Hi, I'm Sean McCourt, and I'm Lindsay
Northen, welcome to another costume
edition of "Behind the Emerald Curtain."
There are over 400 custom-made costumes in
'Wicked,' and it takes an expert team to
maintain them in the midst of eight
performances a week. Join us, as we meet
the folks in the wardrobe room, and they
take us through a day in the life of a
costumer. Alice Gilbert is an amazing
wardrobe supervisor. I've worked with
her before, I had to have her on 'Wicked'
because I thought "She's the only person
who can understand the complexities of
a monkey costume, and a mask, all the way
to the most delicate, beaded piece of
Chiffon." I think, in many ways, Susan
was happy because I had done a lot of
shows over a long period of time, and so
there were things that I could have input
about and choices that you might want to
make to make it easier to maintain the
show over a long period of time. What the
fabric is, what the texture is going to be
Alice takes every single piece of fabric
that I choose, and in something like
'Wicked,' is over 2000 pieces of fabric,
she takes her nail and she digs into it
to make sure that it is going to survive.
For her, survival is the key. I call it
'The Alice Test'— These clothes do eight
performances a week, they live through
sweat, water, fire, performance after
performance, and they have to stay as
beautiful from the very first day to the
last day that they have on stage. It's an
unbelievably difficult life for this costume.
For wardrobe to do the show there are 12
dressers, plus myself and the assistant,
and we have 4-8 people doing daywork,
depending on the day of the week. They are
there before, during, and after every
performance doing a kind of triage,
whether or not it's a tear, or a dropped
bead, or a loose connection, the whole
team of people are prepared at any moment
to jump in, to fix something.
Who the costume would see through the day,
if it were a single costume: There'll be
four or five people dealing in the world
of any individual costume, over a day's
period. In the morning, early would come
the dayworkers, if there had been
something that had happened to it the
night before, we have some dayworkers who
would like, burrow into the costume, as
some of these things are like 16 layers.
When it's time to appear in the show,
the dresser would put it onto the actor,
the actor will wear it, and the dresser
would pull it off the actor, and it will
go back on the rack and the dresser will
bring it back downstairs. Everything will
be looked at everyday, and of course
everything will be worn everyday, so it's
the constant wearing of the clothes, plus
even the handling of the clothes, so like
they go on and off the hangers, they go
up and down the racks, the racks go on
the elevator, racks go back and forth,
you have constant opportunities for
abrasion. The craft of doing wardrobe is
indeed dealing with something that has
originally been made totally by hand.
10-12 people have their hands on a dress,
there's no mass-production here, it is
something that can only be done in a one
on one basis; you and the costume,
right there.
I know, that Alice Gilbert will always be
there for every second of every show, so
I know they're always going to look good.