“When they realize everyone’s butts look big, it’s a very different kind of sensation,” says A. Jeffrey Schoenberg, describing an actor’s typical first reaction to his medieval jerkins, Victorian bustles and eighteenth-century panniers. “In a way, period things are easier because you take people completely out of the realm of what they know.”
Schoenberg leans over an assembly table in his Burbank work studio. With his full grey goatee and smart tan work clothes, he could easily put on the grey Victorian frock coat he has set aside to talk and slip into a crowd of extras in one of his own stage pictures.
“My sense of clothing and what clothes say sort of dies in the mid-1960s. I’ve always been drawn to period clothes and what makes the difference between, say, even 1892 and 1897. I get that and I understand how to relate that to character and statements the clothes need to make in the play.”
The studio behind him is packed floor to ceiling with racks, boxes, hats and shoes, one vast brown work table and several sewing machines. Despite an overcast afternoon and chill inside the space, a constant stream of other designers and regular renters comes in and out while Schoenberg talks. As he fits them or doles out advice, his eyes are bright, his mental inventory whirring, before he flits into his racks to find just the right thing.
No stranger to Ovation nominations for his work, Schoenberg has been nominated this year for three awards: all for shows that begin with a “c” – Cousin Bette, Celadine and Children of the Night – and all for designs with his trademark historic wardrobe. “It’s very gratifying; proof for me of how at home I am with period clothes.”
Despite the nearby racks, which provide ample proof he has probably faced most challenges any historical era or playwright has to offer, he leans in with fresh, conspiratorial excitement. “I love it when the clothes betray the character. For the two men who played Hulot,” [in Antaeus Theater Company’s mid-19th century adaptation of Balzac’s Cousin Bette], “we had to find a way of betraying this man who was not the young gigolo he wanted to present, and showing him for the aging roué he really was. It’s a great way of bringing something to the surface in front of the audience.”
Schoenberg’s experience has given him a playful, even salty awareness of his work’s role within the bigger picture. Speaking of the need to coordinate an actress’ outfit with the scenery she’ll be playing against, he laughs, then sighs. “Because if she spends a lot of time on the couch, between changing the color of the couch and her dress, I’m gonna lose.”
Speaking of Celadine, the Colony Theatre’s revamped restoration comedy that could have been his license to go all out, Schoenberg thoughtfully retraces the limits he gave himself, explaining, “It’s not every day that you get to put a king onstage. But if you go too far with someone that needs to be impressive, the audience misses the first 15 minutes of what they have to say. We need to see him change into the king in all his glory and still listen to the complexities of the language.”
And what were the complexities of Katselas Theatre Company’s Children of the Night, the third of Schoenberg’s nominations? Not just working on an original work, and discovering a play alongside the rest of the design team, but negotiating a fashion language for a period musical about Bram Stoker, grimly determined to see his Dracula produced. “There are so many ways to twist what the clothing is saying. The focus is on a very dour character but on the other hand, it’s a show about the fables and foibles of a theater company. So though you had people dressed tightly and primly, there had to be concessions to allow a bit more movement in.”
A young woman enters carrying an armful of floor-length Victorian dresses. Her frazzled expression turns to relief when she spots Schoenberg. He hugs her and takes her garments, holding them up to the light in turn. She’s another designer, and as Schoenberg consults with her on a current show, his advice echoes the thoughts spoken earlier.
“For me it’s just the awareness of how things need to be seen, the common sense of how it’s going to be viewed, what your stage picture is going to look like.”
He pauses, holds up one of the dresses under her chin, stretching out its arm down her own. “It’s that place where it aids the actor and the story.”
Photos by Rebecca Kinskey.
Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Rebecca Kinskey has been a stage manager, production manager and producer for theatre, film, tv and web. Currently working towards an M.A. in Arts Journalism at USC Annenberg, she loves writing about how creativity makes its way from idea to execution, and all the steps in between.
