Dade County And The Arts - Diving Into The Interior

When I first got the idea of spending my life as a theatre artist, I assumed I would be an actor. This is the role most young people are familiar with so it is where most begin. I was late getting started, not trying out for a play until my senior year of high school.  As I sat backstage each night watching others rehearse or perform, I felt so at home that I knew acting was for me.  That is, until I took my first real college acting class and discovered what was expected: that I was to mine the depths of my being and lay it all out in the open for anyone to see and know.

This I was not willing to do.  I changed my plan and moved easily into what seemed the safe path of costume design, a logical step since I knew how to sew and had worked a summer in the costume shop of the Houston Shakespeare Festival after high school graduation.

Fast forward 40 years. I have been a professional theatrical costume designer and educator my entire adult life. I laugh that I never had to stop dressing my Barbies—only now they are actors.

I do a lot of Shakespeare and shows for children. It continues to be a source of profound creative expression for me.

And this is why:  with almost every show, I mine the depths of my being and lay it all out there for anyone to see and know.  It turns out this is what Artists do.

How do we do this?  We free fall.  We get out of the way.  We surrender our egos to the Muse. We willingly make ourselves vulnerable to the Work.

Usually this process is, for me, not difficult.  I can slide into the Zone and let my creations show up and settle onto my watercolor paper without much ado.  I usually work quickly once I am ready to let everything out and I enjoy seeing who arrives.  Truly, I never know who they will be. Sometimes, however, the process is incredibly painful.  I enter into a kind of obsessive madness that I can neither avoid nor stop until it has moved through my heart and hand onto the paper. While I work within the parameters of period, style, and script, I honestly have to let the characters come alive on their own and define themselves.  I have to trust the process.

There is no way an artist can avoid this trusting of the process.  We all do it to one extant or another in whatever media we work in.  Art that extends meaning to others, that speaks truth, that touches the soul—this is  communication that can only come from that human place that we all share and where we all ultimately live. A painter or photographer opens when she seeks to capture that moment when the light in the trees offers a glimpse into eternity.  The sculptor opens when he seeks communion with his stone. The musician or the writer sets the notes or the words free.  And even the costume designer finds a way to allow a set of characters to speak who they are and in doing so, say who we all are.

We all have to trust the process. We have to trust that Diving into the Interior is the best and perhaps the only way, as an Artist, we serve each other and share our humanity. It’s not for everyone to do.  It takes courage to open in this way.  But in doing so, we connect to our divine centers and we make Art.

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Sydney Roberts is an award-winning costume designer based in Atlanta.  Her work has been on stages all over the country. She was the costume designer in the Department of Theatre and Speech at UTChattanooga for 32 years.