Theatre professor brings a new dimension to directorial debut
Karen Gilmer is nothing if not a storyteller.
Whether her medium is costume design, stage makeup, the classroom, or – as is the case with her latest project, directing – she is most at home when transporting an audience into a different time, a different environment, a different psyche. And she never runs out of tales to tell because along with being an inveterate storyteller, she is also a devoted researcher, immersing herself in her topic for months at a time.
“With every show I do, I learn something new about history, or a culture. There’s something I always take away,” says Gilmer, a lecturer in costume design and head of design and productions in the Department of Theatre Arts. She recently made her debut as a director with Intimate Apparel at the Henry Heymann Theatre.
Perhaps that’s what makes Gilmer, who arrived at Pitt in 2014, such a natural teacher: because she, herself, never stops learning, and doesn’t place boundaries on the topics she explores.
Born into a theatrical family, she found her way home through a somewhat circuitous route. After earning an undergraduate degree in French, Gilmer moved to France, hiring herself out to teach English as a second language to the children of families living in the countryside.
“I don’t know what I was thinking; I was such a romantic,” she laughs now. “After awhile, it was time to come home.”
Because she enjoyed teaching, she thought of making that her full-time career in the United States, but the pull of the theatre changed her mind. So she enrolled in graduate school in Boston, earning a master’s degree with a concentration in costume design.
Gilmer’s parents, Sonny Gilmer and Hatti Taylor, were entertainers, headlining a band called Sonny and the Premiers that performed in variety shows in Pittsburgh, New York, Ohio, and Maryland. Starting when she was 6, she would get off the school bus on the last day of class, climb into the family station wagon, and travel to shows all summer.
Young Karen also accompanied her mother to a costume designer’s studio twice a month for fittings, and while that didn’t occur to her as a career choice, she quickly began sewing for herself.
“As soon as I could put two pieces of fabric together, that was it. There was nothing I wasn’t sewing,” recalls Gilmer. She made her own prom gown and one for her best friend, too. It was the design she loved: The story that people tell through their clothes. As an undergraduate, when she took a stage makeup class, the instructor told her she was wasting her time, that she should pursue her talent for costume design. Beginning her sophomore year, Gilmer began helping that professor, Yoko Hashimoto Sinclair, with costumes for opera and theater in the Delaware and Philadelphia area.
“A lot of what people see on stage has a historical significance,” she says. “I always try to tell a story.”
To do that, she delves into her research: What did people from the production’s time period do for entertainment? What music did they like? How did those factors differ between people who had money and those who didn’t, and how are those differences and preferences reflected in the clothes they wear?
For Intimate Apparel, that research was very much part of the months of preparation she sunk into her first directing job, studying newspapers, magazines, and images from the Library of Congress illustrating African American life. The play tells the story of Esther, a Black seamstress living in New York in 1905, where she earns a living by sewing for both wealthy white patrons and poor prostitutes. Directing the play proved to be a natural outgrowth of the years Gilmer has spent in costume design; both, after all, are simply different methods of storytelling.
“To me, that research helped me design better costumes, because I knew what I was working with within the world of that play,” she explains. The play examines the position of women, especially Black women, and different ways their lives could unfold.
After graduate school, Gilmer taught at Susquehanna University before moving to Pitt. The size of the Dietrich School’s theatre department appealed to her, as did the fact that everyone with whom she spoke had a different perspective.
“It was so refreshing. This is what it’s all about: you experiences, your collaborations. It was very open,” she says. Likewise, the students were also expressive, and not afraid to share and use their experiences in their work.
That level of collaboration was evident in Intimate Apparel, which featured Kimberly Parker Griffin, a voice and movement coach who is the Chosky Teaching Artist-In-Residence at Pitt. She helped Gilmer move the actors seamlessly through the play. Two graduate students helped her with the acting; the sound and lighting also helped create each character, room, and mood, even in a production without walls.
“We had a gamut of experience on that stage, and there wasn’t a single flaw in any of that,” says Gilmer. “Everyone held their own equally, which is very hard to do. And I really owe that to them, and their total commitment to the work.”
Gilmer’s next project is The Royale for the City Theater, which is based on the life of boxer Jack Johnson, who fought a retired white opponent in the early 1900s in a much-touted match.
“I’m on an incredible journey. Even after Intimate Apparel, people see me and say, ‘That was a really great play.’ So I did my job, I entertained people. For two hours, you got to experience a really juicy, good story and lose yourself,” she says. “When the lights go up and you go back home, you’re still sitting with your friends and talking about it.”