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    Don’t Say ‘Macbeth’ and Other Strange Rituals of the Theater World

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    Pulling back the curtain on the peculiar customs and enduring superstitions that help define life backstage.You may not have realized it, but there’s little chance you’ve heard anyone whistle inside a theater. In the old days, sailors often worked the ropes backstage, bringing to show business codes like command whistles. So a whistle meant as a compliment, or to get a person’s attention, might have landed a piece of scenery on someone’s head.Theater is full of these customs — many arising, like most rituals, from hazy origins. Still, show people hold on to them. In an industry that hopes to conjure the same wonder every night (with wildly different results), there’s comfort in tradition, especially if it reaches back decades or even centuries. Some, as the 56-year-old Broadway wardrobe supervisor and costume designer Patrick Bevilacqua says, are “rituals of consistency” — the private fist bumps or helpful Listerine sprays during a backstage quick change, which must be “choreographed within an inch of its life” to keep the show running smoothly. Others are spiritual; according to the actress Lea Salonga, 53, “any practice where everyone can see each other as human” is necessarily grounding.Some are individual: The actor Hugh Jackman, 56, last seen as the lead in “The Music Man” on Broadway in 2023, buys scratch-off lottery tickets for each production member every Friday; occasionally, someone wins a few hundred dollars. Some are secretive, like stealing costumes after a show closes, while others are blared through the house, as when stage managers announce on loudspeakers before a performance, “It’s Saturday night on Broadway,” a reminder that the wearying workweek is almost over.The curio cabinet that the actress Patti LuPone keeps at her Connecticut home filled with gifts from her shows over the years, including an “Evita” (1979) doll, an egg made by an “Anything Goes” (1987) crew member on top of a music box and a Mrs. Lovett bobblehead from when she appeared in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (2005).Daniel TernaLength dictates quantity: Longer-running productions are more likely to develop more idiosyncratic traditions. This means that in New York, Broadway is more ritualistic than Off, and musicals outmatch straight plays for the same reason. The 64-year-old actress Amra-Faye Wright, for example, has for about a decade been painting murals each season backstage for “Chicago,” the second-longest-running musical in Broadway history, which opened in 1975 and has been up since its 1996 revival. All agree that London is more laid-back, despite having some quirks, such as everyone in the cast and crew banging on the windows facing the National Theatre’s interior courtyard on opening night; or the Baddeley cake, an intricately decorated and frosted dessert that varies from show to show but has been served with punch at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, every Jan. 6 since 1795. It’s named after Robert Baddeley, an actor who played minor roles there and who in his will bequeathed funds for the annual festivity.As the 43-year-old British director Michael Longhurst says, most are “a mix of the practical and superstitious.” Actors tell one another to break a leg — maybe because “good luck” is gauche; maybe because they’re an understudy wishing a principal would just bow out; maybe because a theater’s “legs” are the thin drapes that frame the stage, which you’d cross if receiving an ovation; or maybe just because they know it’s a phrase they ought to keep alive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Happy Clothes’ Review: Patricia Field Doc Is Pleasantly Chaotic

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      “Happy Clothes” covers her work on “Emily in Paris” and “Sex and the City,” as well as her time as a tastemaker in the 1970s and ’80s underground.Patricia Field likes, as she puts it, “happy clothes.” If you’ve seen her work, you get it; if you’ve watched TV, you have probably seen her work. The fashion maven is one of the most celebrated and influential costume designers of the past three decades, with “Emily in Paris,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City” among her credits. Michael Selditch’s new documentary, “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field” (in theaters and on demand), follows Field as she works on the second season of the Starz comedy “Run the World,” but the feature is really a celebration of her long career.A movie like this can head in a lot of directions, and a possible weakness of “Happy Clothes” is that it tries to go in all of them. There are conversations with Field’s friends and collaborators, including the “Devil Wears Prada” director David Frankel, the “Sex and the City and “Emily in Paris” creator Darren Star, and the actresses Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Lily Collins. Field’s work in the past as the owner of a well-known boutique that bears her name comes to life through archival footage and interviews, while observational images show her working with assistants, shopping for pieces and going to sets.There’s just a lot here. But with a subject like Field, the mild chaos feels pleasantly appropriate. Her taste runs toward the conspicuous and bold, and several interviewees — particularly Parker, who became a fashion icon partly because of her willingness to wear anything Field selected — note that her choices can be shocking at first. Prints and patterns, gems and silhouettes, neons and bold accessories: You never really know what you’ll get when you work with Field.But that’s why people love her. Her style, as she says, is happy. “I like clothes that don’t die,” she explains, a statement that reveals she’s always thinking about longevity. Field is amazingly energetic — her 80th birthday approaches as the film begins — and she’s interested only in the future, telling someone at one point that she doesn’t keep an archive because she’s always looking forward.It’s probably ironic, then, that the most illuminating element of “Happy Clothes” is a sequence in which her taste now is linked to her history as a central figure in New York’s underground culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Former employees and customers attest to what it meant to have a place — her store — where they could be unapologetically queer or trans or just interested in fashion, where they didn’t have to hide their identities. Field was ahead of her time in more ways than one, and this history suggests that she has been practicing an exuberant joy her whole career. That, “Happy Clothes” says, is her real legacy. More

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      Anthea Sylbert, Costume Designer Who Became a Producer, Dies at 84

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      Her career unfolded in three phases: as the creator of costumes for movies like “Chinatown,” as a studio executive and as a producer, largely with her friend Goldie Hawn.Anthea Sylbert, the Oscar-nominated costume designer of the films “Chinatown” and “Julia,” who left Hollywood fitting rooms to be a studio executive and, later, Goldie Hawn’s producing partner, died on June 18 at her home on the Greek island of Skiathos. She was 84.Robert Romanus, her stepson, said the cause was complications of emphysema.Ms. Sylbert began designing costumes for films in 1967. Over the next decade, she collaborated with A-list directors like Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Elaine May and conceived what Jack Nicholson wore when he starred in “Chinatown,” “The Fortune” and “Carnal Knowledge.”“Jack Nicholson actually gave me the best compliment I ever got as a costume designer,” she said in “My Life in 3 Acts,” a forthcoming documentary about Ms. Sylbert directed by Sakis Lalas. “He said, ‘When “The Ant” does your clothes, you don’t have to act as much.’” (“The Ant” was short for Anthea, she explained.)Ms. Sylbert envisioned Jake Gittes, the natty, determined private detective played by Mr. Nicholson in “Chinatown” (1974), as a dandy.“I thought he would be interested in fashion,” she told Sam Wasson for his book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood” (2020). “The one who would be noticing what the stars were wearing when he went to the races.”Deborah Nadoolman Landis, chair of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled a vivid scene in “Chinatown” in which Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, sit together in a red restaurant banquette.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Broad Appeal of the Elsa Dress from “Frozen”

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      Wearing a costume from “Frozen” in daily life has become a pastime for many children who identify with the character, regardless of gender.Dressing up as Elsa, the blond queen with magical powers from Disney’s animated film “Frozen,” wasn’t necessarily Jeff Hemmig’s idea of a good time.​​“It was well outside of my comfort zone,” Mr. Hemmig, 43, said.But he knew it would make his son, Jace, happy. So Mr. Hemmig, who lives in Killingly, Conn., squeezed his shoulders into a dress his mom made for him, which matched an Elsa costume she had made for her grandson. Mr. Hemmig then performed a rendition of “Let It Go,” choreography and all, as Jace watched.“He loved it,” Mr. Hemmig said. “He was filled with joy.”Mr. Hemmig wasn’t thrilled about wearing the dress: He said it was tight in the armpits and it made him feel vulnerable. But he loved how it delighted his son, then 3. “Seeing Dad do it, too, felt like a big moment,” Mr. Hemmig said.Like the Hemmigs, countless parents have gone to great lengths to satisfy their Elsa-obsessed children since “Frozen” was released in 2013 and became the cornerstone for one of Disney’s most successful franchises. And Mr. Hemmig is far from the only father to dress as Elsa with his son.Such instances have happened enough that the actor Jonathan Groff, the voice of the character Kristoff in “Frozen” and “Frozen 2,” thanked the films’ directors at a 2022 event for “creating space for young boys to dress up as Anna and Elsa,” the franchise’s sister protagonists.Jacqueline Ayala had been a preschool teacher for five years when “Frozen” came out, and it quickly infiltrated her classroom. For a time, Ms. Ayala recalled, there was only one Elsa dress in its dress-up chest. “That’s why the kids started wearing their own costumes to school,” she said. “So they wouldn’t have to share it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Dr. Alex Arroyo Spends His Sundays (in Costume)

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      Dr. Alex Arroyo, a director of pediatric medicine in Brooklyn, gets to live out his “Star Wars” dreams, practice jujitsu and make a big mess while cooking for his family.“Hey, buddy, how are you doing?” a man wearing a Boba Fett costume said as he leaned over the bed of a young boy in a hospital gown.It was a Sunday afternoon in the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where Dr. Alex Arroyo, the hospital’s director of pediatric emergency medicine, often dons one of more than 20 costumes when he visits patients. His favorite is Boba Fett, the famed bounty hunter from the “Star Wars” films.“I love what I do, but it’s sure hot in there!” said Dr. Arroyo, 48, who has worked at the hospital since 2006. He started wearing costumes in 2021.A die-hard “Star Wars” fan who grew up watching the original trilogy with his parents, Dr. Arroyo has passed that love on to his two youngest children, Grayson, 8, and Karra, 6. For New York Comic Con each year, the whole family dresses up, including his wife, Dr. Sharon Yellin, 44, a fellow pediatric emergency medicine physician who works at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. One year they went as the family from “Encanto.”“I was the big, strong sister with the donkey,” Dr. Arroyo said, referring to the character Luisa.Dr. Arroyo, who also has a 21-year-old son, Colin, from a previous marriage, was born in the Borough Park neighborhood of South Brooklyn — at Maimonides, in fact. Now he lives less than a mile from the house where he grew up, in a four-bedroom, three-story 1920s brownstone. He uses one of the spare bedrooms as his office and rents out the third floor.“It’s a frightening place to be inside of because I’m also an active-duty comic collector,” he said of his office. “It’s filled wall to wall with toys. It’s my sanctuary away from the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How ‘Back to Black’ Recreated Amy Winehouse’s Look

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      In the biopic “Back to Black,” Marisa Abela wears some of the singer’s actual clothes, but the hair and makeup team chose to tone the signature beehive down.Few looks are as distinctive as Amy Winehouse’s was. The singer’s sweeping eyeliner, tottering heels and disheveled beehive are still instantly recognizable, 13 years after her death.In the new biopic “Back to Black,” Marisa Abela plays the star from the beginning of her music career until her final days. She wears mini skirts with girlish ruffles and small kitten heels to begin with, before adopting her distinctive pinup aesthetic as she dives deeper into the music industry and her self-destructive habits.Peta Dunstall, left, the makeup and hair designer for “Back to Black,” working on Abela’s hair on set. Dean Rogers/Focus FeaturesThe film takes its title from Winehouse’s second album, and “when we get to ‘Back to Black’ Amy, it’s more sexy,” the film’s costume designer, PC Williams, said. “There was a big change in the way she presented.”To recreate this, the production team studied many real-life images of Winehouse. But there were also some intentional changes: They were making “a piece of cinema as opposed to creating a documentary,” Williams said. Here is a closer look at the process.Towering HairAbela as Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black.”Dean Rogers/Focus FeaturesThe real Amy Winehouse performing at the Riverside Studios in London 2008.Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for NARASWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Carrie Robbins, Costume Designer for Dozens of Broadway Shows, Dies at 81

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      She made a classic wig and poodle skirt for “Grease” (using a bath mat and a toilet cover) and turned actors into Spanish inquisitors, British highwaymen and more.Carrie Robbins, a meticulous and resourceful costume designer who worked on more than 30 Broadway shows from the 1960s to the 2000s, died on April 12 in Manhattan. She was 81.Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Daniel Neiden, a friend, who said her health had declined after she fell and broke her hip in December.In 1972, when she was just 29 years old, Ms. Robbins began “emerging as one of the hottest costume designers in show business,” as the syndicated fashion columnist Patricia Shelton put it, thanks to her work that year on the original Broadway production of “Grease,” six years before it was turned into a hit movie.Ms. Robbins was given a budget of only $4,000 (the equivalent of about $30,000 today). For the character Frenchy, she dyed a wig bright red using a Magic Marker and fashioned a pink poodle skirt out of her own bath mat and furry toilet seat cover.To prepare for designing the costumes for “Grease,” Ms. Robbins studied high school yearbooks from the 1950s.Betty Lee Hunt AssociatesThe poodle skirt practically became a mandatory feature of “Grease” shows. And when, years later, Ms. Robbins visited a production of “Grease” backstage, she saw a man taking a red Magic Marker to a wig. Baffled, she told him that the wardrobe department surely could afford a high-end custom hairpiece. He replied that only a Magic Marker would be authentic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer for ‘Oppenheimer’ Shares Her Favorite Looks

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      The costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, who is nominated for her first Oscar for “Oppenheimer,” is responsible for outfitting some of the most iconic films of the ’80s and ’90s.Everett CollectionEverett CollectionUnlike many designers, much of the work of the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick is contemporary. Her filmography is evidence of the impact she has had on the look and feel of some of the most iconic films of the 1980s and ’90s: Paul Verhoeven’s “Basic Instinct” (1992) and “Showgirls” (1995), Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and “Unfaithful” (2002), and Andrew Davis’s “A Perfect Murder” (1998). These films helped define the distinctly elegant yet dangerous aesthetic of the erotic thrillers that once dominated the box office.After more than 40 years in the industry, Ms. Mirojnick has received her first Oscar nomination for her austere, sharply tailored looks in “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic about the physicist who led the effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. While she has decades of expertise creating an eclectic variety of costumes, ranging in mood from the understated to over-the-top, her work does not span the many costume dramas that are typically favored during awards season. Instead, her most recognized characters often feel fashionable in a way that is more modern and real.In a recent video call, Ms. Mirojnick reflected on eight of her favorite looks from her career.Everett Collection‘Fatal Attraction’ (1987)“Fatal Attraction” marked the first of many collaborations between Ms. Mirojnick and the actor Michael Douglas. “What was fascinating about that particular moment in time was that Adrian Lyne, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer were all kind of at the same level,” she recalled. “It was a great way to begin a working relationship, because everybody had equal stakes in front of them.”The designer and Mr. Douglas originally had differing ideas of how his character should dress. Her interpretation was “much more classic, fashionable and monochromatic,” she said. After rounds of fittings and discussions about “honing his wardrobe to a place that felt very New York and very cool and attractive in a way that was different from how we saw a lawyer in New York in prior films,” she said, “we finally got in a groove that was simpatico, and we were able to create a character that had all of those aspects and felt very real.”Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mean Girls’ Costume Designer Talks Cast Wardrobe and Addresses Critics

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      Some people have roasted the outfits in the new film, but there were reasons the Plastics got a Gen Z spin. (Among them: social media, fast fashion and the pandemic.)When fans first glimpsed outfits in the new adaptation of “Mean Girls,” they were not shy with feedback on the film’s pink miniskirts and mesh bustiers.On social media, some said the costumes looked cheap, as if they had come from fast-fashion retailers. Others said they did not lean heavily enough on the Y2K style of the original “Mean Girls,” released in 2004. And one online commentator said the costumes seemed like an A.I. image generator’s clumsy response to the prompt: “What do trendy teenagers wear today?”The wardrobes for the film, which was released on Jan. 12, were not created by artificial intelligence but by Tom Broecker, the costume designer for “Saturday Night Live,” where he has worked for nearly 30 years. Mr. Broecker, 61, had no involvement in the original “Mean Girls.” He joined the crew of the adaptation after working with Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels — who were involved in both films — on costumes for “S.N.L.” and for “30 Rock.”Mr. Broecker said the criticism of his work had made him “super, super, super anxious” for the new film’s release. His goal was to reference — but not redo — the wardrobes from the original movie, which were created by the costume designer Mary Jane Fort, by imagining how its high-school-age characters might dress as members of Gen Z.He cited the “sexy Santa” costumes for a holiday talent show scene in both films as an example. In the adaptation, those outfits were influenced by Ariana Grande’s music video for the song “thank u, next,” he said, so he made them a little more sparkly than the plasticky red skirts in the original.More than 600 looks were created for the adaptation by Mr. Broecker and his six-person design team. In the edited interview below, he explains how they came up with the wardrobe — which, he said, should not be judged by trailers and teasers alone.“You’re only getting the bread crumbs,” he said, “when you really want to have the whole 10-course meal.”What did you think of the costuming in the original film?When I saw it then, I thought, This is fun, this is high school in 2004. Watching it now, I go, Oh my God, those poor girls were so sexualized. But that’s 2024 eyes looking at 2004. I know they didn’t feel that way at all, but you look at it now and realize that the world has changed.Where did you look to find inspiration for how Gen Z is dressing?We were very influenced by Instagram and TikTok, and by celebrities like Billie Eilish, Jenna Ortega and Sydney Sweeney. I have a niece who graduated from high school in Indiana last year. I looked through her closet and her Instagram. And I live near N.Y.U., so packs of students walk by my apartment all the time in light-wash, straight-leg jeans, white Nike sneakers and crop tops.What did those references reveal about how people dress now?The early aughts are very influential in the visual landscape of clothing right now. Sometimes I would show Tina certain things and she’d say, Oh my God, I think I wore that before.Other things have changed. Gender fluidity is a big thing for kids. And everyone wants to be comfortable, especially after the pandemic. So I dressed the high schoolers in the movie in athleisure, like North Face, Patagonia and Champion hoodies.Fast fashion has changed how young people shop. How much of that did you include?Probably more than we should have. Two brands we used were Cider and Princess Polly. I stayed away from Shein, but I did find a piece or two secondhand.I kept saying that we have to get into the mind of a high-school student, and that’s how they shop. The directors got rid of a mall scene that was in the original because kids don’t go to the mall anymore.After visuals from the new film were released showing Regina, center, in Isabel Marant trousers and a Bardot mesh corset top, some fans moaned that the film’s costumes looked like A.I.’s idea of how trendy teens dress.JoJo Whilden/Paramount PicturesHow did you differentiate costumes for the Plastics — the three popular girls — from those for the students they reign over?Everyone in the high school has big bags and sneakers, except for the Plastics, who have little purses and heels. They are different than the people who are weighed down by their books and grounded to the floor with their shoes.Did you spend more of your budget on clothes for the Plastics?Basically the Plastics got all the money. For Regina George (Reneé Rapp), we did Isabel Marant, streetwear like Off-White and a lot of vintage stuff. Tom-Ford-era 1990s Gucci was the inspiration for her homecoming dress.Regina’s black homecoming dress with a front leg slit was inspired by clothes Tom Ford designed for Gucci in the 1990s, a decade that has influenced Gen Z style.Jojo Whilden/Paramount PicturesWhy do you think people have reacted so strongly to the costumes in the adaptation?I didn’t realize the nostalgia for the original. It’s hard to have something stand on its own when something exists that people love. But this is not that, and 2024 is not 2004. We have changed how we feel about a lot of things. As the tagline says, this isn’t your mom’s “Mean Girls.” More