Stephanie Spangler: Director of Costumes at The Metropolitan Opera

In a typical opera season, she will oversee as many as 4,500 costumes as well as the people who put them on and take them off the Met’s performers. As Director of Costumes, Wardrobe, Wigs, and Makeup, Spangler is the highly organized hub of a nightly whirlwind that makes magic happen on one of the world’s most important stages.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The wildest malfunction I can remember is very early on
in my career. I was the only dresser on the show,
and the actress had nine quick changes in like a
five minute span, and one of her costumes was sort
of like Carmen Miranda, and she ran back and the
zipper just broke, like there was just no way, and
I just remember just like sewing her into her dress

(00:25):
and just being like go and just pushing her out
on stage, and then cutting her out when she came
back and throwing on her next dress. That was Stephanie Spangler,
who's come a long way since her days as a
novice dresser for the theater. Today, she works at New
York's Metropolitan Opera, where she is director of Costumes, wardrobe,

(00:48):
wigs and makeup. During the course of an opera season,
she will oversee as many as forty costumes, not to
mention the people who put them on and take them off,
the performers. She's at the helm of a nightly whirlwind
of activity that results in pure magic on stage. I'm

(01:10):
Milan Ververe and this is Seneca's One Women to hear.
We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most
inspiring and history making women you need to hear. Stephanie
Spangler likes to think of herself and her crew as
the fairy godmothers of the METS productions. They have the

(01:32):
performers backs, they are there to make things happen. In
many ways, what Stephanie does is very down to earth
and requires tremendous organization and coordination. Listen and learn why
Stephanie Spangler is one of Seneca's One Women to Hear.

(01:55):
I'm speaking today with Stephanie Spangler, who has an absolutely
fascinating job. She's the director of costumes, wardrobes, wigs and
makeup for the Metropolitan Opera. Welcome Stephanie, Hi, thank you
Ampathador for having me. Let's talk a little bit about
this position that you hold directing costumes, boardrobes, wigs, makeup

(02:18):
at the Metropolitan Opera. That pinnacle of opera settings. And
we all know the visuals when we go to the
opera and it's in what you do. So what does
the job entail? What are we talking about in terms
of how many costumes, performers changes. Does it vary from
opera to opera? It does. So I did my homework

(02:40):
before today because I wanted to have good numbers for you.
So this season, this Tree season, we opened with Medeia
on September and we'll close UM on June tent and
in that time we'll do approximately two d and fifty
live performances. We do our operas in repertory, which means

(03:01):
that over a seven performance week, seven show week, we're
doing up to four different operas that you can come
and see four different operas over the course of seven days. UM.
While we're doing that, we rehearse the next openings in
the daytime. So essentially my team is setting up for
a rehearsal, breaking down entirely, and then resetting for an evening. UM.

(03:25):
Over the course of the season, we're doing twenty three operas.
We do seven new productions, so new to us often
involves many new bills, and then we do sixteen repertory revivals.
And so I was looking at our numbers for this year,
and so our average performers per opera about one D
per opera, and so if you were to look at

(03:46):
a hundred people per opera twenty three operas, estimate that
we have about over two thousand costumes that go on stage. UM.
Just if everybody has one outfit that they wear per show,
but oftentimes we have who are in multiple costumes they
are changing. So I estimate that we probably have certainly
over maybe costumes that we touch, that we handle, that

(04:11):
we alter, that we dress every season. Well, it sounds
like just an enormous challenge. And as someone who loves
the opera, I know when I look at that stage
and see often a spectacular array, I cannot imagine what
this is like for you. So could you explain a
little bit about what the coordination must be like between yourself, designers,

(04:37):
other teams, Because there's so many teams given any opera.
What do you take into account when you're looking at
costume design and other elements? Give us a sense of
what factors go into this. Sure to start, I oversee
three different areas. I oversee our costume shop, who's run

(04:57):
by the head of the costume shop. We have a
head of wardrobe who have sees the whole backstage dressing team,
and then we have a department head for hair and
makeup and wigs, and altogether there are roughly a hundred
and fifty people. And so the process sort of starts,
particularly with new productions if right now, I'm working on
new productions for next season, and I'm working on our

(05:17):
new productions that we're doing this season. And so when
we get an idea and a design that's approved, I'll
work with the designer and our costume shop to figure
out the plan for the builds. And that information comes
from the score, It comes from the ideas that the
director has about the characters that he wants to see
on stage or she wants to see on stage, and

(05:38):
then we sort of extrapolate and I work with the designers,
come in with a research package that they deliver, and
then we we figure out how to make it a reality.
And so we have a shop head and tailors who
work with the designers to think about if we have casting,
what silhouettes look good on what bodies and you know,
it's so the historical research that goes into it is massive. Um.

(06:02):
One of the interesting things about working at the Met
in particular is that we because we do so many
operas in a season, we can range from contemporary to
mythic cret where we just were any domineo. It's so
we have to we span a very very wide range
of times, of periods, of styles, and the amount of

(06:22):
research that goes into the builds of the costumes is
just really phenomenal. Um. And then after the costumes are made,
we bring them to stage for rehearsals and performances, and
that's when the dressers come in and and need to
know the difference between dressing a corset versus dressing ecclesiastical costumes.
You know. Um, So it's it's really quite a wide range.

(06:43):
And then you know, on top of that you have
the hair stylus, the whig stylists, the designers, and then
the makeup as well. It's just it's a massive it's
it's big. It surely sounds massive. And you mentioned dressers
what exact going to do the dressers do? Because you
oversee the dressers, I understand, right. So I mean I

(07:05):
have a head of wardrobe who who oversees their tracks.
But previously, before having this role at the MET, I
was the head of wardrobe, So I do have a
lot of experience and I've been a career dresser for
twenty years um before moving to my role now, which
is more administrative. Um. The dressers are um, so they
get their delivery of costumes per opera. They understand the

(07:30):
breakdown of where the performers are exiting and entering on stage,
and we have to coordinate their quick changes. We have
to coordinate um, like the choreography, everything that you see
from the front of house. Behind stage, it's just like
people running around making sure that they get to their
next egg entry. We um. We just did um Peter Grimes,

(07:52):
and we're we have a few more performances left. But
there's a huge quick change that happens for our chorus men.
There's fifty of them and they all go backstage after
the prologue and then they have to drop all of
their pieces, all their hats and then switch to raincoats.
And you know, we have about maybe thirteen dressers working
with these fifty men. So it's it's pretty wild to see.

(08:13):
I'm never going to watch it up for the same way.
After this conversation, I will be utterly distracted thinking about
everything people like you go through. So you describe this
massive undertaking. How do you keep tracked? Do you have
a special app? Do you have some kind of special system?

(08:34):
How do you do this in the reel? I don't
have a special app. I sort of like block my
work into just different segments. I mean, I have to
be super organized. I have to be able to compartmentalize.
It's multifold. So for anything that's new production related, where
I'm working with designers on build, I know that I'll
be you know, tracking our timelines. Like I have this

(08:57):
giant calendar that is color coded that breaks down all
of our operas, and then every week is another deadline.
Um that sort of breaks down the when do we
need everything for stage? When do we need everything for
room rehearsal kind of a thing. Um. Looking farther ahead,
you know, when are we getting our casting? Then we

(09:17):
plan our fittings um. And I mean I have a
huge team who works enormously hard to get all of
those details, you know, organized because it's constant and we
are unique because we work with all of the performers.
There isn't a performer that comes through the met that
my team is not intimately like they don't intimately know.
And I like to think of us as like a

(09:39):
team of fairy godmothers, Like we kind of come in
and like we come in and you know, you always
have your your team of people with you, your quick change.
We're like your human mirrors, you know, setecas one hundred
women to hear will be back after this short break?

(10:00):
M M. I would imagine, maybe it's never happened, But
has there ever been a wardrobe malfunction that you've been
involved in? And if so, can you tell us what
that was? Like harrowing, I would imagine, yeah, I mean,

(10:21):
I so I was thinking about this. And the wildest
malfunction I can remember is very early on in my
career when I was dressing a production that was about
Florence Foster Jenkinson, who was the opera singer at Carnegie
but I think she was tone deaf, was the story,
and it was a two person musical, and I was

(10:42):
the only dresser on the show, and and the woman
the actor actors who played Florence had nine quick changes
in like a five minute span where she was supposed
to be singing these different um genres of music to
sort of like show this fan of her career, and
one of her costumes was sort of like um like
Carmen Miranda, and she ran back and the zipper just

(11:06):
broke like there was just no way, And I mean
I must have been I mean in my second or
third year of the career. There's no one back there
to ask, and I just remember just like sewing her
into her dress and just being like go and just
pushing her out on stage, and then cutting her out
when she came back and throwing on her next dress.
And I remember we became such good friends after that.

(11:26):
She was like, you had my back, and I was like,
I was not letting you go out there. My goodness.
It was a good lesson. It's a good lesson, and
I'm sure you're prepared for anything after that happens. Do
you have a favorite show? Was there something that you
worked on that maybe it was just such an enormous

(11:47):
challenge that succeeded beyond your dreams, or just a favorite
show because of what it's about. I mean, it's hard
to say. I was, you know at the Met, I
I it was. I love almost all of what we do.
I should say I love it all, but I you know,
everyone has favorites. I was lucky enough to be part

(12:08):
of the coproduction of That Noon when it first debuted
at the Met, it had come um to us um
I believe it was at the you know, before us,
And to work with that group and to watch that production,
it's a Philip Glast production. So it's a contemporary opera UM,
which I happened to really be a fan of. Being

(12:28):
a part of that experience was absolutely amazing, just the
scope of this, of the production elements, the costumes were phenomenal.
The headpieces were like amazing. The chorus goes out and
all these like animal heads and it's all kind of
like Victorian. It's just stunning. If you haven't seen it,
I highly recommend um watching it on demand. It's absolutely stunning,

(12:50):
or if it's on PBS. Well, let's talk about you,
Stephanie Spangler and your childhood. Were you attached to plays?
Did you do a lot of dress up as a child.
Was there anything that would have signal that you would
be doing this today? I mean, I think so. I
grew up here in New York and Brooklyn, grew up

(13:11):
with a single mom, and my mom took me to
see Broadway shows from the time that I was seven
years old. I think we did it every birthday. UM,
and I loved it. And like so many people I was,
I wanted to be an actor so badly, and lucky
for me, I figured out how not talented I am
in that world. At an early enough age, and then

(13:33):
I started to study costuming in my undergrad and I
really loved it. I just thought it was amazing. I
think the work of a costume designer um is extraordinary.
I Also, one thing I love about what I do
in my industry is I feel like our work of costumes, wardrobe, whigs,
and makeup it's very women centered. It's certainly like for

(13:56):
all of the different parts of the industry, we make
up like, women make up the largest part of this work.
And I've found it to be like very exciting to
work with so many other women and and talented, you know,
people like I mean, especially working at the MET. To
work with the caliber of directors designers that we get
to work with on a regular basis is like you

(14:18):
are spoiled. I'm spoiled, well with good reason. You used
to work with the Blue Man Group. Can you tell
us about that? What was it like and was it
so different from what you're doing today? So different? Um? So,
I started working as a part time dresser backstage for
the Boston ship of Blue Man Group when I was

(14:38):
twenty years old, and I worked with them for eighteen years.
So that's a long run. Yeah, I mean and it
was such a it was a really special place to work. Um,
I learned how to be a dresser. I learned how
to be a manager there. Um what I love about
Blue Man, I mean, to have started in two thousand

(15:00):
and one, it was not like the world phenomenon that
it is now so like to have grown up in
a world where, like we like saw it explode and
become so well known, and to be this sort of
shepherd of this iconic you know, blue paint and black tunic,
and like it's like it's sort of a weird thing.
I mean, you can't. I cannot compare the work at

(15:22):
the Met to Blue Man at all because obviously the
scope of the costumes and like that kind of work
is like deeply challenging and like the best way. But
Blue Man, really, I feel like, gave me like my
work ethic and really taught me how to be like
a viable part of a community. And I had such
a great experience. Sounds absolutely terrific. So then you get

(15:45):
to the Met, which I think, by any consideration, is
getting to the pinnacle of this profession in many many ways.
What did it feel like when you knew here? I
am Stephanie Spangler going to the Metropole and Opera. It's
taken me a few years to even like have it
sink in that it's real, because it's it's just so massive.

(16:06):
I am, we're gonna be um doing Aida, and we
opened in December, and I was thinking that when I
had my final interview, I had to do it in
the auditorium and Aida was rehearsing on stage, and I
was like so distracted by the scale of that production
that it was hard for me to concentrate. And then

(16:27):
a couple of weeks later, when I had started, we
were doing Finchula Dull West and we have live horses
in that show, and I'm backstage like five ft away
from a live horse and a scenic backdrop of like
a you know, a classic Western sunset, and it's just like,
oh my god, this is amazing. It's exciting. It's got

(16:50):
a big just test to be well. We always have
difficulty in these interviews because we run out of time
and we're closely at the end once again, but I
did want to ask you, I mean, there aren't a
whole lot of people in the line of work that
you're in. It's in many ways quite specialized. Maybe you
could say exotic. It's a field in and of itself,

(17:13):
And I wonder does that give you a different perspective
on life? Has it taught you anything in particular that
is translatable to others? What gives you hope? Well, I
love that question. Actually, um So, I think having worked
in this industry for my career, my whole career over

(17:34):
twenty years, is extraordinarily unusual, and I think it's very
very lucky. Um And I've I've taught UM at Monclair
State University and having young students enter the profession is
like incredibly exciting to see like sort of new perspectives
on like an age old art form. And I think

(17:55):
like one of the things that gives me hope in work,
but in general, because I think we can, I'll say
it's been We've had some difficult ears seeing people like
show up, seeing people take on the challenge that they're
kind of afraid of, like when something's too big, you know,
showing up to the MET was very nerve wracking for me,
and it's you know, I still day to day it's huge.

(18:18):
But seeing new people start at the MET, seeing my students,
some of whom now work at the met to show
up and they say this is big and this is scary,
but I'm gonna do it anyway, and I'm gonna try.
That's that's what gives me hope and what an inspirational
way for us to end here. Thank you so much
for giving us this very special view of what happens

(18:39):
backstage at the Metropolitan Opera when it comes to wardrobes
and costumes and everything that goes with it. Thank you
so much, Stephanie Spangler, thank you, thank you very much.
I love the opera and I loved learning behind the

(18:59):
states grits from Stephanie Spangler. There are three things I
took from that conversation. First, it's impressive to learn about
all the work that goes on backstage or an opera.
I was fascinated by Stephanie's anecdotes about performers rushing through
quick changes, throwing off costumes, having dressers help them into

(19:23):
new outfits, and all working together like a well oiled machine. Second,
we can all learn from Stephanie's tracking methods for complex tasks.
Color coded charts, it seems, are the way to go. Finally,
Stephanie reminds us never to lose our sense of awe

(19:44):
at the opportunities we've been given. She's still amazed that
she's working at the MET, and her feelings of gratitude
help her do her immensely demanding job. Tune in next
time to learn about our next Cheered Woman and why
she is one of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear.

(20:06):
Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between
the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with
support from founding partner PNG Have a Great Day,