The Third Piece
Dressing a Revue Company
Companion piece to Murray's "The First Revue for Chalmette." He programs the evening. I dress the company. Here's how.
Murray asks: how do you dress twelve performers who each get their own number? Do you give them a palette? A shared element? Or do you let the variety run wild and trust the light?
The answer is simpler than all of that. The answer is: black, and one thing that's yours.
THE RULE
Every performer wears black. Their own black — not matching, not uniform, not purchased from the same store. Black pants and a black shirt. A black dress. A black turtleneck. A black jumpsuit. Whatever black they already own, whatever black makes them feel like themselves. The specific garment doesn't matter. The color does.
Black is the bare stage of the wardrobe. Black says: I am nobody yet. I am the company. I am the instrument.
Then: the Third Piece.
Each performer adds ONE item that is theirs alone. Not a costume — a piece. A red scarf. A gold belt. A denim jacket. Silver earrings. A suspender. A hat. A pair of red shoes. A strand of beads. One piece per performer, chosen BY the performer, that says: this is who I am tonight.
Piece one: the black shirt. Universal. Company. Piece two: the black pants. Universal. Company. Piece three: the scarf, the belt, the hat. Individual. Star.
Two pieces of uniform. One piece of identity. That's the costume design for a revue company.
WHY IT WORKS
The Opening Number
Everyone on stage. Full warm light. Twelve people in black with twelve different colors at their throat, waist, wrist, head. The company looks like a constellation — black sky, individual stars.
The audience reads it instantly: this is a GROUP of INDIVIDUALS. They belong together AND they are distinct. The black says family. The Third Piece says personality. The audience starts cataloging the pieces — red scarf, gold belt, silver earrings — and they don't know it yet, but they're memorizing the cast list. Each piece is a name tag that works better than any printed program.
The Solo Numbers
When a performer steps into their solo spot, the Third Piece becomes the ONLY color on stage. Everyone else — in black, faded into the band or the wings or the dark — disappears. The soloist's red scarf catches Murray's follow spot and BURNS. For three minutes, that scarf is the entire visual design of the number.
The Third Piece does the work that scenery does in a book musical. A scarf = a torch song. A gold belt = a comedy number. Silver earrings = a ballad. The audience associates the piece with the number, and the association stays. Weeks later, they'll remember: the woman with the red scarf sang that song. The piece IS the memory.
The Ensemble Numbers
When the company gathers for a group number — the up-tempo middle section, the eleven-o'clock showstopper — twelve Third Pieces in one warm wash produce a RIOT of color against the black. Not coordinated. Not designed. ALIVE. The visual variety is the point — it reads as community, as a neighborhood, as a room full of people who showed up in whatever they had and made something together.
This is the visual language of New Orleans. The second line doesn't coordinate. The brass band doesn't match. The neighborhood walks in wearing whatever they wore to church or to work or to bed, and the variety IS the spectacle. A revue company in Chalmette should look like Chalmette — individual, various, particular, and together.
The Finale
Everyone back on stage. Twelve Third Pieces. Twelve colors. The constellation returns. But the audience has now SEEN each piece in isolation — they know the red scarf sang the torch song in Act One, they know the gold belt did the comedy number before intermission, they know the silver earrings wept during the ballad. The pieces carry the memory of the evening. Each Third Piece is a chapter marker.
The finale is a reunion of moments the audience lived through. When they see all twelve pieces together in full warm light, they see the WHOLE EVENING compressed into one image. The design does the work of a curtain call without bowing.
THE CHOICE — Why the Performer Picks
The Third Piece is not assigned by the designer. It is CHOSEN by the performer. This is not laziness. This is philosophy.
When a designer assigns a costume, the performer wears someone else's idea of who they should be. That's appropriate for a book musical — the character is written, the costume serves the character, the performer inhabits both. The designer's eye is the authority.
When a performer chooses their own Third Piece, they wear their OWN idea of who they are. That's appropriate for a revue — because in a revue, the performer IS the character. There's no fictional person to dress. The performer stands in the light as THEMSELVES, and the audience sees them as they see themselves.
The choice is the costume. A performer who picks a red scarf is telling you something about how they want to be seen. A performer who picks a gold belt is making a different statement. The designer's job is not to make the choice FOR them — it's to create the CONDITIONS in which the choice is meaningful. Black is the condition. The Third Piece is the meaning.
Practical note: Some performers will choose something perfect on the first try. Others will need help. The director and the designer should sit with the company and TALK about their pieces. What does this scarf mean to you? Where did you get those earrings? The conversation is the rehearsal. By the time the performer walks on stage with their piece, they know WHY they're wearing it, and the why reads from the house.
THE BUDGET
Zero dollars.
Every performer chooses from what they own. A scarf from a drawer. Earrings from a jewelry box. A belt from the closet. A hat from a hook by the door. The personal investment — "I chose THIS" — is worth more than any costume shop could buy.
If a performer truly has nothing: the company helps. Someone has an extra scarf. Someone has a belt they never wear. The sharing is part of the process. The company dresses the company.
If the director wants to provide options: a box of thrift-store accessories. Scarves, belts, hats, jewelry, vests. Twenty dollars fills a box. The performers choose from the box the way they'd choose from their own closet. The box becomes the company's wardrobe — shared, communal, owned by everyone.
THE EXCEPTION — When Black Breaks
The Third Piece works because it's the ONLY color. But there may be moments in the revue where the design needs more.
The Feature Number
Murray's program has a Feature slot — the centerpiece of the evening. If the Feature is a production number with the full company, consider: everyone removes their Third Piece and adds a SHARED color. Not matching costumes — one color. Everyone adds something red, or something gold, or something white. The Third Pieces disappear into pockets and purses, and the company becomes a single visual force.
Then: the Third Pieces come back for the next number. The variety returns. The company becomes individuals again. The audience felt the UNITY and the INDIVIDUALITY in sequence, and the contrast makes both stronger.
The Quiet Number
Murray's Turn — the quiet number that changes the temperature. For this number, consider: the performer removes their Third Piece. They stand in ONLY black. The color is gone. The personality is gone. The performer is stripped to the company uniform — black, anonymous, nobody.
And in that nobody-ness, the quiet song finds its power. The performer without their Third Piece is the most vulnerable image in the revue — the same principle as Willie John's undershirt, the same principle as Lafitte's linen shirt. The honest garment is the one with nothing on top of it.
THE PRINCIPLE
A revue company is not a chorus line. A chorus line is designed from the outside — identical costumes, identical positions, identical movement. The chorus disappears into the pattern. The pattern is the design.
A revue company is designed from the INSIDE — individual choices, individual pieces, individual silhouettes. The individuals create the pattern. The variety is the design.
The designer's job in a revue is not to DRESS the company. It's to create the FRAME in which the company dresses itself. Black is the frame. The Third Piece is the portrait. The performer is the artist.
I dressed the Ziegfeld Follies in matching gold lamé and four-foot headdresses. I dressed the Greenwich Village Follies in coordinated palettes that took weeks to design. I know how to make twenty-four bodies look like one thought.
But the most beautiful company I ever saw was a group of singers at a church social in Harlem, 1962. Everyone in their Sunday best. Nothing matched. Everything worked. Each person was dressed for the version of themselves they wanted to share that evening, and the room was full of color and variety and life. No designer could have done what those people did for themselves.
The Third Piece is my way of giving that back. The designer steps aside. The performer steps forward. The audience sees a room full of people who dressed themselves — and that's the most honest spectacle theater has to offer.