Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2012 - 41

Ballard would work with Williams again in
1957 on Orpheus Descending and would briefly
come out of retirement for a 1985 revival of
Night of the Iguana.
Perhaps because Lucinda Ballard was five
years older, Williams, like Brando, may have
looked upon her as a mother figure, as she
revealed:
Tennessee could be so convivial and so
enjoy himself; at other times . . . he acted
like a frightened child-no other word
for it-who needs his mother. There were
several women that he felt the same way
about that he did about me; that is, you
could get him to do things that nobody else
could get him to do. (Davis 1985, 140)

It may have been that ability to connect
with both playwright and performer that would
turn out to be one of Lucinda Ballard's greatest
assets as a designer:
Usually I like to discuss with the actors before
I design anything; find out if they have any
. . . if somebody thinks they look absolutely
terrible in pink, or of it's unlucky to wear
green. Forget it. No matter how good you
think it would be. Or if they think their hips
are too big. Or whatever. Because if an actor isn't happy with their
costume, no matter how well it looks and how well it fits the story
and everything else, they can ruin it. All they have to do is stick out
their stomach and their underlip and you're dead. (Davis 1985, 93)

Sketch from the 1961 production The Gay Life, which would be
Lucinda Ballard's final Broadway show.

Acknowledgements
The delight of being able to read 161 pages of interviews with Lucinda
Ballard was made possible by a Clements Center - DeGolyer Research
Grant from the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Appreciation is due to
Andrea Boardman, Ruth Ann Elmore, and Benjamin Johnson for their
hospitality while I was on campus. Librarian Cynthia Franco and Library
Director Russell Martin granted me access to the Ronald L. Davis Oral
History Collection in the Special Collections at the DeGolyer Library,
which included the five separate interviews with Ballard recorded between 1985 and 1987.
Materials from the Ballard family archives have been graciously provided through the assistance of Robert Ballard, her son, Jenny-Sayre Ramberg, her granddaughter, and Nicholas Goldsborough, her nephew.
Charlotte Russell, church historian at the First Congregational Church
in Kalamazoo, Michigan, discovered and forwarded local newspaper interviews with Lucinda Ballard from 1928 and 1988.
Special recognition must go to two women who knew Lucinda Ballard
well, both of whom died this year. Mary C. Henderson's insightful writings
on Ballard in her works on American theatre, Eileen Darby, and Jo Mielziner

And yet, as Tennessee Williams found out, she could be a tenacious
advocate of her own well-thought-out design concept:
I can do a lovely sketch in twenty minutes. I can do forty sketches a day
. . . I burst with ideas . . . Sketches are easy. It's trying to carry out your
ideas-that's the headache. Trying to protect your designs. You've got
to fight with everyone who wants to change them. (Zolotow 1948, 137)

Ultimately she recognized that theatre is, above all, a collaborative
effort:
The costume designer must say with costumes what the author of
a play hasn't the time to say. It must also be designed, estimated,
made and must please the author, producer, actor, director, critics
and all their friends and relatives. (Dressing Broadway 1987, 7) v

Peggy Rosefeldt is a costume designer and independent
scholar from New Orleans.

2012

theatre design

& technology

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