Wardrobe

Wardrobe is usually an afterthought in Off-Off Broadway.  A lot of 99 seat plays just tell the actors to bring in clothes of their own.  Actors wearing their own clothes is not necessarily a bad thing (more often than not, they get it right), but as a producer you should be concerned that it's given proper attention.

Clothes are important for two reasons. 

1)      How you dress represents who you are, and how you’re perceived in the world.  Good playwrights write specific characters, and how they dress helps tell the story. 

2)      Clothing has a dramatic impact on an actor’s behavior.  Your body language is different in a fitted suit than it is in shorts and a t-shirt.  If want the actors to do good work, then you need to put them in the right clothes.

Now that I’ve established how important wardrobe is, I’d like to tackle the reason why most shows ignore it – money.  Good clothes are expensive.  Particularly in my play, one of the characters is wealthy, and he loves to flaunt it.  Clothes than emanate wealth and status can’t be faked.  The color palette and fabrics used by high end designers aren’t really found anywhere else.  And I don’t since I don’t have $6,000 to spend on wardrobe, this presented a real problem.  But as always, when you put your mind to it, you'll find a few ways around it:

1)       Get connected in the fashion industry.  I found someone who could get me top end clothing for dirt cheap.  I got a Gucci cashmere sweater for $40.  Probably retails for $800.  I got a Versace black leather jacket for $60.  Easily costs over a grand.

2)      Clothes can be dyed, and sometimes it’ll save you money.  We were looking for a burgundy leather jacket (burgundy is one of the hottest colors right now) for the male lead.  I saw a nice one at Prada, but with a $5,000 price tag I can forget about that.  My friend in the fashion industry got me something really nice by an Italian designer, but it was tobacco colored, and wasn’t much use.  However, there’s a guy on the upper west side who runs a leather shop and can dye leather.  I talked to him (he didn’t speak a word of English) and he agreed to dye it for $60.  Came out looking perfect.  $5,000 down to $120.  I’ll take that.

3)      Goodwill.  I’m serious.  A lot of incredible stuff can be found there if you have the patience to look.

4)      Sometimes you have to bite the bullet.  I paid $600 (ouch) to Versace for a pair of blue pants.  But they were perfect (wait to you see them, these are incredible pants), and I couldn’t find them anywhere else.