Marion Williams
Q&A WITH MARION WILLIAMSIn the Firebird, the women’s skirts function both as costumes and as sets. How did you make the choice?
What’s exciting about doing the sets and the clothes on the same piece is that you don’t actually have to decide which is which. We wanted to work with the idea of the caged bird. All the princesses have their own individual cages, and the set itself is yet another, larger cage. Historically hoop skirts and corsets have been traditionally seen as women’s cages, but we really wanted to abstract it. The ballet is very contemporary, so we looked at images of contemporary fashion. The skirts are large – the largest one is seven feet – and they’re completely rigid. We wanted something that would scenically move around the stage, so we put them on casters so they really can glide. The women are able to go en pointe and the cages move around inside the larger cage.
And the men’s costumes: you don’t see a lot of kilts and combat boots in ballet.
The men are monsters, but we didn’t want to do green goblins with warts on them – we wanted to keep them human. Adam wanted something that was responsive to the loud percussive nature of the score, adding a sense of gravity to the movement. We started to look at a lot of pictures of contemporary fashion, things like tattoos and mohawks, with sort of a British punk-rock-of-the-80s feel. So there are these plaid kilts, and the combat boots give them a grounded nature. When you jump and land in a plie in a combat boot it’s different from landing that way in a ballet shoe. The costumes have a certain aggressive nature, something that’s overly masculine. And the lead monster has a giant wing tattoo on his back – it’s really responsive to his body. Without putting him in a set of wings, it kept him both human and not-human at the same time.
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Marion Williams
Marion Williams, Scenic and Costume Designer
Marion Williams created sets and costumes for Cincinnati Ballet’s world premiere of Adam Hougland’s Mozart’s Requiem in March, 2010. She is based in New York and creates designs for theater, opera and dance. Her dance designs include Cold Virtues, Devolve, Made to be Broken, Fragile Stasis and Rite of Spring, all with Adam Hougland for Lousiville Ballet, and Crossroads, Phantasy Quintet, A Choreographic Offering, Extreme Beauty and Psalm for Jose Limon Dance, Introdans, P.S. 122, Parson's Dance and Juilliard Dance. Her designs include New York productions Burn This, Savage in Limbo at The Juilliard School, MCC, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd at Mint Theater, The Director’s Company, Women’s Project, Filumena and the world premiere of The Moonlight Room, and The Mystery of Attraction Off-Broadway. Williams has designed internationally: Turn of the Screw Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, Germany as well as regionally for The Alliance Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Boise Contemporary Theatre, (Crimes of the Heart) McCarter Theatre, (The Importance of Being Earnest, Opus, Blue Door, Doubt, Topdog/Underdog, The Illusion, Stones in His Pockets, The Underpants, Cyrano de Bergerac, Yellowman, Not About Heroes, Proof, In the Continuum, Nine Parts of Desire) PlayMakers Repertory Company, Round House Theatre, (Tartuffe, Amadeus, Taming of the Shrew, Othello) Sacramento Theatre Company, (Othello, Of Mice and Men, Measure for Measure, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Cherry Orchard) Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, (Death of Salesman) The Old Globe, (The Glass Menagerie, 26 Miles, ReEntry, Barefoot in the Park) Two River Theatre Company and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Williams has also created designs for opera productions with Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and University of Washington. Williams received a MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA and is the recipient of a 2004 Princess Grace Award for design and is a 2007 Princess Grace Foundation Grant Recipient.
| Marion William's Costume Design Sketchbook | ||
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