Published:
By Walter Ang
New York - Filipino American costume designer Raven Ong has four shows opening this summer, one of which will have an international staging.
Ong has designed the costumes for a triptych of Shakespeare plays for DeCruit Company and for a play about a woman who wore many hats for Owl and Pussycat Theatre Company.
Ong’s credits include “Beautiful: Carole King Musical,” “Waitress,” “Kinky Boots,” “Matilda” and “The Producers,” among others. He designed the costumes for Fil-Am playwright Linda Faigao-Hall’s “Dying in Boulder.” He teaches costume design at Central Connecticut State University.
Ong was approached by Sean Harris, Artistic Director of Playhouse on Park Theater Company, to design one costume for the single actor who carries the play “The Ecstasy of Victoria Woodhull.”
It features a clairvoyant who channels the spirit of Woodhull, a woman written out of history for her “radical views.” Woodhull was a Suffragette, an activist for women’s voting rights, ran her own Wall Street firm and progressive newspaper in New York and was the first woman to run for President. She was also a spiritualist con-artist.
“It’s always interesting to collaborate on new material,” Ong said. “I joined director Sean Harris, playwright Theo Salter and the actor Ashley Ford for rehearsals in West Hollywood. It was a very rich process where we discovered many things inside the rehearsal room.
The play recently ended its run in Hollywood and will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after its New York run.
Multiple characters
Ong was introduced to the producers of DeCruit through Jason O’Connell, who is directing “The Head of Richard.” He’d worked with O’Connell in early 2020 just before the pandemic began, designing a staging of Kate Hammill’s adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.”
“The triptych brings so much inspiration and challenge for a designer. Each play has only two actors. This means multiple character changes without leaving the stage. So how can the costumes and costume pieces help in telling the story?
How do we show the audience the magic of shifting characters right before their eyes in a way that is not confusing? We have three brilliant directors who’ve all choreographed the character changes seamlessly. It was pure collaboration!”
Meaningful
But more than an opportunity to flex creative muscles with other collaborators, Ong was drawn to the group’s ethos. The DeCruit program supports veterans who were recruited into the military to be “de-cruited” for the civilian world by using theater as a tool for processing emotions and behavior.
“The message of these plays and the service to the community that DeCruit producers Stephan Wolfert and Dawn Stern provide is what I find truly meaningful. When we say theater is meant for the audience to have an experience, these are the perfect shows for that.
“As I work more on these kinds of plays as a costume designer, I begin to feel that a spectacle is no longer defined by the lavishness of visuals and effects, rather, a transformative experience that cultivates visibility, accessibility and inclusion.”