MARGINALIA WIG EVOLUTION

We were in conversation with the costume designer, Jeff Hancock, from very early in the development of the project, around 2017. We were interested in wigs featuring extremely long hair, as an exaggeration of one of many stereotypical elements of “femininity”. Early in the process we experimented with 4 foot long cosplay wigs. From those experiments and our own imagined concerns we spoke with Jeff about avoiding unintentional reference to Black or other non-White hair stylings, such as dreadlocks, as we are both White choreographers with moderately textured hair (types 2 & 3, respectively).

Straight (type 1) wigs became tangled and dreaded over the course of use. In addition, Jeff and we were interested in abstracting the costuming element so that it could allude to hair without being a literal wig, including other visual references such as a nun’s wimple. Jeff used wide bands of very fine silk for this iteration. These were used in the piece’s premiere at Links Hall in 2019. The feedback we received was that these still referenced non-White hair styling, at least for some, and the repeated use through rehearsals and performances was clearly increasing the texturedness of the silk.

Following the Links Hall premiere, we gathered with a group of willing consultants who identified as Black for conversation. The results of this conversation were a clear consensus, and we committed to discarding the existing wigs and finding another option. Jeff created several other prototypes using other materials, but these still evoked hair styling that we felt would feel appropriative in the context of this work. Ultimately, after repeated trial and error, we chose to discard the wigs completely, and the final performance of the work did not use them. However, the video documentation offered by the venue was not in the end made, so we have no recording of this final wigless version.

– Julia & Jonathan, creators of Marginalia