Marianne Custer has a fitting career.

“Costumes are laced up with all the visual elements of a play,” explains Marianne. “You’re telling something unspoken through the clothes.”

Clarence Brown Theatre’s resident designer and head of UT’s MFA design program has been staging costumes for 34 years. “I love to read and draw. Costume design brought all my interests together.”

Marianne’s elemental style uses plastic, metal, curtains; whatever it takes to bring a character to life. “The essence of costume design is to tell a story—to think and interpret,” she says.

The Prague Quadrennial, an international design exhibition, is just one place Marianne’s costumes have garnered acclaim. “I do have a special affinity for my Furie costume from the final play of Oresteia—The Eumenides,” admits Marianne. 

While her grad students work on Richard III this semester, she begins fittings for Major Barbara. “No matter how many productions of Richard III we’ve seen,” Marianne explains, “You have to take the play apart and learn in this moment how to make it mean something.”

And Major Barbara? “It’s a play of ideas. It’s art.”