An Interview with Kristen P Ahern, Costume Designer
This week, dramaturg Emily MacLeod talks with costume designer for Shakespeare’s Histories, Kristen P Ahern. Kristen is a Chicago-based costume designer and an MFA graduate from the University of Maryland with numerous credits both here in the DMV area and in Chicago. We caught up about her process for costuming eight distinct plays, the challenges of presenting “the past,” and how Brave Spirits’ cycle of these English histories will be distinctly American in focus.
Emily MacLeod: Had you read Shakespeare’s history plays before this project? Any first impressions?
Kristen P Ahern: I had read some of them for various classes… This is the first time I’m taking on the plays as a designer… I think reading any script is really challenging, [because] it’s something that’s meant to be performed… So I’m someone who really depends on reference tools to fully understand what’s going on… especially because I’m primarily looking at character, not overall plot. Sometimes they use four names for the same person, or there are seven Thomases, or whatever, and as a costume designer I find it really difficult to get past some of those barriers and really appreciate the script. So I approached the readings… after quite a bit of conversation with [King’s Shadow director] Charlene [Smith] and [Queen’s Storm director] Jordan [Friend] about what their intentions were and why they were selecting these scripts at this time. I feel like I came into it with an eye to look at how relevant some of the topics are. So that really colored my readings of the script in terms of seeing parallels and… noticing the power imbalances and power shifts as I discussed with the directing team.
EM: You said that you look at character foremost in your work. Is there an example of a character that you encountered on the page that really jumped out at you in terms of the costume possibilities there?
KA: I mean, the easy answer to that question is always Falstaff. Because he’s written in prose, instead of in iambic pentameter, that’s always something that catches my attention… and when he really plays with the language, which a lot of Shakespeare’s characters do. It gives you call backs to some of the clowning in [Shakespeare’s] comedies. Most of the Shakespeare pieces I’ve designed so far, actually all of them, have been comedies, and in that context I’ve focused very much on the clown characters. So [Falstaff] was a character that I could see coming to life very easily, just based on the language.
EM: You know, one thing I love about Henry IV is that blend of genre. You have comedic moments, tragic moments, domestic strife, the court, the battlefield. Does that make it more difficult to be bouncing between these different worlds as a designer?
KA: No, I think it’s actually easier, because it’s easier to create clarity, and costumes in contrast to other costumes. It’s easier to show a hierarchy. I found, since we just opened Richard II, one of the challenges there was in our court scenes… Charlene and I decided on this uniform structure, mimicking a lot of royalty and military dress uniforms that we see all over the world, and with a uniform, there is only so much you can control to show hierarchy and rank…
EM: I mean, “uniform” literally means “one form,” right?
KA: Exactly! So having the opportunity to bounce between some of these different environments, it’ll be much easier and more fun to play with the different looks… and to be able to play with some of the class and environment differences will be much more interesting than, oh, “this is a more formal court scene,” and “this is a more casual court scene,” but they’re still court scenes, you know?
EM: So based on your conversations with the directors, what historical periods and/or places are you taking the most inspiration from?
KA: I’m mostly taking inspiration from the twentieth century, as a broad sweeping gesture, mostly mid-century. Looking at post-World War II through… I’m not sure where we’re going to get to in the twentieth century, that’s still up for some debate. But mostly focusing on a time that we in 2020 can look back on with some degree of nostalgia, without putting it too far removed. You know, I’m always fascinated by the idea of this greater and simpler time of post-war America and trying to heighten that… We’re really trying to set it in an American context. So that’s the time period that I’ve been drawing the most inspiration from, but then there are moments directly from modern eras and from Shakespearean eras, and the eras where the stories actually take place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as opposed to when they are written. So I’m trying to look at all those eras at once, and trying to come up with a hybrid that is easy to understand, with an emphasis on rank and class and power structures. It’s not rooted in one time period, on purpose.
EM: It’s a similar job that a dramaturg has, thinking about when are the plays written, when are they set, when are the productions set, when are we now… Those layers are really important when thinking about storytelling.
KA: Exactly. And you know, sometimes I try to set things in a more specific time period, but that felt wrong given the goals of this piece, wanting it to be a little bit more living and breathing. So we’re trying this period mash-up thing which I’m hoping is going to work. [Laughs]
EM: I think it does! We are also working on this huge cycle, covering almost a hundred years of history. Are you thinking about, as we move forward, any kind of progression through the periods you’ve mentioned, based on how time is progressing in the plays themselves?
KA: Yes, absolutely. I don’t think it’s going to progress as sort of a “one to one” ratio through history. It’s not necessarily going to be, “oh, this happened five years after this, so the fashions are going to look five years later” but there is going to be an advancement of style which I’ve already started doing. Richard II is sort of set late forties-ish (ish with a lot of emphasis) so as we move into the Henry IVs we’ll be pushing into the 1950s a little bit more, and we’ll go from there. I’m going more on what feels right. I feel like there are certain values and personality types that we associate with different eras of American history. When we get into the sixties and seventies, there are hippies and counterculture, so how does that archetype function in the plays that would maybe take place in that period, which would maybe be moving into our Henry V and Henry VIs. In theory… I’m not quite there yet, design-wise.
EM: I mean, there’s unjust war… a lot of similarities to draw on…
KA: Yes, and wanting to play with the archetypes and how they exist in the American consciousness and our audience’s consciousness… We’ve [also] decided as a team that we are not going to create parallels between specific characters and specific personalities in history. Trying to leave it a little bit more loose.
EM: Yeah, let the audience make those connections for you.
KA: Right. But we really are planning to progress. I know one of the other things that we talked about is we are going to start in a more formal world, with the costuming and clothing being a little more straightforward, and then I know when we get into the cycle in 2021, we’re going to be trying to break that world and deconstruct the world we’ve created this year. So it will be very interesting to see how the rules we are establishing now carry through and get broken as the power structures start to come apart next year.
EM: I was about to say, “oh, you can rip up the old costumes” but no, you actually have to keep them to perform the other plays!
KA: Yeah, unfortunately not, that is one of the big challenges, and one of the reasons we decided to create this uniform aesthetic is that those costumes can carry through all eight plays and give us a clear place for those costumes. So already from Richard II to Henry IV, Part 1, I think I only have about ten new costumes to create, in terms of something that is completely different from what we’ve seen before. We have more battle scenes and fight scenes but we’ve sort of already established what those costumes look like with the joust scene in Richard II, and then the uniforms are going to carry over, so those are two sets of costumes that have already been established.
EM: You’ve mentioned a few challenges for doing a project on this scale. Is there also a kind of thrill to such an undertaking?
KA: I think the biggest thrill is that mindset of reuse and of character development. I’ve been talking about it a lot like a TV miniseries. We cover eighty seven years of history and being able to show character development over that length of time is very unusual in a theatre setting. We’re usually telling much shorter stories. So that’s really exciting to me. And also being able to show some of these culture shifts. We often, as designers, get called on to make worlds, but the world only needs to exist for a moment, as opposed to over a century. To see how this invented, manufactured culture expands and extends and develops… that’s really interesting to me. I am a fantasy and sci-fi dork so I always love looking at the costuming in series like Star Wars and Star Trek and Lord of the Rings where you can see the fictional culture’s influences on the fictional costumes. So I’m excited to get to do that as a designer and show some of those changes.
EM: Do you have a favorite character design that you are working on right now?
KA: I’m diving into Henry IV, Part 2 right now, and I think the tavern crew is very interesting. In terms of social status, they are very low on the ladder, but it needs to be a place of comedy and fun… I want it to be loud and boisterous and colorful… so getting to play with more color after having such a tight palette in Richard II is a lot of fun for me. And diving into some of those more screwball characters and trying to really heighten that.
EM: To go back to your involvement in the project as a whole for a second, how did you hear about Brave Spirits and the Histories?
KA: I was contacted by Charlene and Jordan. Charlene had seen my design for Be More Chill at Monumental Theatre, which is just down the road in Alexandria, and she reached out to me to see if I was interested in designing the cycle, which I was. It’s a really exciting project, and actually by the time I’m done with the cycle, I will have designed over half of Shakespeare’s plays, which is a nice little landmark to hit. So that was exciting to me on a personal level.
EM: And just to wrap up with a more general question, what inspired you to do costume design?
KA: It’s something I’ve sort of always done… I’ve always loved literature and history and I’ve been sewing since I was four years old and doing art… Rather than using my passion for research and reading to generate more reading materials or to teach, I always enjoyed reinterpreting and creating something new from it. So, costume design, I realized, gave me an opportunity to still be involved in all these things that I enjoyed and was really passionate about, but in a way that was creative and generative.
You can see Kristen’s beautiful costume design in Richard II playing now, and soon in the rest of the King’s Shadow cycle this winter and spring at Brave Spirits!