Costume designer Mara Blumenfeld shares how she is coping with COVID-19 closings in this series, "When the Lights Went Out," where theatrical designers discuss what they are doing these days.
She was in New York for rehearsals and fittings for Trevor, a new musical scheduled for an April Off-Broadway opening at Stage 42. “We had done the show previously at Writers Theatre in Chicago in the summer of 2017,” costume designer Mara Blumenfeld says. Set in a middle school with a cast of mostly teenagers, the play’s cancellation was especially hard for the cast.
Blumenfeld was also scheduled to do a remount of Lookingglass Alice at the Lookingglass Theatre Company, an adaptation of Love’s Labor’s Lost at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, originally done at Oregon Shakespeare, and the world premiere of The Supreme Leader at Dallas Theater Center. “The show is designed, but we hadn’t started rehearsals yet,” she says.
Last semester, she was also a guest lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. She was enjoying her first-time teaching experience when she found herself heading back to Chicago to finish the term online. “It was definitely a challenge teaching design classes via Zoom, but the students were amazing and so resilient,” Blumenfeld says. “It was so sad for the third year MFAs to not get to have the usual send-off.” The design showcase became a virtual event, organized by students who Blumenfeld says “did an incredible job. It was actually really great because we were able to have guest responders from all over the country. Everyone was so generous with their time, and it meant a lot to the students to have that kind of feedback from so many professionals in the industry.”
At home with her partner, Greg, and their two cats, Blumenfeld has been cleaning and decluttering. “I’m in the midst of a big purge of my home studio space,” she says. “It’s amazing how much junk you accumulate over the years. I’ve also been spending a lot of time in my garden. We are lucky to have a backyard to escape to, and it’s been nice being home long enough to watch things grow.”
“If this craziness has taught me anything, it’s that people still have a strong to desire to connect and share art together. Even in these socially-distanced times, artists are finding creative ways to share their work online or with social distancing.” She and Greg recently went to a dance concert in a large parking lot of an art gallery space. “The audience of about twenty cars parked in a square facing in towards the center of the open lot, and the dancers performed solo or distanced duo pieces, all wearing masks, with a PA system piping in the music. It was beautiful and so powerful,” says Blumenfeld.
“I’m just looking forward to the day we can all be back in theatres telling stories.”
Check out what other designers are doing "When the Lights Went Out."