Happy Labor Day!
To all my IATSE Local 764 Union Member friends, have a great Labor Day Parade up 5th Avenue! Being able to say I was a Broadway Dresser and rocked it is one of my favorite career moments. "Divas and Deadlines" just like the Wedding Biz. It takes alot of hard work to make a show look that glamorous!
Before moving on to Television and Film Wardrobe (and opening Seams Couture), I was a member of the Broadway Wardrobe Crew for various shows like Miss Saigon, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Sunset Boulevard, Phantom of the Opera, and Victor/Victoria among others.
There are approximately the same number of people backstage as onstage sight unseen making it work. Dangerous and tight choreography for all concerned with massive set pieces flying at us from all directions, being early for a cue could be disaster. To this day I can't hear Phantom without my blood pressure spiking at my old cues, musical notes that instantly set my brain on RUN to get me and my basket of stuff to a specific spot backstage to be ready for my Actor/s changes in the dark. Thank You Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber for turning me into Pavlov's Dog.
I was a 'Swing' at many shows simultaneously, some days that meant working 3 separate shows in a single day. Swings step in and cover someone else's job or 'Track' if they're out for any reason. Someone's gotta do it! There are Swing Dancers in the Chorus, and Swings in other areas of the Crew as well, no track can go unmanned or the entire clockworks of the show will simply not work.
'Day Work' is the long morning work call to do all the maintenance of the Costumes and Shoes that got a beating the night before, ironing hundreds of shirts, steaming, replacing, even the Laundry is a very long work day to get everything clean and ready for the Dressers when they come in at their Call Time to set the show parts all over the building. Re-painting all the shoes at Beauty and the Beast was actually great fun, how many pairs of hot pink character shoes was that ultimately? I shoulda counted.
Being able to really sew and having worked at Parsons Meares Ltd which constructed most of the Costumes on Broadway got me lots of Day Work including a regular job at Victor Victoria remaking things that fell apart or needed more backing and re-lining to survive the punishing 8 shows a week for years on end. Broadway costumes are made like iron in order to last and constructed very differently even from the heaviest Wedding Gown.
At Parsons Meares we made all the costumes for the entire original production of Will Rogers Follies and the powder puff girls including the flower covered overskirts were our team assignment. Seeing the dresses go by on every New York City bus show billboard for a while was a thrill! Being able to sit at my table and show the amazing Milliner Woody Shelp (he made the hats for the Great Gatsby film) how I made the dress flowers so he could recreate them for the matching hats was an honor for another blog post.
Being a 'Dresser' is a very physical job, you are running nonstop in a ratmaze of crowded dark corridors and stairs carrying some very heavy loads. The Phantom of the Opera backstage has 9 flights of stairs full of dressing rooms with the Ballet Chorus on the top floor. The Carlotta "Hannibal" Gown weighs 60lbs! Fill a laundry basket full of tap shoes and pick it up sometime. At one point the entire Broadway Stagehands Unions were on the verge of a strike which didn't end up happening, scary times! The Performers were rightly afraid of going on without a skilled crew behind them and were prepared to walk out with us. There is no I in Team!
Excellent NY Times article about some of my fellow Union Members and a little bit about what the job really entails:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/theater/sutton-foster-and-patti-lupone-and-their-dressers.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=arts&adxnnlx=1308968170-2K0lXqA9NEp2lVXHn29rjA
So the next time you buy Broadway tickets, remember the hardworking and highly skilled Union Members back there putting on a show for you!
