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      Machine Dazzle: How Many Ways Can You Say Fabulous?

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      It was movie night at the Museum of Arts & Design in Manhattan, and the costume designer Machine Dazzle was ready for his entrance.The selection was the 1980 roller-disco fantasy “Xanadu,” and he had draped his 6-foot-5 frame in a shiny take on Olivia Newton-John’s purple Grecian goddess look, accessorized with pastel-rainbow pumps, sequined legwarmers and a Venetian-style ONJ mask on a stick.The movie, of course, was a mess — but the kind of wildly colorful, overstuffed, yes-to-everything mess that could have roller-skated right into his own work.“How many different ideas can find their way into a costume?” Dazzle asked the audience, plenty of whom came in their own homemade light-up headdresses, sparkly jackets and legwarmers. “A lot. If you don’t believe me, go upstairs.”“Upstairs” meant the museum’s fourth and fifth floors, where “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle,” on view through Feb. 19, is currently offering perhaps the city’s most glittery, tinselly, witty display of bling this holiday season.The show, Dazzle’s first solo exhibition, brings together more than 80 costumes and other artifacts, from self-worn creations from his beginnings in the 90s downtown experimental drag scene to his outrageously extravagant costumes for Taylor Mac’s epic “24-Decade History of Popular Music,” which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize.Costumes from “Treasure,” Machine Dazzle’s 2019 indie-rock cabaret piece about his relationship with his mother, who died soon after he moved to New York.Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignIt’s a summing up, but also a bit of a pivot for Dazzle, who turns 50 on Dec. 30. Lately, he said, he’s been broadening his possibilities, “slowly moving uptown” — and not just because there’s currently a 30-foot photograph of him in rainbow-spangled drag on the museum’s facade, looking up Central Park West (or as he put it, “shooting lasers” at the nearby Trump International Hotel & Tower).This month, he designed and performed in “Bassline Fabulous,” a fanciful staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations with the Grammy-winning Catalyst Quartet in a Versailles-themed gallery at the Metropolitan Museum (where his character, among many other things, constructed an elaborate topiary garden from ingenious props pulled from under the covers of a giant bed, and at one point did battle with a giant bottle of Elmer’s glue). Next up: costumes for Rameau’s “Io” with the Washington-based Opera Lafayette in the spring.“I love there’s this shift into classical,” Dazzle said. “It makes me want to dive into it more.”Before the commission, he said, he’d never heard the Goldberg Variations, but then he listened to them every day for months. “Music inspires me more than anything visual,” he said. “When I hear music, I see shapes.”Chatting in his studio on the top floor of the museum known as MAD, the evening before the “Bassline Fabulous” dress rehearsal, Dazzle — dressed in paint-splattered jumpsuit and sneakers, his Medusa-like head of dark curls tucked into a knit hat — came off as both knowing exactly what he was doing but also a bit hard-pressed to describe his indeterminate position in the intergalactic space between the art, theater and drag worlds.“It’s taken me years to describe what I am, what I’ve been my whole life,” he said. “I’m an emotionally driven, instinct-based conceptual artist in the role of costume designer” — he paused ever so slightly — “most of the time.”Three looks from “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle”: left, a Jackie Kennedy-inspired costume from Taylor Mac’s “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”; center, a costume from Godfrey Reggio’s film “Once Within a Time”; and right, another costume from Mac’s show.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesIf the exhibition floors are a dazzling parade of exquisitely detailed looks, the studio is unabashed chaos, crammed with bits and pieces of costumes from previous projects. On a dressmaker’s dummy, there was his not quite finished Louis XIV-ish costume for “Bassline Fabulous,” including a bondage-tinged cage of ruched elastic over a lace caftan that had been pulled through the holes.“You get these weird blob shapes, which are kind of oozing,” he said. “You don’t want to lose the body, but there can also be sculpture.”Nearby was a neck corset, a pair of size 15 period shoes awaiting their blue-sky-and-clouds trompe l’oeil paint job, and a pile of cloth flowers in “weird Barbie flesh tones” set to be incorporated into a headdress. And, on the table, his sewing machine: a basic $250 Singer from Michael’s, the arts and crafts emporium.“I use a sewing machine the way I use a hammer,” Dazzle said. “I’m not a fine tailor. What I do with a sewing machine is attach two things together. It’s sort of like civilized glue.”“Civilized glue” — or maybe Krazy Glue? — might be an alternate title for the exhibition, which showcases the way his work bonds not just wildly disparate elements but trash and glamour, metaphor and materiality, emotion and intellect.“I love wearing ideas,” Dazzle said. “You can make something that’s really beautiful but gets boring after five minutes onstage. I like giving the audience some work to do. I want them to ask, ‘Why the hell is he wearing an apple pie on his head?’”Taylor Mac in Machine Dazzle’s 1776-inspired opening costume from “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, 2016.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMachine Dazzle with the Catalyst Quartet at a dress rehearsal for “Bassline Fabulous,” a staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December.Stephanie Berger/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe show was assembled by Elissa Auther, the museum’s chief curator. She’d seen photographs of Dazzle’s costumes for “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” a 24-hour-long queer retelling of American history from 1776 to the present through songs of the time. “I thought I’d be lucky if I could find 10 costumes available,” she said.Instead, she was surprised by the profusion of material that came out of Dazzle’s studio, his apartment and friends’ basements. The title “queer maximalism” was her idea — and one meant to challenge aesthetic hierarchies.“In the art world, these kinds of maximalist styles are viewed as stylistic embarrassment, lacking in rigor or meaning,” Auther said. “But Machine really, really brilliantly demonstrates it as an embodied aesthetic category. These surface effects are really political effects of resilience and survival.”Dazzle, whose name is Matthew Flower, was born in 1972, and spent his early childhood in Houston, where his father worked as an engineer in the energy sector. He was always into crafting, and movies like “Grease” and “Xanadu.” On his 10th birthday, he was enchanted by a trip to “The Nutcracker,” which involved not just elaborate costumes but children like himself onstage.“I thought, ‘This is what I want to do! Look, there it is!’” he said. “But then I got depressed, since I was so far away from that. I didn’t come from a cultured place. I had to find it for myself.”A display of headdresses, costumes, photographs and ephemera, from “Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle” at the Museum of Arts and Design. Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignWhen he was 11, the family moved even farther from Xanadu, to Idaho Falls, Idaho. In 1994, after art school at the University of Colorado, he bought the proverbial one-way ticket to New York City. (In his suitcase was a bag full of milk tops that said “HOMO,” for “homogenized,” collected from a favorite cafe in Boulder, which he later fashioned into a kind of chain-mail breastplate included in the show.)He worked a series of day jobs, including a 15-year stint as a costume jewelry designer. (In his studio, he pointed out one of the first pieces he made in the early 2000s, for a friend: a choker made of a piece of windshield retrieved from a burned-out car on the Brooklyn waterfront.) At night, he was a regular at venues like Exit Art, a performance-oriented gallery, and small downtown queer clubs like the Cock, the Slide and the Pyramid Club.He began making costumes for the Dazzle Dancers, a Solid Gold-style dance troupe formed in 1996 (represented in the show by writhing mannequins in barely-there costumes and a video for their raunchy cover of the theme from “The Love Boat,” which introduces them as “a naked sensation” that had “come to heal a broken nation”). A friend called him a “dancing machine,” and it stuck.Machine Dazzle’s costumes for the Dazzle Dancers, a downtown performance art troupe founded in New York City in 1996. A fellow member called Dazzle (who was born Matthew Flower) a “dancing machine,” and the name stuck.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesHe also began making costumes for downtown performers like Julie Atlas Muz, Justin Vivian Bond and Mac, who in 2004 invited the Dazzle Dancers to participate in “Live Patriot Acts: Patriots Gone Wild!,” a “political vaudeville” that parodied the Republican National Convention.“I had my own rougher aesthetic, and Machine had a similar take on things,” Mac recalled. “It was about making a trash bag beautiful, and not so much about making something that was already beautiful beautiful.”“His costumes are always metaphors for something,” Mac continued. “With everyone else, if you say the costume is a cat, it’s a cat. But he would make a costume of what cats make you feel like.”They are also, Mac ventured, “a storage of pain.” “It’s a flooding of all the emotions and things a little queer kid wasn’t allowed to express, growing up in the time we did,” Mac said.Dazzle made what became nearly 100 costumes for “The Lily’s Revenge,” Mac’s six-hour, 40-performer play staged in 2009 at HERE Arts Center in Manhattan. It’s represented at the museum by a single flower headdress. But MAD’s entire fifth floor is dedicated to Dazzle’s dozens of costumes for “A 24-Decade of Popular Music,” including the companion costumes he made for himself. (For those who missed it, there’s a sizzle reel in the gallery, and an HBO documentary in the works.)Dazzle’s Civil War-era costume for Mac, right, from “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” featuring a hoop skirt made of hot dogs and barbed wire, inventions of the period. At right, Dazzle’s companion costume for himself, “Gay-braham Lincoln.” Jenna Bascom/Museum of Arts and DesignDazzle summed up what he calls his “recipe” for Mac’s show: a silhouette informed by what people wore at the time, but layered with references to inventions, technological and social change, and collective emotions. Take his costume for 1856-1866: a shredded military jacket on top of a skeletal hoop skirt made from barbed wire and strings of … sausage?“It was the Civil War, so there’s loneliness, dead people, sadness, winning, losing,” Dazzle said. “But also barbed wire, which was invented at the time. And hot dogs! I read in a couple places that the American hot dog was invented in this time, by German immigrants.”Representing the 1960s, there’s a Jackie Kennedy pink suit painted with Roy Lichtenstein dots, backed with giant “wings” of Pop-Art hands pointing like guns. For the AIDs era, there’s a robe made of cassette tapes, topped by a many-headed mushroom-cloud-like death mask.It was in 2016, during the performances leading up to the one-time-only, 24-hour marathon show at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, that Dazzle got the courage to quit his day job.“I’m Capricorn, Virgo rising — very responsible, practical, realistic,” he said. “I was really scared, but I decided to take the leap and follow my heart.”Dazzle in his studio at the Museum of Arts & Design. “I love wearing ideas,” he said. “You can make something that’s really beautiful but gets boring after five minutes onstage.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThe show highlights some work with new collaborators, including his costumes for “Once Within a Time,” a 50-minute wordless art film by Godfrey Reggio (“Koyaanisqatsi”), which had its premiere last October at the Santa Fe International Film Festival. (One oversize mannequin wears the mud-cloth shaman number worn by Mike Tyson, who plays a character called the Mentor.)There’s also a moving suite of costumes for “Treasure,” his 2019 indie-rock cabaret piece about his relationship with his mother, who died soon after he moved to New York. (An album version was released in October.)And Dazzle is also working with Mac on a new, large-scale piece, “The Bark of Millions,” a suite of 54 original songs inspired by queer figures throughout history, written by Mac and the composer Matt Ray. At a recent preview concert at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Dazzle — who also sings in the ensemble — wore a jumpsuit and “a large poncho.” But this time, both he and Mac decided to trade their usual extravagant footwear for some maximal minimalism.“Being barefoot onstage is very punk,” Dazzle said. “It’s raw and it’s real and it’s kind of witchy.”Queer Maximalism x Machine DazzleThrough Feb. 19, Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan, (212) 299-7777; madmuseum.org. More

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      The Museum of Broadway Is Open. Here Are 10 Highlights.

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      In Times Square, a 26,000-square-foot space details the history of theater with objects like Patti LuPone’s “Evita” wig, a Jets jacket from “West Side Story” and more.When a Broadway show closes, the next stop for the hundreds of costumes, setpieces and props is often … the dumpster.“The producers often stop paying rent in a storage unit somewhere, which is heartbreaking,” said Julie Boardman, one of the founders of the Museum of Broadway, which opened in Times Square this month.Boardman, 40, a Broadway producer whose shows include “Funny Girl” and “Company,” and Diane Nicoletti, the founder of a marketing agency, are looking to reroute those items to their museum, a dream five years in the making.“We see it as an experiential, interactive museum that tells the story of Broadway through costumes, props and artifacts,” Nicoletti, 40, said of the four-floor, 26,000-square-foot space on West 45th Street, next to the Lyceum Theater.The museum was a self-funded project at the start, Nicoletti said, as they drew from Boardman’s connections to secure meetings with major players in the New York theater industry, including theater owners; the heads of the American Theater Wing, the Broadway League, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS; and executives from the licensing companies. (Boardman and Nicoletti declined to share the for-profit institution’s budget and early investors. Tickets cost $39 to $49, with a portion of each ticket benefiting the nonprofit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.)The museum occupies a building next to the Lyceum Theater on West 45th Street.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOriginally scheduled to open in 2020, the museum was delayed by the pandemic — though that gave Boardman and Nicoletti more time to acquire artifacts, photographs and costumes. A majority of the more than 1,000 objects and photographs on display are loans from individual artists, creators and producers, as well as performing arts organizations like Disney Theatrical Productions and the Public Theater.The space is organized chronologically, starting with Broadway’s beginnings in the mid-18th century and running to productions onstage now. And more than 500 shows are highlighted here in the form of items like a pair of tap shoes from the current revival of “The Music Man” and the arm cast that the actor Sam Primack wore onstage in September during the final Broadway performance of “Dear Evan Hansen.” Several of the rooms were dreamed up by the same set designers who worked on the shows the spaces are devoted to, among them Paul Clay (“Rent”) and Bunny Christie, who designed the recent revival of “Company.”Nicoletti and Boardman said they also wanted to reveal how shows are made, and highlight the roles of costumers, press agents and stage managers. To that end, a first-floor space, by the set designer David Rockwell, takes visitors behind the scenes of the making of a Broadway show.“People don’t realize shows take five, seven, 10 years to put together,” Boardman said.In addition to rotating the items on display in the permanent areas, Boardman said, the museum plans to host two or three special exhibitions each year in a first-floor space that is now devoted to the drawings of the theatrical caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.And as notable Broadway productions end their runs, well, they’ll be ready.“We already have a glove from ‘MJ,’” Boardman said. “And we’re getting a ‘Strange Loop’ usher hat.”Here are 10 highlights from the collection.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway AIDS QuiltThis quilt, meant to mourn those lost to AIDS and show solidarity with those living with it, was one of the first projects initiated by the organizations Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS. Shows running on Broadway in the late 1980s created handcrafted 7-inch-by-7-inch squares, with much of the work handled by the productions’ wardrobe teams. (Look for the square for the 1984 Terrence McNally musical “The Rink,” which is signed by Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, who won a Tony Award for her role the show.)Patti LuPone ‘Evita’ WigYou aren’t likely to see a Museum of Broadway Wigs anytime soon. That’s because wigs are expensive, and they’re often reused, dyed or cut for new productions, said Michael McDonald, a costumes and props curator for the museum. But this one, created for LuPone by the celebrated wigmaker Paul Huntley for the original 1979 Broadway production of “Evita” — and possibly worn on the production’s opening night — was a gift to her. Each of the approximately 100,000 strands was fitted through a minuscule hole, one by one, to create an accurate hairline, resulting in a seamless look. “It’s hard to believe there’s bobby pins, a cap and a full head of her own hair under the wig,” McDonald said as he pointed to a photograph of LuPone wearing it.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York Times‘West Side Story’ JacketThis Jets jacket, worn by the actor Don Grilley, who succeeded Larry Kert, who played Tony in the original 1957 Broadway company of “West Side Story,” hung in a closet for decades. It was given to the museum by Grilley’s widow, Lesley Stewart Grilley. (Don Grilley died in 2017.) “We got lucky,” McDonald said. “There aren’t many costumes still around from the original.”‘Hair’ Military JacketClearly built to last, this red-and-green military jacket was worn by an ensemble member in the original 1968 production of “Hair,” the 2008 Public Theater revival in Central Park, the 2009 Broadway revival and that production’s 2010 transfer to London. But it most likely dates back even further, said McDonald, who received a Tony nomination for designing the costumes for the Broadway revival and loaned the jacket to the museum. “It was likely used in a production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at the Public in the 1960s,” he said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesLittle Red Dress From ‘Annie’The iconic fiery red frock from the 1977 Broadway musical about a little orphan with curly red hair whose pluck and positivity wins the heart of the billionaire Oliver Warbucks (not to mention the audience) is on loan from the Connecticut nonprofit Goodspeed Musicals. (“Annie” originated at Goodspeed Opera House in 1976.) “It’s honestly the most instantly recognizable costume on earth,” said Lisa Zinni, a costumes and props curator for the museum.Meryl Streep’s Broadway Debut CostumeLuke McDonough, the longtime costumes director at the Public Theater, had the foresight to hold on to this one: a floor-length, off-white lacy number worn by a then-little-known actress named Meryl Streep, who made her Broadway debut in the Public’s production of “Trelawny of the ‘Wells’” at Lincoln Center in 1975. (One of her co-stars was another fresh face making his Broadway debut: Mandy Patinkin.)Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Phantom of the Opera’ Chandelier InstallationEach of the 13,917 glistening crystals in this piece, which were fashioned by the German artist Ulli Böhmelmann into hanging strands, is meant to represent one performance the Broadway production of “The Phantom of the Opera” will have played from its opening on Jan. 26, 1988, through its closing night performance. Though the final show was originally set for Feb. 18, 2023, the production announced Tuesday that it had been pushed to April 16 amid strong ticket sales (Böhmelmann plans to add the necessary crystals). ‘Avenue Q’ PuppetsIn the early days of the 2003 Broadway production of the puppet-filled musical comedy “Avenue Q,” the show’s low budget meant the puppeteers had to put their charges through quick changes. The show initially had only three Princeton puppets — but he had eight costumes — meaning the puppets took a beating from changing clothes multiple times eight shows a week. “Eventually, they had a puppet for every costume,” McDonald said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAl Hirschfeld Foundation; Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGershwin Theater Set ModelThis scale model, which is just over five feet wide, was designed by Edward Pierce, the associate scenic designer of the original Broadway production of “Wicked,” and took four people seven weeks to build. It includes more than 300 individual characters — and another 300 seated audience members in the auditorium. (See if you can find the Easter egg: a small model of the set model, with the designers — who look like the actual designers — showing the director a future design for “Wicked.”)Al Hirschfeld Etching of Barbra StreisandThe theater caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, who was most famous for his sketches that ran in The New York Times the Sunday before a show opened, created around 10,000 drawings over his 82-year career. But one of his most popular pieces was his 1968 portrait of Barbra Streisand — captured here in a 1975 etching — which he drew on the Sunday before “Funny Girl” opened in March 1964. It depicts Streisand looking into a mirror showing a 1910 photo of Fanny Brice, whom she played in the Jule Styne musical. “For him, a caption was a toe-curling admission of failure,” said David Leopold, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation creative director who curated the special exhibition. “He wanted the drawing to stand on its own two feet.” More

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      Things To Do in New York: Halloween Events and Activities

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      Haunt the streets at Halloween parades. Dance at a “Zombie Prom.” Or find your way through a corn maze. We’ve got you covered on how to celebrate.During Halloween, it’s OK — even encouraged — to frighten your neighbors and devour mounds of Twizzlers and candy corn without judgment. This tradition was partially halted by the pandemic, as walk-through haunted houses mutated into drive-throughs and theaters shut out viewers, while streaming services welcomed them.As in-person programming bounces back, here’s a guide to pumpkin picking, drag shows, haunted houses and more to enjoy throughout New York City with friends and family. All scare levels are welcome.Frights for the FamilyIn its 49th year, the Village Halloween Parade returns on Halloween Day with hundreds of puppeteers, dancers, artists and musicians marching — or crawling — along Greenwich Village. The parade, which begins at 7 p.m. on Sixth Avenue between Spring Street and 16th Street, encourages thousands of costumed New Yorkers to walk alongside the performers.At the annual Bronx Halloween Parade, beginning Oct. 22 at noon, Halloween enthusiasts can enjoy a similar experience as the New York Police Department marching band, the Philadelphia 76ers drum line and dozens of community organizations haunt the streets for about a half mile, from Southern Boulevard and Westchester Avenue to Dawson Street and Rogers Place, adjacent to Bill Rainey Park. The comedian Radel Ortiz will host the post-parade festivities, and all ages are encouraged to participate in a costume contest for a cash prize.Run as you are, whether in a witch costume or your racing attire, during the NYCRuns Haunted Island 5K and 10K. The race takes place early on Oct. 29, wrapping around Governors Island — twice for 10K runners — and provides age and gender-specific awards. All racers can enjoy a ferry ride, a post-race breakfast and Halloween candy. Governors Island will also host Pumpkin Point, its annual pumpkin patch and fall festival at Nolan Park (Oct. 22-23 and Oct. 29-30), where guests can enjoy pumpkin picking with a suggested donation, arts and crafts, pumpkin painting and trick-or-treating. Pumpkins that don’t find a home will be composted or donated locally to organizations combating hunger.At the Amazing Maize Maze at the Queens County Farm Museum, visitors can join a scavenger hunt through acres of towering cornstalk.Matthew BorowickAt the family-run Decker Farm on Staten Island, visitors can handpick the perfect pumpkin, hop on a tractor-towed hayride exploring the 11 acres of farmland, wander through the children’s hay maze and even chuck a gourd (exactly what it sounds like) on October weekends and Oct. 10. The farm, established in the 19th century and a designated New York City landmark, also welcomes guests for fall-themed family portraits and pumpkin painting.In the Amazing Maize Maze, located at the Queens County Farm Museum, visitors can embark on a scavenger hunt through acres of towering cornstalk on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in October and on Oct. 10. For an added challenge, Maze by Moonlight allows visitors to venture through the path at night on four select dates, using only a flashlight to guide them.If you’re in search of a different leafy plant this season, watch “Little Shop of Horrors” Off Broadway at the Westside Theater/Upstairs, Tuesday through Sunday on select afternoons and evenings. The 40-year-old musical, created by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, follows a bloodthirsty plant, Audrey II, that catapults a geeky flower shop assistant, Seymour, to stardom. The musical, inspired by Roger Corman’s 1960 black comedy, has since grown into one of the most produced shows in high schools nationwide. As the plant’s size multiplies, so does Seymour’s prominence. The story reminds viewers “of the special potency of grisly things that come in small, impeccably wrapped packages,” the former New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote in a 2019 review.The streaming service Disney+ has resurrected the cult classic that follows three kooky sisters who cast spells on the unfortunate youth in the city of Salem, Mass. In Anne Fletcher’s “Hocus Pocus 2,” Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy reprise their witchy roles as they zap into the 21st century, summoned by a charmed candle. The sisters run amok using Roombas instead of flying broomsticks and chug anti-aging creams in a local pharmacy. A treat for the whole family, the film embraces existing fans and attracts new ones.“RuPaul’s Drag Race Night of the Living Drag” in Los Angeles last year. On Oct. 30, the drag queen Yvie Oddly will lead the show at Kings Theater in Brooklyn.Emma Mcintyre/Getty ImagesHorror With a Hint of GlamHouse of Yes, a club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, known for theatrical, sky-high performances and pulsating rhythms, has a full slate of Halloween-themed events such as “Vampire Ball” (Oct. 20) and “Zombie Prom” (Oct. 27), where guests are encouraged to dress as “bloody (bat)dies” and “gory ghouls.” A Halloween edition of the venue’s popular variety show “Dirty Circus” will begin Oct. 26 and conclude with “Absolutely: A Halloween Drag Spectacular” on Halloween night.Kings Theater will also host a night of drag queen royalty with “RuPaul’s Drag Race Night of the Living Drag,” led by Yvie Oddly, the absurdist drag queen and Season 11 winner, and featuring eight other performers in an interpretation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”Particularly PetrifyingThe NYC Ghosts tour visits eight to 12 locations throughout the city, including the Morris-Jumel Mansion, which served as Gen. George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and a Revivalist Greek brownstone called the House of Death, where Mark Twain lived for about a year. Tours range from an hour to 90 minutes and are held nightly throughout the year.For a true bloodcurdling experience, Blood Manor, a 10,000-square-foot haunted house in TriBeCa with clowns, corpse brides and cannibals, would be a good place to start. The renowned Halloween destination, where Kevin Hart and Jimmy Fallon shrieked in terror in 2016, has welcomed the fearful and fearless for more than a decade. This year, the house brings attractions like “Maggot Invasion” and “Hannibal’s Hell” as well as killer clowns and a paranormal battlefield. Attend at your own risk on weekends and select weekdays through Nov. 5.For those willing to venture outside the city, Headless Horseman Haunted Attractions, upstate in Ulster Park, guarantees a horrifying immersive experience along its 65-acre property with escape rooms, haunted houses, a corn maze and a new walk-through trail. More sinister than the special effects are the masked serial killers and squealing clowns in each dimly lit, blood-smeared room. It’s open Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings, with Children’s Days, which tone down the thrills, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the second and fourth Saturday in October. More

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      ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Costume Designer Shirley Kurata Becomes the Story

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      With the success of the film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the work of Shirley Kurata is in demand, but her personal style has always had its own fans.Shirley Kurata wore a pink long-sleeve T-shirt designed by her husband, Charlie Staunton; a vintage pink floral Comme des Garçons skirt; and yellow and purple Melissa x Opening Ceremony sneaker jellies, one of at least two pairs she owns. The large round L.A. Eyeworks glasses are exclusive to her, in a marbled pattern and tobacco color called “bronzino.”Ms. Kurata, who gives her age only as “Gen X’er,” has a signature style, mixing vintage with high-end designers, and is drawn to an intense color wheel — an exuberant look she has cultivated since her brother’s girlfriend gave her hand-me-down Barbies from the 1960s. (“I thought, ‘Wow, these clothes are so much cuter’” than Barbies from the ’80s, she recalled.)She has brought her aesthetic to the Linda Lindas’ new music video “Growing Up,” Rodarte’s recently released look book for its fall 2022 collection, the MiuMiu short film “House Comes With a Bird” and Vans’s capsule collection with the rapper Tierra Whack. But perhaps most notably, this sought-after costume designer’s original eye was showcased in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” this spring’s sleeper hit feature film.“She’s able to take the dumbest-looking things and turn them into high fashion,” said Daniel Kwan, who, along with Daniel Scheinert, directed “Everything,” which is now streaming. “In a lot of ways, she’s a kindred spirit to our process and very much focused on the same endeavor, putting highest and lowest on the same level and showing people maybe they’re two sides of the same coin.”“A lot of the movie is regular people wearing kind of frumpy things that are very specific to an I.R.S. office or a laundromat, and it was exciting that Shirley was just as passionate about that as the far-fetched, wild aspects of it,” Mr. Scheinert said. “Shirley was a slam-dunk for this movie.”For the film, Ms. Kurata spearheaded the costumes for the actors Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis as they traveled between multiple universes — including nearly a dozen wild looks for Ms. Hsu, who played Joy Wang, the daughter of a Chinese American couple running a suburban laundromat, as well as the villain Jobu Tupaki.Ms. Kurata spearheaded the costumes for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in which characters (above, Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre) travel between multiple universes.A24“She’s able to take the dumbest-looking things and turn them into high fashion,” said Daniel Kwan, who, along with Daniel Scheinert, directed the film. Above, Stephanie Hsu as Jobu Tupaki.Allyson Riggs“The interesting parallel is my parents owned a laundromat, too,” said Ms. Kurata, who grew up in the Los Angeles suburb Monterey Park and attended an all-girls Catholic high school in La Cañada Flintridge. “I really related to Joy’s character.”Based in Los Angeles, Ms. Kurata describes herself as a “creative collaborator.” She has dressed Billie Eilish (including for her current world tour), Ms. Whack, Lena Dunham, Jenny Lewis and Pharrell Williams. Among her fans are the directors Autumn de Wilde, Cat Solen and Janicza Bravo. And Ms. Kurata herself emits an aura of celebrity — as a fashion icon, a model, a muse and a co-owner, along with her husband, of the lifestyle store Virgil Normal — even if fame is not how she measures her success.The youngest of four children in a Japanese American family, she said she didn’t fit in at her “predominantly white and preppy” school. At a freshman ice cream social, she recounted, “One of the seniors asked me earnestly, ‘Do you speak English?’”Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.The Villain: The actress Stephanie Hsu, who plays an all-powerful evil being, talks about how clothes convey the full range of her character.A Lovelorn Romantic: A child star in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blanding action and drama.A Healing Experience: For some viewers, the movie was a way to reflect on how the effects of trauma can be passed down between generations.“You’re just as American as these other white students,” she said. “But in terms of the mainstream, there wasn’t much that reflected who you were. It was always a challenge or dilemma to assert your Americanness.”She expressed herself through fashion.“I was really into Japanese magazines,” Ms. Kurata said, adding that she loved the fashion and styling and would try to do her own version on “free-dress days,” when school uniforms weren’t required. “I had a friend that lived in Orange County, and she introduced me to the whole world of thrift shopping.” While studying art at Cal State University Long Beach, she decided to move to Paris to study fashion design.It was during this formative three-year period attending Studio Berçot, known for its avant-garde curriculum, that Ms. Kurata’s interest in film burgeoned. “There was such a big appreciation for filmmakers and there would always be film festivals — Godard, Jacques Tati,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Who is this Cassavetes?’ I had a thirst for seeing cult and indie films and the fashion in them.”“I really consider Shirley to be one of the top five stylists in the world,” said Peter Jensen, chair of fashion at the Savannah College of Art & Design. Mr. Jensen founded (and has since sold) a namesake label that once featured a collection inspired by Ms. Kurata — with color-blocked ’60s silhouettes and models all sporting her glasses and hairstyle. “She comes from a fashion design background. She knows the language. She understands the nuance and small elements and how to put all of it together to become a full story.”“I was really into Japanese magazines,” she said. “I loved the fashion and styling and would try to do my own version.”Jimmy Marble for The New York TimesMuch of her inspiration comes from the world she has built around her, including Virgil Normal, the East Hollywood store she opened with Mr. Staunton in 2015 in a former motorcycle-repair shop that was also the hangout for their moped gang Latebirds. The shop’s patio hosts events such as a pop-up for hand-lettered signs by She Chimp, fund-raisers and gatherings to rally support around local causes.“Having the shop has been really fulfilling and it was kind of a surprise to me because it’s beyond just having a store, it’s having a community,” she said. “Having events here, being part of this neighborhood, we’ve met so many people, artists, designers.”Her home in Los Feliz (by the midcentury architect Stephen Alan Siskind) is an extension of her style, filled with art, vintage furniture, records, magazines, books, CDs and DVDs. Among her enthusiasms are ’80s music (tickets to a freestyle show with the headliners Stevie B and Rob Base are affixed to her refrigerator), shopping in Japan, analog entertainment devices (especially “anything that’s round”) and photography books.“Shirley has knowledge of all different mediums of art that makes her references and eye unique,” the actress Kirsten Dunst, whom Ms. Kurata has worked with on Rodarte collaborations, wrote in an email while shooting Alex Garland’s “Civil War.” Besides being a great dancer and karaoke partner, she continued, “Shirley has an innovative imagination and knows how to make that a reality.”Standing at her Eero Saarinen tulip dining table on a recent Saturday morning (in a bright red turtleneck worn underneath a knit tank dress with vertical black and white stripes), Ms. Kurata brought out a book called “Fruits,” while the soundtrack for the 1971 movie “Melody” played.“I’ll show you my bible,” she said, with the book, a 2001 collection of Tokyo street-style looks photographed by Shoichi Aoki, in hand. “I refer to this all the time because the way they mix, you know? It never looks out of date to me.” Mr. Aoki also published the magazine Street, chronicling fashion in cities such as London and Paris — including, in one issue, a photo of Ms. Kurata while she was studying at Studio Berçot.“Shirley is always hip to new things, so whenever I present an idea to her, she’s able to think quickly and find a resolution,” Ms. Whack wrote in an email. “There are so many looks that Shirley and I pulled off. Recently for my show in New Orleans I sent Shirley a photo of this outfit Michael Jackson wore when he was a kid and, boom, she got it made.”“You know how when you’re dreaming and then a sound from the real world appears right before you wake up?” said Ms. Solen, who directed Ms. Whack’s fantastical videos for “Link” and “Body of Water,” working alongside Ms. Kurata. “It’s almost like you’re seeing into the future for a second. That’s what working with her is like. She understands what you want immediately, and it’s also something that only could have come to you in a dream — slightly newer, different, more surprising. She’s a visual artist and she could do anything, and she wants to do costumes. She blows my mind the way that she costumes Tierra, which is out there, but then she also works with Rodarte.”Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters who founded and are the designers of Rodarte, have worked with Ms. Kurata, along with the stylist Ashley Furnival, since their first New York show, in 2006. Its fall 2022 collection — presented in a look book instead of a runway show — featured a cast of actors, musicians and directors such as Kathleen Hanna, Rachel Brosnahan, Lexi Underwood and the Linda Lindas. Laura Mulleavy talks to Ms. Kurata almost every day on the phone.“Shirley is very much connected to a visual narrative,” Ms. Mulleavy said. “Creating character, an intention to come across in the clothing, extreme or subdued, she understands the theatricality. She understands the history of fashion in a very interesting way.”“The first time we met her it was over Zoom and she had her cat on her lap,” said the drummer for the Linda Lindas, 11-year-old Mila de la Garza. (Ms. Kurata has two black-and-white tuxedo cats, Fanny and Moondog.) “She was already there petting her cat. And she has her glasses. And we were like, ‘Wow, this girl is cool.’”“In film right now, it’s still very much a boys’ club, so throw in being a person of color, that’s another challenge,” Ms. Kurata said. “I’ve definitely felt that. I think it’s still a battle.”Jimmy Marble for The New York Times“For us, it’s important that you’re comfortable and you can move in your clothes and you’re confident in what you’re wearing,” Lucia de la Garza, 15, a guitarist for the group, said over Zoom as her bandmates nodded in agreement.That’s what punk is, according to Bela Salazar, 17, another guitarist: “a way of doing things and thinking, so it translates into fashion.” “It’s a way of expressing yourself,” she added. “And we trusted Shirley.”Ms. Kurata said she wished a band like the Linda Lindas had existed when she was growing up.“We need more voices and new stories,” she said. “Things are changing; it’s long overdue.”Ms. Kurata has taken a momentary pause to field scripts before signing on to her next major project since the surprising box-office success of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”“I don’t want to be working on things for superficial reasons, because I need money or to build my book or whatever — I did that when I was younger,” she said. “I’m seeing how much the movie has affected people. Being part of something like that means a lot to me, where you see Asian representation not in a clichéd or stereotypical way.”Ms. Kurata is also involved in workers’ rights in her own field, as a board member on pay equity for the Costume Designers Guild. “In film right now, it’s still very much a boys’ club, so throw in being a person of color, that’s another challenge. I’ve definitely felt that. I think it’s still a battle.”Though she’s reached a certain level of success, Ms. Kurata says she’s far from done.“For me, it was a long path,” she said. “It wasn’t like I was discovered, I didn’t have the contacts. I worked on the crappiest low-budget movies for years. It was very slow and it took a lot of hard work to get to where I am now. I’m still not even where I could be, but getting there.” More

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      in Theater

      Tony Walton, Award-Winning Stage and Screen Designer, Dies at 87

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      He worked with the directors Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning three Tony Awards and an Oscar for “All That Jazz.”Tony Walton, a production designer who brought a broad visual imagination to the creation of distinct onstage looks for Broadway shows over a half-century, earning him three Tony Awards, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.His daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, whose mother is Julie Andrews, said the cause was complications of a stroke.In more than 50 Broadway productions, Mr. Walton collaborated on designing the sets (and sometimes, the costumes) with directors like Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning Tonys for “Pippin,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Guys and Dolls.”He also worked in film, where he shared the Oscar for the art and set decoration of Mr. Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979); years earlier, Mr. Walton designed the interior sets and the costumes for “Mary Poppins” (1964), starring Ms. Andrews, to whom he was then married.Mr. Walton’s television work included “Death of Salesman” (1985), which starred Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid and John Malkovich, for which he won an Emmy.Before the opening of his final Broadway show, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in 2008, Mr. Walton described his process of conceiving a production’s design.“These days, I try to read the script or listen to the score as if it were a radio show and not allow myself to have a rush of imagery,” he told Playbill. “Then, after meeting with the director — and, if I’m lucky, the writer — and whatever input they may want to give, I try to imagine what I see as if it were slowly being revealed by a pool of light.”Mr. Walton with Julie Andrews and their daughter, Emma, in 1963.Associated PressDonald Albrecht, the curator of an exhibition of Mr. Walton’s theater and film work at the Museum of the Moving Image in 1989, told The New York Times in 1992: “He never puts a Walton style on top of the material. He comes from within the work out.”Mr. Walton worked with Mr. Zaks on many Broadway shows, including “Guys and Dolls,” a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Anything Goes.”“I started directing because I liked working with actors,” Mr. Zaks said in a phone interview. “I had no appreciation for what a set could for a production. Tony pushed me to visualize the different possibilities that might be used to create a set.”For the 1986 revival of John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves,” about a family in Sunnyside, Queens, on the day Pope Paul VI visited New York City in 1965, Mr. Zaks recalled what Mr. Guare wrote in the actor’s edition of the play.“He referred to Manhattan as Oz to the people who lived in Queens,” Mr. Zaks said, “and out of that he came up with a set that always had Manhattan in the distance.”In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich described the impact of Mr. Walton’s set as a “Stuart Davis-like collage in which the Shaughnessys’ vulgar domestic squalor is hemmed in by the urbanscape’s oppressive brand-name signs.”Four years later, Mr. Zaks added: “I said, ‘Tony, we could do ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ with two sofas and a Kandinsky.’ He said, ‘Trust that, believe that,’ and he made me a better director.”The double-sided Kandinsky hung over the two red sofas on the stage in the play by Mr. Guare, about a mysterious young Black con man.Anthony John Walton was born on Oct, 24, 1934, in Walton-on-Thames, England. His father, Lancelot, was an orthopedic surgeon. His mother, Hilda (Drew) Walton was a homemaker.Ann Reinking in the 1979 film “All That Jazz.” Mr. Walton shared the Oscar for art and set decoration on the film.Museum of Modern Art Film Stills ArchiveHe traced his love of theater to a night during World War II when he was 5 or 6. His parents had just seen the musical “Me and My Girl,” he said in the Playbill interview, and “they had paper hats and little hooters — and had obviously had a few bubbles to cheer them along the way — and they woke my sister and me up and taught us ‘The Lambeth Walk.’”His interest in the theater blossomed at Radley College, which is near Oxfordshire, where he acted, directed and put on marionette shows. After serving in the Royal Air Force in Canada, he studied art and design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. While there, he was a part-time actor and stagehand at the Wimbledon Theater.After graduating in 1955, he moved to Manhattan where he got a job sketching caricatures for Playbill. His first significant theater project in the United States was an Off Broadway revival of the Noël Coward musical, “Conversation Piece” in 1957.Four years later, after commuting to London where he designed productions for various shows, he was hired for his first Broadway play, “Once There Was a Russian,” set in 18th-century Crimea; it closed on opening night.His next show, the original production of “A Funny Thing,” ran for more than two years, and used his idea to project various sky images onto a curved screen across the stage.For the next 47 years, he toggled between musicals, comedies and dramas like a 1973 Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” For one of its stars, Lillian Gish, he had designed an eggplant-colored dress that she rejected, telling him that “Russian peasants only wore beautiful pastel colors,” according to Ms. Walton Hamilton. “He said, ‘Of course, Miss Gish,’” she said, then he had it dyed one shade darker with each subsequent cleaning.On the set of “The House of Blue Leaves” at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1986. From left: Christine Baranski, Swoosie Kurtz and John Mahoney.Brigitte LacombeIn the 1990s, he began directing at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in New York, which his daughter helped found. At Bay Street, he was also the production designer of a 2003 revival of “The Boy Friend,” which was Ms. Andrews’s directorial debut.Mr. Walton also illustrated the 12 children’s books about Dumpy the Dump Truck, and “The Great American Mousical,” that were written by Ms. Andrews and Ms. Walton Hamilton.“Tony was my dearest and oldest friend,” Ms. Andrews, who met Mr. Walton when she was 12 and he was 13, said in a statement. “He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes, and his talent was simply monumental.”In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton; his stepdaughter, Bridget LeRoy; five grandchildren; his sisters, Jennifer Gosney and Carol Hall; and his brother, Richard.In 1989, Mr. Zaks recalled being uncertain about the type of hotel for the setting for the farce “Lend Me a Tenor.” Mr. Walton sketched one that had a Victorian style, then another, more compelling one, with an Art Deco design.“The beauty of the Art Deco sketch just blew me away,” he said, “and I knew right away that when things got amok onstage, when people started slamming doors within a beautiful piece of Art Deco architecture, it would be much funnier.” More

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      in Movies

      Meet the Costume Designers of 'Sing 2'

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      The Rodarte designers on creating costumes for the sequel to the animated film “Sing.”What should an animated elephant, anthropomorphized as a shy teenage girl with a crush on an ice-cream vendor, wear onstage while she performs Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” in front of said vendor?This was the kind of question facing Laura and Kate Mulleavy, better known for designing the fashion brand Rodarte, three years ago, when the sisters were brought on as costume designers for the animated movie “Sing 2” by the company Illumination, best known for bringing “Minions” into the world.It wasn’t the sisters’ first time designing costumes for a feature film about performers working thorough their issues onstage. In 2010, they cocreated costumes for Darren Aronofsky’s ballet gothic “Black Swan.” But it was their first time designing for an animated cast of zoo animals, which included a pig (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), porcupine (Scarlett Johansson) and lion (Bono) putting on a space opera in a Las Vegas-type town.The fashion designers and sisters Kate, left and Laura Mulleavy, the creators of Rodarte.Brinson+Banks for The New York TimesThere were more questions, of course — questions that came up for the entirety of production, Kate Mulleavy said: “How do we get the movement right? How do we get the texture right? How do we get this as detailed as possible?”Here, in an interview condensed and edited for clarity, the sisters discuss the complexities of fashion animation, including their inspiration for the film’s standout costume (worn by Meena, that lovestruck teenage elephant): a crystal-encrusted hooded cape in several shades of blue that cloaks a long white gown with a giant train — all ruffles and chiffon and unabashed innocence.A sketch of Meena.Illumination and Universal Pictures, via Universal StudiosMeena’s costume.Illumination and Universal Pictures, via Universal StudiosHow do you even start designing something like that gown for animation?Kate Mulleavy: There’s so much heart and soul in her character, and we wanted to reveal that in her costume change. When she takes off the cape and reveals this beautiful dress, the train kind of floats, and it’s actually so spectacular to watch. Trying to get that thing that chiffon does when you have a magic gust of wind … animating that was just a very long process.Laura Mulleavy: Her cape, if I’m correct, took a year. There were things on it that we really wanted to achieve, like hand-smocking detail. It’s so easy in animation to make something perfect. And what we wanted to bring is the fact that what we do is either handmade or a hand-done technique — something that makes it look special and interesting, not like a cookie-cutter item.Even down to the shape of this smocking and the crystal application and then the dégradé within the cape. It took such a long time because it wasn’t just like, “Oh, let’s make dark blue and teal come together.” We had to recreate an effect that you would get from hand-dyeing.Those details, going back and forth and making sure that the blue was swishing across her in the right part — that took a lot of work.You released a few Rodarte collections in this time period, between 2018 and 2021. Did any aspects of your work on “Sing 2” seep into those collections, or vice versa?Kate: Sometimes this question comes up when you costume-design — if you’re coming, in our case, from your own fashion company. How much should Rodarte show up in the costumes? We definitely have a viewpoint, creatively, and those things can become intertwined in a sense.Rather than having the movie influence what we were doing, it made us rethink things that we’ve done. Sometimes you compartmentalize. You do something and you never think about it again. With fashion, you’re always trying to move forward or take new steps in a different direction, even if it’s within your language; the handwork that we’ve done over the years — aging, beading, hand-dyeing and a lot of techniques that we said at the time we’re never going to do that again.A sketch of the look on the character Ash.Illumination and Universal Pictures, via Universal StudiosA still from “Sing 2” of Ash on stage.Illumination and Universal Pictures, via Universal StudiosThis was, in a sense, a pretty straightforward costume design project. But in fashion there has been a lot of attention lately on the “metaverse,” and brands translating their looks for avatars in video games or animated characters. For you, did working on “Sing 2” feel connected to that phenomenon at all?Laura: I don’t connect them. It’s definitely in the zeitgeist, but this is a feature film that took three years to do. It doesn’t seem like a gimmick, and that’s not what it is. Fashion going into those spaces is a way to make money, and I don’t think that’s bad. I think that’s great, it’s what we do. It’s exciting, and it’s a way to create brand awareness.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      How Jessica Chastain Became Tammy Faye

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      To transform the actress into the title televangelist of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” it took a little faith and a lot of artists.Jessica Chastain spent years pursuing the opportunity to play Tammy Faye Messner, the indefatigable star of Christian broadcasting. Better known to an audience of millions as Tammy Faye Bakker, she and Jim Bakker, her husband at the time, presided over the popular PTL television ministry until they were brought down in the late 1980s by financial and sex scandals.So when Chastain finally got that chance in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” a new biopic co-starring Andrew Garfield as Jim Bakker and directed by Michael Showalter, she was determined to look the part. As Chastain said of the woman behind her character: “She never really did anything halfway. She didn’t have an ounce of being cool or being aloof about her. So I just felt like I couldn’t dip my toe in or be cool and aloof in the performance. I had to jump in the most wild, extreme way. Because that’s how she lived every moment.”Chastain had done her own research for the film, which Searchlight Pictures released on Friday: she sought out magazine articles about Messner, who died in 2007, as well as old photographs and TV appearances. But making that transformation required a team of makeup, hair and wardrobe artists. Some of them had worked with Chastain before and they knew what they would be expected to deliver. “It’s basically what she says she wants,” said the hairstylist Stephanie Ingram, adding, “At that point you’ve just got to make it happen.”Here, Chastain and several of the artists who worked on “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” talk about how they were able to fill the TV personality’s shoes (not to mention her wigs, sequins and acrylics).ProstheticsJustin Raleigh, the film’s prosthetic makeup designer, and his team faced a twofold challenge. First, designing prosthetics (artificial skin appliances made of gel-filled silicone) that struck the right balance between character and performer: “Jessica wanted to be lost within the role and to really embody Tammy without completely obliterating Jessica as well,” Raleigh said. “We had a really careful dance of how much prosthetics we were going to use or not.” Second, creating consistent looks that would build up to Bakker in her most recognizable eras: “Working in reverse, once we established what we had to do for the 1980s and ’90s, the only way to make the rest of it work would be to add prosthetics to her younger look,” Raleigh explained. “We had to keep that level of continuity, anatomically speaking, throughout the entire film.”During the 1960s and ’70s, Chastain wore prosthetics on her cheeks, an appliance on her chin (to cover a dimple) and tape to pull up the tip of her nose. In scenes set in the ’80s, she added a body suit, a full neck prosthetic and an appliance on her upper lip; for the ’90s she added eye bags. Throughout, Raleigh said, “The cheeks were the hallmark element that had to carry all the way through.”Kelly Golden, center, the lead prosthetic applicator, and Justin Raleigh, the prosthetic makeup designer, work on Chastain before filming.Daniel McFadden/Searchlight PicturesTammy Faye Baker got bolder with her makeup as she got older, and so did the screen version.Daniel McFadden/Searchlight PicturesMakeupFor all the cosmetics that Messner wore — and as much as she was ridiculed for it — members of the makeup team said they wanted to avoid mockery. “It was just really making sure that nothing we did compromised the authenticity of who she was and that we never crossed a line into a caricature,” said the makeup artist Linda Dowds, who has worked with the actress on 15 movies, beginning with the 2013 horror film “Mama.”Dowds, who headed the makeup department on “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” said there always had to be a “beauty element” in how the character used makeup: “She absolutely loved makeup and she loved looking the way she did in makeup. She just got bolder with it.”Pink was a prominent color in her youthful palette, but over time, her coloring got darker and she tattooed her eyeliner, eyebrows and lip liner (recreated with marker on Chastain). “We also had a lot more lashes to deal with — we went from one coat of mascara to four or five,” Dowds said. “She would say things in interviews like, ‘Who said you can’t put mascara on false lashes? Where do these rules come from? You don’t have to be dowdy to be Christian.’”CostumesTo build a wardrobe for the onscreen Tammy Faye, the film’s costume designer, Mitchell Travers, had to get into her character, too: “Honestly, I went shopping like Tammy did,” Travers said. “She had an expression where she would say that shopping was her favorite cardio. And she was a woman who loved the hunt.”He scoured swap meets and estate sales, shopped on Etsy and at T.J. Maxx, in search of clothes for a woman who wanted to look powerful even before she could afford to and who later had access to money, then lost it.“I could tell the story of what it was like to be comfortable with money and almost forget that things had prices,” Travers said. “And I could also tell the story of what it was like to have lost it all and the pressure to live up to that persona when you didn’t have the funds.”At her 1980s zenith, the character’s apparel looked new and everything about it was big: the shoulder pads, the clip-on earrings, the polka dots. And for Tammy Faye’s post-PTL life, Travers said, he tried to reuse earlier looks he’d already assembled, “so that you get the sense that it’s a woman holding onto something that used to be there but it’s not coming as easily.”The costumes were intended to reflect Tammy Faye’s growing comfort with money.Fox Searchlight PicturesHairGetting Chastain’s hair to look like Tammy Faye’s memorable tresses required no less than 11 wigs: brunette ones for her youth; big blond ones for her heyday in the ’80s and red ones for her later years — even a removable wig with a built-in headband that Chastain could pull off to reveal the character’s short, spindly locks (in fact, another wig). And don’t assume that Stephanie Ingram, head of the film’s hair department and another veteran of many Chastain projects, simply found these wigs on a store shelf.“It’s funny because people say, ‘You take ’em out of the box, you put ’em on,’” Ingram said. “I’m like, mmm, no, you don’t.” Some wigs were colored and fit to Chastain’s specifications and others were made custom for her. A given day on set could also call for five to 10 more stylists to provide period hair for the rest of the cast. Near the end of the shoot, when Tammy Faye asks for a divorce from her husband, Ingram said, “I just fell apart. I guess my body just went, oh my God, you actually did it.”PerformancePlaying a role under many layers of wigs, clothing, makeup and silicone was a largely new process for Chastain. She said her closest previous experience was portraying the dowdy heroine in a Broadway production of “The Heiress,” on which she didn’t have the benefit of such a large artistic team: “I had a prosthetic nose, which I applied myself,” she said. “So I have the utmost respect for what they do. Because it was really hard.”Turning herself into Tammy Faye each day could sometimes take as long as five to seven hours, even before any filming started, but Chastain said that lengthy preparation at least offered her the additional time to connect with her character. “When you sit in a chair for that long it can be draining,” Chastain said. “I was constantly watching videos of her, listening to her voice. I was using it as a runway. Sometimes when you’re playing a character, you get a 30-minute runway, and then you take off and you’re shooting. My character had an extra-long runway.” More