PRODUCTION SPOTLIGHT
Karen Perry
AN INTERVIEW WITH
KAREN PERRY Costume designer Karen Perry has a career stretching back over 40 years. Since 2012, she has designed twelve shows at Two River Theater. Radio Golf is lucky number 13. She spoke with former Artistic Assistant Kamilah Bush about her career, her relationship with August Wilson and his work, and this production of Radio Golf.
KAMILAH BUSH: You’ve been so blessed to be designing for so long. What keeps you doing this every day? KAREN PERRY: Well I like what I do. You have to like it because if you don’t, you need to be doing something else. Some jobs are harder than others. Some actors are harder than others. Some directors are harder than others. Some plays are harder than others, but I’m not afraid of a challenge. There are not a lot of plays that I want to do repeat performances of. Once I’ve done them and had the experience of being in what I consider an optimum production where the integrity, quality, and understanding [of the play] are delivered crystal clear to an audience, then I’m usually done. This is my third or fourth Radio Golf. So, I will not do Radio Golf ever again. I said yes because John [Dias] and Stephanie [Coen] asked me and I knew it was Brandon [Dirden] and I do not like to say no to any of those three, if I can. K.B.: Radio Golf is August’s [Wilson] last play—both chronologically in the American Century Cycle and it is the last play he wrote in his lifetime. It’s the culmination of his life’s work. You’ve designed 8 of his 10 plays—
Mann and Carey Perloff worked it out so that it could go from Broadway to the regional theater world quickly. August asked Ruben [Santiago-Hudson] to direct it. It was my introduction to seeing and designing Gem of the Ocean. August and Ruben spoke every day when we were at The McCarter rehearsing. I remember the day that he died. We just stopped. We just stopped everything. Rehearsal was over. Radio Golf was still in process. I saw it and thought “this is an odd button.” After Gem, I felt he didn’t have to write nothing else. He could have stopped there. For me, that is his perfect play. It took me designing Radio Golf twice before I really understood. Also, having my birth home, Harlem, moving through a huge gentrification, before my very eyes was heartbreaking and astounding. While I was designing these other two Radio Golfs, I realized what it really felt like living through it. We’re still having that happen. For anybody who feels that their history is not important and that the future is all that there is, I believe that they are doomed to repeat the wrongs of the past by not looking back and observing the lessons. That’s what Radio Golf is for me. Oh Kam, you ask me questions and I go through history. K.B.: But isn’t that what August wants? He was asking us in his August brilliance to stop and look back. I think that’s the gift that he left us was, “You need to stop and look back at the things…” K.P.: “Look what the New World has wrought.” Like Lorraine Hansberry has Walter say “It’s always been about money, Mama.” ” That part of Raisin in the Sun always resonates in my head when I’m watching Radio Golf. It’s like there’s Lorraine. There she is.
K.P.: I’ve designed 9. I’ve designed every August show except Fences and I’m kind of okay with that. If I don’t design all 10, I’ll be alright. I’m at that point in my life where I’ve got to like what I’m doing. I’ve got to like who I’m doing it with. I’ve got to care about all of it, or I’m just going to say no. I can stay home. I really, really like my home a lot. K.B.: Do you think that there’s something special about Radio Golf, knowing that it’s the last one? K.P.: It’s hard for a lot of people. I remember when August was trying to finish it and he got really, really sick to the point where he was denying treatment to finish [the play]. Gem of the Ocean was on Broadway and it closed early. Emily 30
The Company of Love In Hate Nation with costumes by Karen Perry. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.
