreds of times the same exact way with the same costumes and the same set, and it is refreshing to see someone really care about the artistry and the craft of the shows that they are doing. It just shows that the team has an interesting idea of the show, and the designers really love what they do. Because anyone can rent a set of costumes and do lion makeup and paint someone's face silver. But the real beauty is doing something different and avant-garde, which shows the love of the game! It also shows the attention paid to a script, and the level of detail which probably is the reason why this guy has such a stacked resume.
What really stands out to me in this article is how much of Blussick’s work is driven by memory and personal attachment rather than just professional ambition. It’s not just that he has an impressive resume, it’s that so many of these projects seem tied back to very specific emotional points in his life, especially Little Lake and The Wizard of Oz. That full circle moment from a kid performing shows in his driveway to now designing the costumes feels genuinely rare, and it makes the work feel more grounded. I also like how much attention he pays to detail that most audiences probably won’t notice, like references to the original illustrations or subtle color decisions from the 1939 film. It shows a kind of layered design thinking where there are multiple audiences at once, some seeing the surface and others catching deeper references. At the same time, it’s interesting how collaborative and fluid his process seems, especially how he pulls from friends and past networks. It makes the whole thing feel less like a solo “genius designer” story and more like a community shaped practice.
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