Angels in America: A play by Tony Kushner

ANGELS IN AMERICA A PLAY BY TONY KUSHNER

BY MARCO COUSINS

COSTUME DESIGN MODERN DAY

For my costume designs, I chose to do a modern day rendition of Joe and Harper Pitt and Roy Cohn. The reason why I chose Harper was because her persona reminds me of your average middle class stay at home mother. Though he has mental instability, the stereotype of stay at home mothers is that they just drink wine and take pills and wear track suits around their houses and that’s the direction I decided to take Harper’s outfit. For Joe, I decided to take a more modern day approach to the gay Mormon. While Joe is a Mormon struggling with is identity, I would still imagine that he would be interested in fashion and looking good therefore I decided to still keep it modest with the suit but he is wearing layers and a black tie thus nodding at the fashionable nature of the stereotypical gay man. For Roy Cohn, I had to keep it professional and since he is a man with power in the public domain, I feel like his suit would be very nice and well fitting the fashionable quality key because he is a powerful public figure and can afford quality suits.

Inspiriation for the outfits:

ROY COHN

HARPER PITT

JOE PITT

SET DESIGN DREAM REALM

For my set design, I decided to do a reinterpretation of the dream world in which Harper first encounters Prior’s character in the midst of a passionate monologue about how he feels betrayed by life. I was mostly inspired by the portion in the play when Prior enters the dream world through a long and mysterious corridor lined with arms holding candles and a doorway inspired by early Greco-Roman architecture. The scene was very interesting and I believed that it would make for an extra amazing scene on the stage. So I collected a few elements via royalty free websites and threw together this composition. The orange light is the contribution from my chosen set designer, Ian MacNeil. He tends to incorporate very harsh orange light that mimics the color of fire and is a visual representation of passion.

He also tends to take advantage of the mysterious nature of fog as another element that he uses in his design and stage production.

Here is some more inspiration that lead me to this final composition.

DREAM WORLD: SET DESIGN

Marco Cousins 06/17/2016 Ian MacNeil HU3342: Section A; Harrison Ian MacNeil: Set Designer Ian MacNeil is an English set designer born in 1960 and is responsible for noteworthy stage productions such as An Inspector Calls, Billy Elliot: The Musical, Via Dolorosa, Festen, and Betrayal. Of his multiple productions, MacNeil has won the 1994 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design on An Inspector Calls and the 2009 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for Billy Elliot: The Musical. MacNeil’s interest in visuals and set design started at an early age and was expressed through his love of toy theatre sets and puppet shows that he would preform as a youth. He has designed for a multitude of different platforms including opera, musical, film, and dance.

His scenes mimic that of a nightmarish vision come to life through the use of his colossal scale and the distortion of proportions and perspectives. With every design that MacNeil completes, the world of theatre raises the bar for him in terms of expectations on his next production and time and again MacNeil meets and exceeds those expectations. Though all his success wasn’t an overnight affair. MacNeil graduated from the Croydon School of Art, studied under famous Chinese American set designer, Ming Cho Lee in New York, and took up a variety of set jobs throughout England prior to his settling in London where he was able to make his debut at the West End Theatre on the play Death and the Maiden. He has a very extensive list of venues that he has designed for after his big break in London which include the National Theatre, the Young Vic, and the Barbican Theatre just to name a few.

With the struggles that people in the LGBTQIA community continue to face, MacNeil claims he was able to tell that he was openly gay by the age of five and was courageous enough to come out to his family at the age of 20 years old. This flung him and his father into the spot light of idealized family relations because MacNeil’s father, Robert, was very supportive of his son and even ended up speaking at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in regards to there relationship. Eventually, MacNeil’s career path put him on a course that intersected with the likes of Stephen Daldry, a renowned director and producer. Through this relationship, Daldry and MacNeil ended up collaborating on some plays together, one of which included An Inspector Calls.

MacNeil draws his influences from a variety of places such as film noir and horror movies but has been quoted with taking inspiration specifically from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The dramatic clouds and black and white imagery helped to influence MacNeil in his production, An Inspector Calls. He tends to implement very dramatic yellow/orange lighting throughout this production and the symbolism behind the color of lighting that he is drawn to is to symbolize a world burning. The light mimics a strong and overbearing fire and this element is also a subtle nod to the sense of passion that is often associated with the artistic elements present in fire. MacNeil was able to approach his set design for this play from an artist’s standpoint in the sense that he created scenery that mimicked expressionism in the form of a surrounding. The production’s characters were also shown in garish proportions and exaggerated perspectives in order to communicate the theme of the play.

For my Ian MacNeil inspired wardrobe design, I decided to keep it very simple.

After doing some research about the types of costumes MacNeil chooses to use per production, it appears that he typically likes to keep the wardrobe consistent with the period but with more current modifications. If the play is a period piece surrounding the great depression and dust bowl he would mirror the dress by producing shirts and suspenders from the 1930’s but maybe cut the outfit in a way that wasn’t being done until the 2000’s it’s very interesting. Therefore, I decided to keep it as authentic as possible to his styling by updating the dress to late 90’s to modern day fashion. For Haper Pitt, I chose to go with a simple tracksuit. The dress is something comfortable and something that would be worn all day and maybe even slept in. Due to Harper’s mental instability, she doesn’t get to or choose to leave the house. Her dress is very relaxed but the tracksuit also plays into the suburban, middle-class, stay at home mom trope. In cinema and shows, stay at home moms are typically produced in this kind of dress, drinking wine and popping pills just like Harper so I felt like it was a very accurate wardrobe choice. For Roy Cohn, I chose to keep the traditional suit but decided to bring it into the modern era of suits. It has to be clean, tailored, and custom made because Cohn is a powerful man in the public eye and his outfit needs to reflect that. Usually the custom tailored suit is a status symbol that reflects an amount of money that is associated with the ability to have the money for something to be custom made for your body only. This suit is also very masculine and therefore an effective cover for Cohn, who is gay but in the public eye has to appear as a debonair, lady-killer. For the last wardrobe piece of Joe Pitt, Harper’s husband, I was researching Mormon dress codes and they are bound to modesty. This outfit effectively communicates modesty because it is not too well fit but still modern in

cut and length. The layers are another Mormon dress code to keep the body as hidden as possible. Joe is still keeping with the code but with a slight modern twist. The modern twist is also a fashion choice by Joe and is a slight way for him to express his sexuality without being blunt about it. Staying fashionable is important to him but he doesn’t really understand why.

I feel like through solid research and conceptualizing I was able to bring MacNeil’s iconic influence to the set and wardrobe of Angels in America.

Presented by Marco Cousins Theatre Studies HU3342: Section A; Harrison