Costume Designer Kaye Voyce returns to Virginia Opera after her stunning debut for last season's Orphée. She's here today to share her inspiration for A Streetcar Named Desire and a first glimpse at the beautiful costumes she's created.
What was your vision for the overall look of the costumes? Where did you find your inspiration?
I was very interested in the world of late 1940s America - it's a weird time, just post World War II, not quite the 1950s yet - and then how that world transformed into 1950s nuclear family America. To me there's something about this world that had experienced death, loss, and violence, and then chose to disavow the more damaged or radical part of itself. I think it's very much what happens to Blanche.
Kay's design boards with inspiration gathered for each character.
How did the New Orleans setting inspire your designs, if at all?
I think the south itself was a bigger inspiration. A sense of heat and, for Blanche and Stella, of a lost grandeur.
Photo by David A. Beloff
Describe how the fashions nod to the passing of time in certain characters.
Blanche arrives at Stella's with everything she owns. She's held on to certain dresses and objects from her past, and what she wears is sometimes from previous times in her life when things were more glamorous. Blanche and Stella go out to Galatoire's in dresses from the 1930s, when they would have been wealthier and more glamorous younger women. Blanche's world is more rooted in the past and Stella and Stanley's is more in the future to come.
Photo by David A. Beloff
Do you have a favorite costume in the show?
Honestly, every costume at this point is my favorite!
Photo by David A. Beloff
Where do you find vintage items like the ones you feature?
On a show like this you source things everywhere. The costume shop at Virginia Opera built Blanche's clothes based on period research, and they built some of Stella's clothes as well. Stanley's uniform was copied from a vintage piece that we found at a great Army/Navy store here in Norfolk, and tons of other individual pieces were sourced on Etsy, which is an online marketplace for vintage and homemade goods. Without Etsy it would have been impossible to do this show! I also have some favorite vintage sources in New York, where I'm based. Basically you just never stop looking. There's a vintage place in Ghent that I'm meaning to check out this weekend!
Photo by David A. Beloff
Kaye Voyce (costume design) - Previously at Virginia Opera: Philip Glass’ Orphée. Recent opera credits include: Kepler (Spoleto Festival USA), Don Giovanni (New York Philharmonic at the Park Avenue Armory), A Quiet Place (New York City Opera), and The Consul (Glimmerglass Opera).Theatre credits include: Shining City (Broadway), 4000 Miles (Lincoln Center Theater), “The National Broadway Company” (Esplanade Arts Center, Singapore), Neutral Hero (Festival d’Automne, Paris, Vienna Festwochen, HAU Theater, Berlin), and Richard Maxwell’s installation “Open Rehearsal” which was part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
