Ravagers Sneak Peek

This week’s Ravagers post includes another sneak peek from Sonya Berlovitz’s sketch book, with comments from Christina Lien (SU Company Member and Ravagers Costume Assistant).

Costumes, costumes, costumes… stitching, stitching, stitching… My artistic past is glittered with dressing, building, stitching, and costuming large-scale productions, but I have not dove into this area of design and construction with SU for a while. Currently, I am one of four stitchers working under the beautiful and talented Sonya Berlovitz constructing the costumes for Ravagers.  The cast is on the larger side of things and the task of costuming the show sometimes makes me catch my breath and raise my eyebrows.

I love donning my sewing and stitching hat and all is well in my corner of the world as I construct nine dresses for nine (very tall) men, who in addition to playing sons of Aegyptus, play daughters of Danaus at moments.

All the sister's dresses - all 19 of them! - will look exactly the same. They'll be hand painted by Sonya, and like Danaus's costume (that was posted here last week), the colors are meant to reflect the desert where they live.

Unlike the sisters, who are supposed to act identically, each of the brothers is allowed to be an individual. So the men will have the same basic silhouette, but their pieces will vary slightly to show that individuality. Their colors will be greys, greens, and blues to reflect their more fertile home land.

I’m tapping into skills I haven’t exercised at this capacity in a while. It’s always super exciting to be working on a new show, but even more brilliant to be part of a specific production crew with amazing new people, including creative and talented designers.

Tickets are now on sale for The Ravagers, opening at the Hollywood Theater in Northeast Minneapolis on November 4th.