Stearns’ makeup design is used as a story telling device to enhance the tragedy of the Kit Kat Club. “I show both sides of the spectrum in the show, so definitely showing some more of the more elegant and extravagant of the queer side of the role.”Īs important as costuming is, a character without a unique make up plot is like a fine painting without a frame. “The Emcee is like this interesting creature,” Eibler said. Eibler worked with both Stearns and director Tom Debello to create an Emcee that is unlike any other iteration of the character. Nick Eibler plays the Emcee, a role that is perhaps one of the most iconic roles in musical theatre. She has the waist cincher, the high heels and the wig and they’re taken away until she’s left in the uniform in the end.” “And over the course of the show, her being stripped away from femininity until the very end.

We looked into many drag performers at the time, they were called femulators,” Stearns said. Stearns decided to embrace the ambiguity and fluidity of the character and slowly strip that away as the show goes on. Stearns spoke about each design with pride, but the design that he was proudest of was for the Emcee. “So Rosie and Lulu are our twins and Herman is based off of the wild boys, which were a group of young men that lived on the outskirts of Berlin that were basically prostitute fraternities.” “They’re all based off of different kinks and fetishes and when I ran out of appropriate ones to put onstage I started taking from different subgroups of the LGBT community that existed in that time period,” Stearns said. Design by Alexander Stearns.Īccording to costume designer Alexander Stearns, the goal of the design was to create a world that is “dirty, inhibited, seductive and dangerous.” This is highlighted by the chorus costuming, where each character is based off of a different fetish or element of the LGBT+ culture. An evolved version of the costume design for Lulu.

Through costume and makeup design, Texas State’s “Cabaret” will transport audience members to the sexually liberated communities of 1930s Berlin as the Nazi Party rises to power. It does not reflect the opinions and values of KTSW. *The following article was not written by a KTSW staff member, but by a student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Emcee cabaret costume