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#SupportingCast- WICKED Wardrobe Supervisor, Alyce Gilbert
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Nov 2, 2022
Status quo seeks the spotlight. Status Go shares the stage. As the Official Accounting Services Partner of the Tony Awards, Grant Thornton wants you to join us in recognizing the individuals who work behind the curtain to make others shine bright. Enjoy this series, and then share your #SupportingCast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For every post, Grant Thornton will make a donation to the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League Foundation-empowering the supporting casts of tomorrow. Let's go.
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This edition of Supporting Cast is brought to you by Grant Thornton, the official accounting
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services partner of the Tony Awards. We're shining the spotlight on the supporting cast
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whose unrelenting passion and talent make the momentous performances of the 2018 nominees possible
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I'm in charge of maintaining the look of the costumes over this now what will be 15 years
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in October to maintain the design that Susan Hilferty came up with over all these changes of
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cast and the day-to-day wear that a performance a week does to the close
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For us, it's a lot about abrasion. There are roughly 300 costume pieces in Wicked
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And, you know, that's shoes, and then you have lots of underwear
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We have hats. We have a lot of basic looks. and since the looks for each member of the ensemble has their own unique track
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we only have just the soldiers in the show and the monkeys are the only ones
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who you have the same costume on more than one person. Everyone else has their very own, and all the understudies have their track
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so that when they go on, they don't duplicate somebody who's already on stage
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So she came up with a lot of individual designs, some of which got very complex when she had to get down to the seventh or eighth swing costume, where she'd done an awful lot of things before
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And they're abstract and they're influenced by different periods, but they also, the ensemble is particularly asymmetrical
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So wherever you get into heavy repairs, you're dealing with things that are not the same on both sides
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so the repairs are different. We have at Wicked, there are 14 people who dress the show
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during the performance and every day we have one or two stitchers in for eight hours to do repairs do major repairs
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We have people in each ensemble room. Most days, one person in each room
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One day a week, we have two in the men's room because there are more of them, and they have extra clothes
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Another person who comes in to do shoes. Another person who comes in to do the monkey wings and check the monkey costumes
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because the monkey thing is very sort of craft-specific and everyone is stringing things and repairing things
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Broken zippers, buttons, and they just wear this stuff a lot. So you find abrasion constantly is a thing
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We have a lot of clothes that are long, So when they plie, they sweep the floor and they drag along the floor and suddenly the hem is wearing out and you're having to move the hem or you're having to rebind the hem
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The interiors of the clothes take a fair beating because they change clothes a fair number of times
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They're in and out of coats that can be more different on one side than the other and suddenly have to reline the whole thing
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This becomes a major project. It varies from designer to designer, situation to situation
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In some situations they hire wardrobe very late because I don't know why
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What they think they're saving by not committing to them early, I don't know
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And very often they start and they say, well, never even started without the clothes
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I have always been from the beginning because I moved to Broadway with the original production
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chorus line and we already had the clothes I always been involved earlier and now I will if I doing the show I will be involved probably With Susan I had done the revival of Into the Woods with her
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and we were going to be out of town in San Francisco
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so I was there at the original bid session, where the various costume houses got copies of the sketches
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and were going to submit bids to build the show. And they wound up, nobody wanted to bid on the entire show
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The most fragile costume at this point is probably a costume that is on stage a very short time
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It's the dress, we call it the Molena dress. The Molena is Elphaba's mother
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And that dress for years and years has been made out of a silk burnout
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It was continually shredding that costume. It is one of the most delicate costumes
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They have now finally managed to negotiate with various manufacturers to make a similar fabric not as weak
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and hopefully, and the new, and there have been some adjustments to the construction that have made a little less stress on the costume
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You have to, first of all, be sure, and you definitely want to be doing this before you come to New York looking for the work
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And of course you can do it. The job is the same. You can do it regionally, you can do it in educational theater, you can do it in long-term
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amateur places around. Every show needs to have someone generally more than one someone who does this Sometimes if you want to design sometimes in the regions you have opportunities for design that you would not have necessarily in New York that way But you need to deal
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with the designer, the actor, the management, and the money. Always in doing the job. That
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never changes. The only thing that changes is how much money there is to spend and how
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many people there are to help you. The accomplishment is very daily there
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You can do something and things get better, most of the time
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And there's a chance to, but it's also interesting to, with Wicked particularly, to come out
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the door and see generally very young people who have had a remarkable experience
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They've had that show happen to them. And that show happens to everybody, I think
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who continues to go to the theater. You see the one and you go, oh, that can really be magical
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And you sort of be chasing that experience in many ways. And Wicked is that for a lot of people
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It's kind of wonderful to be associated with that kind of an effect
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I was born this way. Always misunderstood because I'm different
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People assumed because I'm green, I'm wicked. I discovered that by using my brain, my courage, and my heart
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one day even I could defy them all. Thank you
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