It’s the night before the premiere at the PW (“Brown University’s only completely student-run theatre”) and there’s a weightless tension in the air. Four actors who are to play the parts of Alice, Anna, Dan and Larry tumble down from the upstairs practice room to form an intimate huddle. They inhale slowly. Eyes are closed. Anya Eber ‘12.5 takes me upstairs to where the actors were practising just moments ago. Bottles of nervously sipped beer lie on the benches, waiting, still fizzing.
Eber and Scout Willis ‘13 are the costume designers for Closer, a melodrama by the English playwright Patrick Marber. They talk—and sometimes can’t stop talking—about the exhilaration, challenges and beauty of working on the emotionally charged production.
HC Brown: How did you come to work as costume designers?
Anya Eber: Well, Patrick (director Sean Patrick McGowan ’12) hired me for the position in December, and Scout and Karin joined me as “assistants,” but we’ve definitely been working more as a team.
Scout Willis: It really has been a collaborative process, throwing around all these crazy ideas.
AE: It’s amazing, because anyone could spark something new to your stylistic approach at anytime.
SW: Yeah, Karin suddenly brought up this idea of identifying each character with a colour. And we were all like, “Whoaaah f***!” It’s true. Everyone has something different to offer.
Tell me more about Closer.
AE: Neither of us have seen the film, so we were able to focus on the story itself without any preconceived idea. It’s basically about two different couples that have dysfunctional relationships: they switch lovers, go back to their original partners, and it ends with one of the characters dying. Something interesting is that the four of them never leave the stage. It’s like they’re choosing to stay in this dysfunctional foursome.
What is the stage setup like? Did that influence the clothes at all?
AE: It’s like a museum space, very sparse, minimalistic. The actors use cell phones and Mac Books, so it’s quite modern… but there’re also objects that are placed on pedestals, like in museums. You ask yourself, “What objects are important?” “What is their meaning?” Also, the actors are always in the audience’s view. Even when they’re changing!
Can you talk more about the colours you mentioned earlier?
SW: Sure. Each character is identified by a colour. There’s green, blue, a yellowish brown, and a pinkish red. Anna is green, Larry is blue, Dan is yellow, and Alice is red. These colours aid the performance, and every piece of clothing matters in the play. I mean, if you’re going to meet the girl your own husband is having an affair with, what would you wear?
AE: Anna, for instance, is this sleek, mature woman, while Alice is almost her opposite. She’s sexy, quirky, and has this eclectic style.
SW: She’s the kind of girl who picks up a shirt that belongs to her ex-roommate and wears it around. At one point, she runs off the stage in Dan’s boxers! People have that one necklace that they like to wear, their favourite shirt, their favourite accessory. We tried to think about the characters as real people. The clothes make the characters complete, but you have to think about the actors, too. They’re the ones acting, so the last thing we would want for them is to feel uncomfortable in their characters’ clothes.
AE: Speaking of discomfort, there’s this great uneasiness between the relationships in this play. There’s this one sweater dress that is quite revealing. It exposes the collarbone, shoulders and the neck. You can see just how fragile the character is in that scene.
Did you make any of the clothes?
SW: We got almost everything.
AE: Haha, yeah. Scout had to trek to the mall many, many times. Besides actually buying the clothes, we did make some alterations… like the green dress that Alice wears. We had to pull it in a bit so that it fit her body perfectly. She wears it at the Anna’s gallery opening, a very grown-up and mature atmosphere.
SW: And you can tell that she’s not used to styling herself to events like this. She wears this weird little dress with a bomber jacket, and actually, the jacket comes from my closet!
AE: Alice wears a lot of Scout’s clothes!
How has Patrick been as a director?
SW: Patrick is very much involved in every process. He’s able to create this safe space. There’s definitely a collaborative feel with the small cast and crew… it’s not the case with a lot of productions. And I feel that you keep yourself going, being on a team. We even do warm up exercises together. He makes me want to go to all the rehearsals!
AE: Patrick’s aim is basically, “the most essential items will appear.” So we’ve had multiple times when we had to rethink everything all over again.
SW: But then you design, design, design, and you realize, when you’re looking at the finished product, wow, it actually works! It’s been a battle… but everything looks pretty f***ing nice.