NEW YORK-BASED COSTUME DESIGNER SAMUEL (SAMMY) MANZIER discusses his process of designing across cultures and histories with fellow dumpling order member Christina Angharad Fitzgerald.
WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS FOR DESIGNING COSTUMES FOR THIS PRODUCTION OF M. BUTTERFLY? HOW DID YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SEPARATION YOU HAVE FROM THE TOPIC ?
I can’t give a direct answer to what my process is like. It’s kind of a shambles a little bit, which is why l’m in school. But like yeah, I think every production is kind of different the way that I would go about it. This one sort of was research a lot of research then kind of doing costume plot because it was so the looks changed so much and time periods changed so much to just help you figure it out. With this show, what I did was I divided up the looks into three categories. What looks were part of the fantasy for song? What were the looks that were part of the fantasy for Renee? And then what is the reality? What looks go into that category that are the reasons why these characters want to escape? So I started by doing that, and then a lot of it was again, just talking with people and reading and information and, you know, putting everything up on a wall and sort of seeing what and kind of going from there.
HOW DID YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SEPARATION YOU HAVE FROM THE TOPIC?
So when it came to like the historical and cultural aspects of the show, it really was just reading up, watching I watched a couple of movies around the time of the Cultural Revolution. Death to My Concubine is one. I read books. Cultural revolution I read, you know, about how the gay and queer rights and all that type of thing around the time, and then yeah, it really is just getting as much information as I can. But the nice thing about going to the school is that I have so many different students and classmates that are from China, Japan and all these other places in the East. And so it really I would, I would just go up to them and get thoughts from them because they knew as much as they have that perspective, that as much as l, l as a white person don’t have and, you know. It helps a lot doing that, just getting the perspective of someone who is from that culture. It helps you as a designer, especially as someone who is doing a show about. Characters that are not trom my own culture.
“WHY DO YOU CHOOSE TO NOT LOOK AT OTHER ARTISTS INTERPRETATIONS OF M. BUTTERFLY COSTUME DESIGNS ?“
Okay. So when I go into a show, I typically don’t like to look at a prediction that’s been done before. I think every there’s always, you know, it’s everyone’s interpretation. So it’s l feel like any way you tell the story could be different. And I also just didn’t think I don’t it’s not about when you’re constantly it’s not about copying what’s been done.
It’s about how you, as the artist, want to tell the story. So I don’t typically like to look at a piece that has been done unless I’m like, truly, like, I can’t figure out where I’m going with this. And yeah, so I think that’s kind of where I went with it. I want to just I didn’t want to focus so much on Madame Butterfly. And because there’s so many other things going on with the show.
