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Gabriel Berry interviewed Interview granted when Gabriel Berry spoke with Mala Renganathan in New York, May 3 1996. Mala Renganathan: How did you come into costume designing? Gabriel Berry: Accidently I stumbled into it. I was interested in clothing and museum, you know, history clothing. I was working with a costume clothing collection of 1810. And while I was doing that I decided to just take a course in New York University and I took, by way of an introduction to costume, a design course and I figured 'Oh I can do that' and so I did! And when I came to New York, I set up as a costume designer and that was sufficient because I knew how to sew, and I knew how to work, and my brain worked, and I quickly fell among people doing interesting projects. And I did some technical work for some people after working at La Mama, and doing that I met Ellen Stuart. She liked me, so she offered me a job as resident designer. It just had to do with - she liked my vibes - which is how she hires people anyway. And I met actor Charles Ludlum very early in my career and started working with him. So I did a lot of experimental theater very quickly, and in New York, if you're going into work and if you're well in the work you can do anything in the theater, as long as you don't need any money. And my rent was low, my rent is still low, which is probably why I can still work in the theater, because it's a very hard business to make a living here. MR: And how did you get to work for Maria Irene Fornes' productions? GB: Donald Eastman ... I met him in La Mama when I was working there. He just told me that Irene needed a costume designer. He recommended me, and she called me and I said 'sure' and we started working together. It was very - that's the way theater works anyway in downtown - very easy. That was 'A Visit', that was the first production we did together. That was at the Theater for the New City, the one that's on Second Avenue. MR: And what exactly did you do, I mean, towards costume designing for 'A Visit'? GB: Irene works on these things for a long time and she had done a workshop of it out in Padua Hills. And she always sort of thinks she knows exactly what she wants. And in that case, this was a play that had porcelain breasts and penises. And she didn't want it the work of an Edwardian fallacy thing. I can't even remember; I mean it was all on whites. And I don't know whether that was me, or her it came from. It was very easy. It was the first we'd done together. And I just brought in lot of things and put them on people and we talked about it. And that's the way she likes to work. I know that she gets very irritated if she's working with somebody who doesn't have a lot of stuff to look at. (laughs). And it's like - but it's just that we would look at things and, I mean, you work with different directors in different ways and in this case you work with the playwright and the director. And you're going to the playwright and the director who is a visual artist and who thinks she knows what she wants, you know, which she does. But we talk, we don't - it's funny, because with Irene I don't think we ever really looked at images together. I certainly never did volumes (laughs). We would just talk and then I'd do something. And I'll have 50 dollar budget, you know. May be if life is really good, I'll have a 100 dollar budget. I don't know what the budget was for 'A Visit', it was probably a 100 dollars. MR: What do you think should be according to you, the role of a designer in a performance? GB: Maybe costume designers we're the wives of the productions making everybody else comfortable (laughter). Irene is extremely dictatorial, so you basically just support and make her think that she's doing the right thing, and she's telling you that she's doing the right thing. You're just saying 'yes, you're exactly right, you're doing the right thing.' MR: (laughs) I'm not deciding whether she's doing the right thing. I'm just trying to find out what her style of direction is. GB: No, no, I'm telling you what is wrong with Irene. She is, you know, a little bit of a megalomaniac. And rightly so. I have no problems with a megalomaniac. The funny thing about Irene is, she is older than I am. And she comes from a different culture than I come from. And she's got an amazing sort of large life. And she has very strong feelings about items of clothing. She loves clothing. She's personally involved with what she wears and what other people wear. And you put something in on a person and it has also its own emotional significance to her. And you never know what it's going to mean. And if you stay to think about it, you can get totally screwed up. And all you can do about it is to follow your notion, emotional reaction to what she's saying and do it. And as long as you pay attention to her you could. But if you start trying to second guess her by saying this is what she really means, you can't do it. You have to do all that instinctually, because she deals very much with her dreams really. And in some she operates some other states which she has created as operas, as pictures, as some stage. So you have to cue into that. I don't know, it's all subtext, it's not something to talk about, it's never something to talk about. And when she tries to talk about something it has to do with a very specific emotional reaction in a very specific time to a certain odd clothing. You go like 'oh, okay' and you don't talk about it because it is all personal. So, I don't know what that means (laughs). MR: So I can understand maybe, your idea or your style of doing something to some extent is restricted. Because you have to do what the director says...? GB: No, it's always restricted, in that sense. I mean, it depends. It's more restricted with some directors than with others. With Irene, in some ways it's restricted and in other ways I always feel like I end up doing what I wanted to do. And I always feel at the same time, she comes up with things that have great emotional resonance that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of. And she dropped things out and does things and she'll say 'What! Do you think you should do that?' And she'd put it out on stage and it's amazing. And the other thing is, if I have a strong emotional feeling that when I do something she'll also respond to that; and as long as it is genuine, instant, then it is fine. I'd really say you're only getting into trouble when you start intellectualizing or doing it by the book. As long as you just sort of surf in, and ... she likes beautiful things. And that can be something tarty, that can be something cheap, that can be something ... whatever. But things that have integrity in themselves and beauty, and as long as everything you use has some sort of place to it, you're probably in a good position. What I've seen, when other people work with her, when they're not exactly getting what she's talking about, when they try to approximate ... when she says 'put them in a white shirt and a brown pants', then all they can think of is to put them in a white shirt and brown pants, without sort of assimilating what that means, and by trying to follow by letter what she's saying rather than this point of what she's saying. And you never go wrong with Irene if you do something beautiful. And that can be just about anything. But it's how things work in space on stage which is very important and what the picture is doing. And she has an incredible sense of color and composition and so you'd want to start playing with that. MR: Yes, that was very clear in some of the performances which I saw - that sense of color, specially with the costuming she's able, one way you used it to define the character.. you know.. to characterize that particular role. And another thing is, what is very important in her performance, is that designing steers the performance into a different level of meaning. GB: Yes. That's there always. MR: A kind of mythical level, you know, sort of symbolical level. GB: I think it is a dream level, yes. MR: And that was very clear specially from the performances of Sarita, Mud and Abingdon Square. For example, she makes use of, in Mud, she establishes a kind of, the stripping of clothes that she uses ... like for example, how Henry takes out his clothes, and finally he just stays there with just pants and tie. You know there's a kind of, it adds meaning. In the same way, how you used colors in Sarita, to bring out the emotional state of Sarita, like, first you used lot of passionate colors - red, maroon colors, and then towards the end, when she's in the hospital, you make use of white color for her, you know. So that was very intelligent of you to use such combinations..... GB: Well, one of the important things about Irene, and the biggest thing that Irene has talked - a sort of an obsession with her, and she knows that it's an obsession with her - which is that, she is passionately involved with every character on stage and they're infinitely attractive to her. And therefore she wants them all to be infinitely attractive, to the extent that you want to be involved with her on stage, you know what I mean. I think that's like to me it becomes a very important part of my aesthetic and that's all for her, which is that idea that nobody is despicable. Everybody assumed that, in that humanity there is ... fascination. And she would never demean anyone on stage - I mean, people could do good things, people could do ugly things, but, they're still human. And in that, in humanity, there's still something accessible and fascinating. And I know that when we did Hedda Gabler together, I was very curious to do Hedda Gabler with her, because she was totally convinced she understood what Ibsen meant and that everyone had screwed it up for years. And a lot of things like making Judge Brack a villain which is, you know, he's often a sort of, often moustached totally, lewd old man who's waiting to seduce Hedda and things like that. And she thinks that surely Ibsen would never be that simple minded, and that, you know, Judge Brack is a much more complicated person. No matter what the play she's doing, - whether one of her plays or someone else's play - she never wants to vilify somebody that way, and when you get someone like in The Conduct of Life, when you're talking about the villain, ... the villain can never be inaccessible, you always have to have access to what's going on with him. And in that case he has to be beautiful ... there's never any excuse in her world for making somebody ugly or unattractive, and whether, you know, it's a young person or an old person, or a conventionally unattractive person by regular standard. And I think that is a very Irene thing. I think it's a great thing, it's a very theatrical thing. ©2005 Marla Renganathan. Many thanks to Mala for allowing this interview to be used on this website. For Mala Renganathan, Maria Irene Fornes' Theatre: A Study see Academia.
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Gabriel Berry has long been an important collaborator of Fornes on works including A Visit, Mud, The Danube, Lovers and Keepers, Sarita, The Summer in Gossensass. Berry has also worked with Fornes' direction of Hedda Gabler, Uncle Vanya, and Cold Air.