Emilio Sosa Brings Style and Flair to Arena’s ‘Chez Joey’
The Tony-nominated costume designer and Project Runway alum talks designing for movement and dressing dancers in Arena's jazz-infused revival.
“What inspires me? People,” says costume designer Emilio Sosa, connecting via Zoom from his workspace in rehearsals for Manhattan Theatre Club’s upcoming drama The Balusters, by David Lindsay-Abaire.
“I’m a huge people watcher, which in New York could be a little tricky because you can’t look at anyone more than two seconds or they’ll ask you, ‘What you looking at?!’ But people inspire me, because, just like the saying, life is stranger than fiction.”
Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and raised in New York’s South Bronx, Sosa is living a life emblematic of the phrase. Familiar to reality TV audiences for his two high-impact seasons as a contestant on Project Runway, the former assistant wardrobe supervisor for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has long since transcended his relative success on the TV franchise through his formidable work on theater stages.
Amassing an impressive list of Broadway and regional credits, Sosa has earned five Tony Award nominations — for Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch; Ain’t No Mo’; Good Night, Oscar; Trouble in Mind; and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess — and been recognized with many other honors, including a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Arena Stage’s Señor Discretion Himself.
It was during that 2004 run, Sosa’s first sojourn into D.C. theater, that he learned to appreciate what he gathers distinguishes theater in the District. “The audiences,” he attests. “The audiences are very sophisticated. They love theater and they know theater. And they’re very supportive of theater. And that’s what you want. You want people who love it and appreciate it to come to see your show, you know?”
And should the audience support become a little vocal, all the better. “The [D.C.] audiences, they know what they like and they know what works, and they like to talk back, which I love,” he says. “I’m one of those kind of audience members that I like to talk back to the characters, although you’re not supposed to. And this is a show that’s perfect for that.”
He’s talking about his current show at Arena, Chez Joey, a dazzling jazz reworking of Rodgers & Hart’s Pal Joey, with a new book by Richard LaGravenese, and direction by Savion Glover and Tony Goldwyn.
According to Sosa, his co-directors also knew what they wanted, though Glover and Goldwyn have very different ways of expressing themselves. “I’ve known Savion for quite a while,” Sosa says. “So I speak Savion. Or let me say, I understand Savion because that’s a whole language within itself.”
Communicating with a dance-and-tap genius just requires a certain kind of listening. “He may not express it in a linear way, because for him, it’s all about movement and sound. So he’ll say, ‘Okay, I want this dress to move like this,’ and he’ll do a movement, or ‘I want them to be able to do this,’ and he’ll do something. And then from that, I deduct what the dress needs to be.”
Movement is, of course, what makes a musical “a whole different kind of animal,” in Sosa’s words, from a play like The Balusters. In Chez Joey, period costumes have to move sublimely on a large cast of dancers led by Tony-winning MJ star Myles Frost, performing titular rake Joey Evans.
Always fresh-dressed, Frost’s Joey has to do splits in the air, and jump and do back bends, a huge ask for every pair of his pants. So Sosa looked to the dancing pants pioneers.
“I like to go back in the day, back in history,” he says, “when you look at these old films of the Nicholas Brothers, or you look at the Hines Brothers, Maurice and Gregory, none of that clothing had stretch in it. Think about that. Think about in the ’40s there wasn’t spandex. So they’re doing all that movement in fabrics that are not made to stretch.”
Unable to rely on high-tech textiles, ’40s designers had to design. “That means that it’s all in how you make them and how you cut them,” says Sosa.
“You gotta cut them with a high crotch seam, so they can really have full extension of the leg. That’s the main trick, back in the day, is how you cut the pants so they fit properly. Everything is at their natural waist, not in a society that we live in now where everything is sagging. And everything is, like, around their knees and their ankles.”
Sosa and his team “kept it to that mindset” for Frost. “We just made the clothing so that he could do everything. Also, we have fittings. In the fittings, we had him do the movement. And we’ll figure out, okay, he needs a little more room here, let’s make it a little tighter there, a little looser there.”
Everything is custom-made for Frost to be able to move the way he does. “And why the clothing looks so good, it’s because there’s, like, 100 people backstage, pressing and steaming every day and making sure the costumes look great. But a lot of it is how you cut them.”
Chez Joey runs through March 22 at Arena Stage, 1101 6th St. SW. Tickets are $83 to $143. Call 202-488-3300, or visit arenastage.org.
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