Dressing the stars

Tiverton's Emily Taradash, costume designer for Ocean State Theater

By Tom Killin Dalglish
Posted 5/25/17

TIVERTON — Emily Taradash was raised on a horse farm on Neck Road in Tiverton, her life now consists of a full immersion in theater.

She designs costumes for performers in Warwick's Ocean State Theater (Ocean State or OST) productions — shows like "Victor Victoria," a musical that has just finished its run, and the upcoming [and now cancelled, see update] "Shrek" (July), and "Clue" (August), and "Titanic" (September).

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Dressing the stars

Tiverton's Emily Taradash, costume designer for Ocean State Theater

Posted

Update: Hours after the print version of the Sakonnet Times story below went to press, the Ocean State Theater announced suddenly — late Tuesday night, May 23, after a board meeting — that it was closing immediately, canceling its summer programming (e.g. of "Shrek" and "Clue"), and suspending its fall performance season, all due to financial pressures.

TIVERTON — Emily Taradash was raised on a horse farm on Neck Road in Tiverton, her life now consists of a full immersion in theater.
She designs costumes for performers in Warwick's Ocean State Theater (Ocean State or OST) productions — shows like "Victor Victoria," a musical that has just finished its run, and the upcoming [and now cancelled, see update] "Shrek" (July), and "Clue" (August), and "Titanic" (September).
In her spare time she does some costume designing for the New Bedford Festival Theater ("My Fair Lady"), and participates as a player in assorted performance-artist collaborations and theater pieces in Newport (e.g. at First Beach, in a sea pageant) and Providence (e.g. an improvisation at the RISD museum).

Behind the scenes at Ocean State
But it's at Ocean State where her energies are most on display, and where she supervises a staff of four. They have just completed the costuming for the local run of "Victor Victoria," which finished — to rave reviews — on Sunday, May 21.
What's involved in being a costume designer for a regional theater, she was asked.
"My process is to read the script," she said, "listen to the music (if it is a musical, which Victor/Victoria was), do period and mood research to create an electronic image board, and then meet and discuss moments in the script with the entire design team: director, choreographer, set designer, lighting designer, props department and stage manager. I generally have separate conversations about visions with the director and sometime the choreographer."
It's more complex than it might seem. "Over the years you learn to ask questions," she said.
"For example, does this actor quick change in or out of this garment in this scene? Are they changing on or off stage? It may be written in the script one way, but the director may want to handle it differently in this telling of the show. All of these choices that the director makes have an affect on the way we need to create the costume: do we need to build something because it needs to be quick-changeable? Or do we want to find something pre-built to reconstruct to our needs? Often times, building from nothing is just easier in this situation."
"As a costume designer I like being part of the process. I like to see how everything works," she said. "Sometimes the opportunity for creativity is more than the circumstances allow. There are always a lot of last minute decisions."
For example, she says, as a play goes into production, "the actors can show up on a Monday, and it turns out they are not the size or shape they said they were, so there are last minute decisions. If you've spent money and bought things, then you have to return those things."
"So you have to wait until the very last minute," she said, "and then pull the trigger. Dress, jacket, large feet, bad knees, bunions, all that. There's a whole lot of information you don't get until the whole person is available for review. You're talking about people's bodies, or how to wear the costume. Those are my parameters. There are a lot of body image problems in the theater. It keeps my work interesting.
My job is 90 percent making choices, and very quickly. There's a lot of pressure."

Life in the costume shop
As OST costume shop supervisor, Ms. Taradash has a staff of four (OST has a total staff of 60).
One of those four is a "first hand" — the first person to touch a garment — who prepares it for the two stitchers who sew it together.
Then there's the wardrobe supervisor — “She takes over when everything is done, and makes the garment available for the theatrical run," says Ms. Taradash.
Last Christmas, the show "White Christmas" had over 150 costumes, Ms. Taradash said.
"It's a lot to do in a short period of time. You have to be able to fix things on the spot. For someone who works in theater, you have to have a sense of urgency, and work in the moment."
"At Ocean State we do nine shows a year, and generally work Mondays through Fridays from 9 to 5. But it's all subject to the show. Towards the end, as the show approaches, we put in 14-hour days, Tuesday through Thursday, before weekend performances."

Costuming "Victor Victoria"
"For Victor/Victoria, the show is set in the gay night life subculture of Paris in the 1930's," she said. "The looks are dictated by what is written on the page: we are mostly in nightclubs, and at this time, most people wore evening gowns and tuxedos to the types of places we are frequenting."
"I researched images from the period both in books that I have collected over the years and also on the internet — it's great to check museum websites for specifics, but a quick google search with a few differently worded queries will get your research pointed in the right direction. I usually collect over 150 images from various sources per show, but there is no limit or requirement."
"I like to look at primary or secondary research as often as possible," she said. "For example, actual clothing advertisements from the period, patterns, stills from films, people's personal photographs from the time and location. The 1930's in the US in the winter during the day looked a great deal different than 1930's Paris in the Summer in the evening."
"Design problems can surface from almost anywhere," she said. "For example, an actor needs to pull glasses out of an interior coat pocket in the bedroom scene. We then need to put a pocket in a robe, and ask the actor which is their dominant hand. We will then put the pocket on the opposite side so that they can reach across the body and create a dynamic (and streamlined for ease) moment." 
"As for the job of the wardrobe department? It's job is to keep the clothing looking as if the show just opened every night," she said

Early experience
Ms. Tarash, 32, went to school in Tiverton until the 6th grade, then went to the Wheeler School in Providence, from which she graduated in 2002. "I had some amazing opportunities at Wheeler," she said.
She was a theater major (theatrical costume design) at the University of Vermont, graduating in 2006, then "was a gypsy in the theater for five or six years," living or working in Brooklyn and Cape Cod, she said.
I had "started dancing when I was three years old," she said, "and later studied clowning and physical theater."
She went to graduate school from 2011 to 2014 at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she earned an MFA in costume design.
"I was part of a generation that was out hustling from the time they got out of college. I started on Cape Cod, and in New York, it's a big hustle. The burn-out rate is extremely high. You have to pace yourself, to detach, and calm yourself."

The challenge of costume design

"The biggest challenge," she said, is "balancing the deadlines with the art. You can't get ahead of yourself and finish the show. You can't get to deadline, and have the show look like crap. It's a lot of perpetual skill-building. That's what I like about it."
To be a costume designer, "you need three things — these are required skills," she said. "There has to be a willingness to learn. You have to have a sense of humor, and a willingness to work long hours."
What do you like most about your work, she was asked. "I like the camaraderie of my shop, and being with other people who have the patience and the skills to figure out what's going to work. It's about how you achieve the visualization of something."
"One thing I like is being able to build relationships. It's nice to have the confidence of knowing what I want and being able to work with people. You develop a language with other people you work with a lot."

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