"Broadway's Dirty Secret: How to Turn Costumes From Riches to Rags"

by Erik Piepenburg 

[From time to time, I post articles on Rick On Theater that illuminate work in the theater about which most theatergoers don’t know.  In the past, I’ve republished articles on stage managers (30 January 2017), dance captains (6 May 2020), wig designers (30 June 2014), and whole series on arts administration (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, and 17 December 2020) and sound design (25, 28, and 31 March, and 3, 6, and 9 April 2021). 

[Erik Piepenburg’s article below, from the New York Times of 18 August 2016, is another in this occasional series, focusing on costume designing.  You’ll see, however, that its emphasis isn’t so much on the conception of the garments the actors wear on stage, but on one aspect of the costume process: distressing. 

[Distressing, says Piepenburg, is making “costumes look beautifully bad” or, to be more precise, making them “look as if they’d been dragged through the mud or bloodied in a fight.”  This is a very particular skill, and you’ll meet Hochi Asiatico, known, appropriately enough, as a “distressor,” the artist who accomplishes this effect.]

Hochi Asiatico gives Broadway costumes the appearance of having a long (and soiled) history. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

The nicest thing you can say to Hochi Asiatico is that his work looks like hell. 

That’s because Mr. Asiatico is one of a small number of Broadway distressors, artisans who make costumes look beautifully bad. In the play “Eclipsed,” he turned a “Rugrats” T-shirt, worn by Lupita Nyong’o, into a sweaty rag that looked as if it had spent weeks forsaken in Liberia, where the play is set. Clint Ramos, who won a Tony Award for his “Eclipsed” costume design, said that Mr. Asiatico created “a history for a garment” that came across onstage as “organic and inherent.” 

                                                    

Mr. Asiatico turned the “Rugrats” T-shirt worn by Lupita Nyong’o in “Eclipsed” into a shirt that looked as if it had been worn for weeks. 

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times 

“In his mind, he can picture how the character goes through his or her day,” Mr. Ramos said. “He has a relationship to the clothing and how it interacts with the environment in a physical way. It informs everything.” 

Mr. Asiatico does more than make clothes look as if they’d been dragged through the mud or bloodied in a fight. He’s mostly a costume painter, whose brush strokes can be seen on the unitards in the Broadway revival of “Cats.” In “The Color Purple,” his painting and silk-screening add elegance to the kimono worn by the actress Heather Headley.

Hiring Mr. Asiatico, who also designs costumes, isn’t cheap. The cost can range from $3,000 to $140,000 per production. Perfectly ragged clothing doesn’t just come off the rack.

“Producers say, ‘There’s no fabric out there that can do the part?’” said Mr. Asiatico, who has been in the business for some 22 years. “But costume designers know that what I’m going to give adds finesse to the show.”

Distressing for the stage requires exaggerated painting and destruction techniques, such that color, shadows and “damage” can be read under the lights and from a distance. Recently, Mr. Asiatico added subtle variations of “blood” and “sweat” to costumes in the revival of “The Crucible,” and made uniforms in the musical “Doctor Zhivago” look as if they had gotten wet from fresh snow.

The New York Times recently asked Mr. Asiatico to modify some of his techniques to turn a jean jacket into a wearable, distressed, chic-looking garment that anyone can make. Here, in four relatively easy steps, is Mr. Asiatico’s guide to D.I.Y. distressing.

Step No. 1: Shred

Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

Distressing a garment requires a combination of washing (to break down the fabric), painting and working it over with tools, like scissors and sandpaper. Mr. Asiatico begins with a shredder, a hand-held, spiky comb that looks like a torture chamber device. In short, quick strokes, he breaks down the fibers, pulls down the shape and trims the edges, giving the garment the appearance of everyday wear.

“You don’t want it to look fake,” Mr. Asiatico said. “It has to look lived in.”

It’s a workout to distress a fabric as tough as denim, but the result can be almost delicately soft. And expensive-looking, like “Ralph Lauren, what you’d find in a vintage store,” Mr. Asiatico said.

Step No. 2: Paint

Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

After shredding, Mr. Asiatico applies layers of paint, usually with an airbrush. Here, he uses a spray bottle that can accommodate attachable jars, each with different colors of thinned-down, Setasilk paint (about 25 percent paint and 75 percent water). He applies thin layers of gold, brown and black on the chest and arms, spraying more heavily around the collar and the sides, “where the garment tends to get more of the dirt.” He then uses a small brush to apply black low lights, or shadows, on the sides of the denim. This “blocking” technique creates depth and gives the garment dimension.

Step No. 3: Dry

Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

After he paints the garment, Mr. Asiatico uses a hair dryer to make the paint permanent. (For Broadway, the costumes are usually heat-set in a clothes dryer.) When dried, the paint will appear on the garment in a lighter shade. And it’s not going anywhere.

“If you don’t heat set, you can wash and remove the paint,” Mr. Asiatico said. “It’s hard to remove paint when it’s dry.”

After drying, he adds more accents of paint here and there, and dries those areas again.

Step No. 4: Sand

Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

After the paint is dried, Mr. Asiatico sandpapers parts of the jacket, a technique that returns highlights to the garment by forcing the paint into the fabric. “It brings back life into the garment,” he said. “It was becoming too painted. Now it has shadows and light.” Mr. Asiatico does the sanding on a dress form, which helps pull down the garment and naturally distresses the denim. (It can also be done on a table.) He also cuts off some excess threads on the hem. The finished look is about a six on a distressing scale of one to 10.

“For the theater, they would buy a jean jacket that costs $30 and charge me a couple hundred to do this,” he said. “A full jacket for a Broadway show would take probably four hours. We did this in about 90 minutes.”

The original denim jacket, left, and the finished version, completed by Mr. Asiatico in about 90 minutes. Photographs by Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

"Ready, Set, Freeze!"

by Erik Piepenburg

[Among the topics I cover on Rick On Theater is how theater gets made—the jobs and processes by which a production gets on stage or a script gets written and prepped for production.  On  25 April, the New York Times published an article about the final hours of rehearsal for a new Broadway musical, Bandstand, before it’s “frozen”—when, as the article’s on-line subhead puts is,  “The director of ‘Bandstand’ had to introduce changes — then let go.”  Bandstand, with a book by Robert Taylor and Richard Oberacker, music by Oberacker, lyrics by Taylor and Oberacker, started previews at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on 31 March and opened on 26 April for an open run.]

The show “Bandstand” counts down the hours to its final fixes.

In theater parlance, a show is “frozen” when — on a designated rehearsal day, usually about a week before opening night — no more fixes, cuts or additions are introduced. While not contractually mandated, it’s a decision and a deadline, determined by the director and the creative team, that give the cast a sense of an ending. Up to that point, the actors rehearse by day and adjust their performances for an audience that night.

To understand what happens in the hours before a show officially freezes, I spent much of last Wednesday afternoon at the Jacobs Theater with Andy Blankenbuehler, the director and choreographer of the new Broadway musical “Bandstand.” The show is a comedy-drama, with a swing-infused score by Richard Oberacker and a book and lyrics by Rob Taylor and Mr. Oberacker, about a piano-playing World War II veteran (Corey Cott) who returns home to Cleveland and forms both a band and a relationship with a fellow soldier’s widow (Laura Osnes). Now in previews, the show opens on Wednesday.

The day before that rehearsal, Mr. Blankenbuehler said he’d made 100 changes — “a line, a shoulder, an arm,” as he put it. At the Paper Mill Playhouse, where “Bandstand” had its premiere in 2015, 22 minutes — including whole numbers and scenes — were cut from the show in one day, he said.

But the day this show was frozen wasn’t quite that eventful. Still, it found the high-energy Mr. Blankenbuehler, who won Tony Awards for his choreography of “Hamilton” and “In the Heights,” running from the house to the stage and back almost nonstop, making fixes until the 5 p.m. deadline.

He compared the process to a home renovation: “You build the structure, and put the tile in the kitchen and all the knobs on. We are doing that final hit list before we say to the contractor, ‘We are good, we can move in.’ ”

Dancers in the Dark

11:48 a.m. For the first fix of the day, Mr. Blankenbuehler had to figure out why light and actor weren’t gelling in a “button,” a tiny moment that signals to the audience that an element in the show is over. He consulted with the lighting designer, Jeff Croiter, on how best to handle a first-act transition in the number “You Deserve It,” set at a bar and involving the actor Drew McVety and the ensemble.

“I keep giving the actors the note to be sharper, but I’m now realizing that we are not helping them with the lights,” Mr. Blankenbuehler said. “So we are just shifting the button cue to bring the focus in just a little further.”

After huddling with Mr. Croiter, Mr. Blankenbuehler smiled as Mr. McVety, who plays the bar owner, became perfectly isolated in the light as the ensemble clapped in slow motion.

12:08 p.m. With the actors in street clothes — T-shirts, sweatpants and, for some of the women, kerchiefs — Mr. Blankenbuehler spent about 20 minutes going over individual notes. “Hold the glasses like they are real things,” he said to the assembled actors, referring to the props they handle in the show’s many nightclub scenes. “Make sure the eggs reach the table,” he told one actor. He asked Ms. Osnes to take “one step stage right” in one of her scenes.

“I appreciate that,” Ms. Osnes, a two-time Tony nominee, later said of Mr. Blankenbuehler’s attention to detail. “I think it makes the difference between great and excellent.”

How to Bow

1:10 p.m. Mr. Blankenbuehler spent almost an hour fleshing out a fully choreographed curtain call for the first time. He repeatedly moved actors in and out of position and asked for shifts in lighting as they tried out their cues.

He asked the actress Beth Leavel to speed up her entrance and come farther downstage center before gesturing to Ms. Osnes and Mr. Cott, who were on deck backstage. Before finishing, Mr. Blankenbuehler asked four male dancers to do a little quick step that he thought might work just as the lights come up before the bows. They learned the moves in about five minutes, and they were in the show when I saw it the next night. (It worked.)

2:05 p.m. Repeated calls of “Five, six, seven, eight” echoed throughout the theater as Mr. Blankenbuehler figured out the right way to properly light Ms. Osnes and Mr. Cott as they came into position during a number featuring an onstage microphone. He then spent about 10 minutes making tiny adjustments to a complicated-looking dance sequence, finessing over and over the dancers’ leg extensions and speed as they sang the lyrics “the boys are back.” In the show the moment lasted all of about three seconds.

Two Words

3:25 p.m. Mr. Blankenbuehler spent about six minutes chatting alone with Mr. Cott about a crucial scene early in “Bandstand” that pivots on two words Mr. Cott’s character says. The words were cut about two weeks ago but were recently restored.

“I asked him about whether or not it’s working,” Mr. Cott said afterward in his dressing room. “We are going to try again for tonight. That’s where this process gets fun. You have to bounce things off a live audience and see whether it works or it doesn’t work.”

Mr. Cott didn’t want to disclose what the two words were, saying they “give a big plot point away.”

What a Wiggle Will Do

4:09 p.m. Mr. Blankenbuehler demonstrated come-hither moves to two female dancers (far right, above) for a musical transition that involved a standup bass. He showed the women how he wanted them to wiggle their hips, give flirty little looks and shrug their shoulders as they lead the men offstage.

He liked it. They liked it.

“This transition didn’t feel like it was ending,” Mr. Blankenbuehler said as he watched the performers execute his changes. “The girls swishing their hips there tells the audience, O.K., the moment is done.”

4:34 p.m. The mood in the theater began to feel frenzied as crew members disassembled the work tables that had been set up throughout the theater.  Looking irate, Mr. Blankenbuehler loudly asked about turning off the house lights, just after they had come on. He then called for stage management to meet him upstage to discuss how best to bring a door offstage.

Frozen!

4:53 p.m. Mr. Blankenbuehler said he knew that he could keep fixing or suggesting, sometimes to the detriment of the work. “Many of my notes are overanalytic,” he said during a break. “They are me digging deeper when it’s not really necessary. The forced deadline of today is really good. It’s like someone saying, ‘Take your hands off the table, you’re done.’”

So as the countdown to 5 p.m. neared, he gathered the cast onstage for a final round of notes and thank yous.

“All the good work couldn’t have continued if walls were up at all, and there were no walls,” he said. “I owe you all alcohol.”

The cast members then huddled, stretched out their arms in a circle like football players, and shouted: “‘Bandstand’ frozen!”

At 5:03 p.m., Mr. Blankenbuehler was sitting in the house, looking exhausted but smiling. He said he was satisfied that the show was in good shape.

“We worked hard enough in advance of today that we actually finished the job,” he said.

[Past articles on the making of theater have included the work of stage managers and dance captains (“Stage Hands,” 14 January 2014), set designer Eugene Lee and wigmaker Paul Huntley (“Two (Back) Stage Pros,” 30 June 2014), and swings in a musical show (“Swings,” 9 March 2016).  That’s in addition to many articles on acting, directing, reviewing, and even a few on playwriting.)