Yesterday, the Tony committee withdrew Santo Loquasto’s nomination for Best Costume Design for his work on Ragtime. According to Playbill.com, his designs for the revival “substantially duplicate” his earlier designs for the first production of that show. While I can think of at least one argument that can be made in his favor (Ummm, hello – it’s Ragtime. There are very specific costume requirements for this piece. How exactly is the eventual revival of Doubt, for an example, going to look that much different from the original? Both pieces are set in extremely definitive historical periods and there are very clear-cut characters in both shows that have limited costumes choices – I would, in fact, argue that the delightfully subtle changes in this revival are a testament to Mr. Loquasto’s skill as a designer. You show me the conceptual support for the German Expressionist revival of Ragtime and then you’ll see designs that vary hugely from the original. But I digress...) the thing that gets my blood boiling the most here is that it feels like no one was paying attention in the first place. Their reason for withdrawing the nomination is so visually obvious – the two productions look very similar and yet they very publically gave him the nomination. In front of the entire theatre community.
And listen, I don’t know what the inside story is here. Maybe Mr. Loquasto used his original designs and merely changed bits and pieces. I very much admire his work and hope that this would not be the case and must admit by comparing both shows I can clearly see marked differences. And you know what? If he did, then he did. There is no law against it that I know of. I’m sure there are theatre artists who would argue that it is artistically unethical (I’m not sure if that’s a thing but it was the only way I could think to describe it) to redesign a show so similarly to your first design. The mark of a good designer is being able to look at a piece and create a visual landscape that helps the audience to understand the story and while it is also important to be “artistic” the number one job of a designer is just that - to tell the story visually.
Again, what gets me here is that they gave him the nomination to begin with and then took it back. And that is a crap thing to do.
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4 comments:
Bravo, Roxie Z! You are sensibly and rightfully outraged. It was a silly thing for the nominating committee to do that achieves ... what? Nothing. Not a thing.
I hope you left room on that soap box. This is awkward and unnecessary and really something that should never have happened. To me, the Drama Desk nomination for Orchestrations is the real stunner. To think that no one involved realized that Brohn's charts WON in 1998 (and it was cited in the show's press release they were using his original charts). Gah!!
See, I heard that he DIDN'T even know that his designs were used for this KC production that transferred to Broadway. But I also haven't dug around for any specific word from him.
But also, since you ARE a costume designer, I know you know things. And I like that you pointed about subtleties and the difficulties of them when staying within very specific time considerations.
I really can't imagine how you could make this show look vastly different without also changing the concept much more than they did. And I thought that his changes (or whoever's changes...I have no idea how designing for the Broadway works) bewteen the OBP and the revival suited Marcia M. Dodge's concept very well.
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