If Clothes Make the Man (and Woman)

Guest blogging by The New New News cast member Tammy Batey. - ed.

When you’re acting in a play, there’s that incredible moment when you try on your costume or costumes for the first time. Sometimes I’ve had vague notions of what the costumer was putting together while other times I’ve been completely surprised. Either way, it’s always been a pivotal moment in helping me become my character on stage.

If clothes make the man (and woman), they certainly make the character. We make quick judgments all the time based on what someone is wearing. What people wear provides important clues to their age, income, destination, attitude, fitness level, profession and personal style. 

The same holds true for characters. Would Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” be so quickly characterized as a seductive young woman with unfulfilled sexual desires if we didn’t see her strip down to a sexy slip and stockings in the first scene? Would Eliza Doolittle’s huge transformation in Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” from an unrefined Cockney flower girl to a supremely elegant toast of society be as obvious without those incredible costumes, including that sublime gown at the ball?

For “The New New News” – as well as for “The Crucible, my last play with Stage One Theater – the costumer is Kim Newton, who possesses a gift for finding inexpensive treasures at Goodwill, pulling together the perfect outfit for each character and sewing the most wild costumes (See the play to find out what I mean by that!). 

For “The Crucible,” set during the Salem witch trials in Puritan times, the heavy, restrictive clothing helped me get into the mindset of the dark, restrictive time period and also helped audiences see the world that I and the fellow actors were creating. 

While “The New New News” is set in modern times, the costumes serve the same dual purpose of helping my fellow actors and I get into our characters and helping the audience accept us as those characters. 

I play five different characters. One of them is Police Dispatcher. Embracing the authoritative intensity of Police Dispatcher was greatly helped at Saturday’s rehearsal by the fact I was wearing my costume for the first time – navy slacks with a black belt; a navy, long-sleeved shirt with a badge; and black combat boots. I noticed it was easier to adopt the rim-rod straight posture of my character and her authoritative manner while wearing that costume. In that costume, I really felt like a police employee for the first time. And at least for that scene, I will be.