Notes from the Wardrobe: Let’s Hear it for the Boys...

I have a pet peeve. Actually two. Okay, if you know me I have a whole farm full of them, but in the case of Love, Loss & What I Wore I have two very specific ones. The first, that I’ve Already covered here is that the play is merely about clothes. The second is that this is a “women’s show”.  

When Spawn was in elementary school I volunteered with the reading program, and kids who would coming in looking for books would often reject them on the basis of whether it was a “boy’s book” or a “girl’s book”. I worked long and hard to convince them (with varying degrees of success) that there was no such thing gendered books. Such is the case with Love, Loss. Yes, these are stories about women’s lives, and yes, we definitely need to see and hear these stories on-stage. Especially now. But as far as the intended audience? There is no such thing as “Men’s Shows” or “Women’s Shows”, only Human shows.

But first, I do want to address the idea that men don’t care about clothes. This is manifestly untrue. They may not care about FASHION but they do care about STYLE. Fashion is what the stores and magazines try to sell you, style is knowing who you are and adorning yourself accordingly. They care about the expressive power of clothing. The guys I work with at Pioneer all have definite takes on clothing, whether they admit it or not. Jon, my assistant director, has an affinity for “old-man sweaters” and very definite ideas about pants. He also has a collection of bow ties for dress up that includes Spider Man and bacon. Dan, our company artistic director has a great collection of silver and beaded bracelets that I have tried to pilfer on more than one occasion. And Doug, one of our board members, and the director of our spring show Tommy, is almost never seen in public without his leather jacket. Each of these guys has a very distinct look that is part of their persona as artists and creators. They have STYLE.

And then there are the stories...One of the interesting things about the rehearsal process has been how often a scene we’ve worked on sparks a cascade of stories from both actors and production team. One monologue about a prom dress had all the women and men in the rehearsal room telling stories not just about what we wore to our proms but who we took, what we did afterwards and what our dates turned out to be in their adult life. Sometimes all it takes to spark a connection or conversation is the shared memory of an object. In our case the object just happened to be clothes. 

Not all stories illustrate the commonalities, but illuminate the differences and that too is a blessing. There are things men never experience that are part of the daily fabric of being a woman. Dealing with the expectations of a society that sends constantly mixed messages. That insists you must be sexy and desirable but if you are sexually assaulted somehow you bear the responsibility. That tells you that men and women are from different planets and it must simply be accepted that there will never be understanding between the two. But the beauty of really listening to someone’s else’s stories is that we begin to understand the world from a perspective outside our own. This is what a show like this offers to men. The chance to see the world in a different way.

So bring your girlfriends and sisters and mothers to see Love, Loss & What I Wore  but bring the men in your life too. You’ll be surprised at what happens. 

Notes from the Wardrobe: My Mother, My Closet

One of the interesting things about working on a show that seems at first glance to be a collection of scenes and monologues is that when you look closely enough you find that there is, in the best of them, always a structure. This is absolutely the case with Love, Loss & What I Wore. As I have dissected the script I have discovered that the stories are divided into sections based on subjects. The first section is all about mothers and daughters. This makes sense to me.

Mothers and daughters and clothes are often the first battles in our war for independence. Deciding what we want to wear and how we want to look are the first steps we take away from our parents and into ourselves. It can be an acceptance of the roles and expectations laid out for us or it can be a rejection of them. These battles run deeper than fabric. They have everything to do with how we see ourselves, how we want to be seen, and our deep desire to claim a place for ourselves in the world.

When I think of my own mother and clothes the words that come to mind are impeccable and conservative. My mother loved beautiful clothes, something she definitely passed along to me. She loved nothing more than a beautifully cut suit, with a skirt not too short and a heel not too high. She never left the house without her lipstick on and perfectly placed accessories.

In her gentle way she encouraged her daughters to emulate her. Cheap fabrics, clothes from tacky teen stores, and anything too short, tight or garish was absolutely discouraged. Appropriate was the word when it came to clothes. You didn’t wear pants to church or a job interview and you never ever bragged about wearing a new outfit. Naked attention seeking was tacky and embarrassing. And always, always make sure your hair has some height to it. Having me for a daughter meant that there were more than a few skirmishes over clothes. From the three piece pantsuit she made me wear when I was five to the stiletto heeled sandals I insisted I wear to my sixth grade graduation (I won that one, thank you very much).

It’s taken me a long time to understand that my mother’s feelings about clothes, her desire for conformity and appropriateness were about a lot more than mere appearance. My mother grew up dirt poor in Mississippi. The kid of poor where you go to bed hungry and wake up even hungrier. Where you live in a place with walls so thin that the wind blows right through them, and you hate it, but you realize that you’re lucky to have even that. On top of that she was born with Marfan’s Syndrome, a congenital birth defect. One of the main hallmarks of Marfan’s is elongated fingers and toes and a tall extremely lanky frame. (For reference both Abraham Lincoln and Jonathan Larson had Marfan’s.

Dire poverty and a disease so rare that most doctors can go an entire career without seeing a case of it made my mother a marked woman. She was treated as an oddity by doctors who would bring their colleagues around to examine her without a thought of asking her permission. Her peers mocked her and called her Olive Oyl. It was not a happy childhood.

For my mother to marry, have a house in the suburbs and a closet with lovely clothes was a triumph. Clothing was her armor. To conform, to be “properly” dressed was security. It meant that no one could make fun of her. It meant that she would be see as something other than an illness. If she did’t stand out in any way she would be safe. She didn’t want her daughters to suffer the way she had and so she tried to pass on these things to them.

What makes me sad is that it took me so long to understand this. In many ways my mother would be absolutely shocked by a lot of what I wear. I worry much less about attracting attention to myself and more about what pleases me on any given day. And as for my flat hair...well, the less said about that the better. But because of things she sacrificed for me I get to indulge in the privilege of being a non-conformist. And it is a privilege.

She also left me with valuable lessons. Appropriateness to the occasion is just good manners. LIfe is too short too wear bad fabric. Always look your best when leaving the house, it will make you feel better. And never underestimate the value of a well cut suit.  In these things I think she’d be proud.