Ray Diffen Stage Clothes

About the Book

Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Katherine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand and Alec Guinness are just a few of the hundreds of actors costumed by Ray Diffen during his career of more than fifty years in the US, UK and Canada. Working for a cadre of talented collaborators—producers, directors, designers and actors—Ray and his team of craftsmen created stage clothing for the best known Shakespeare Festivals, spectacular musical theatre productions, innovative dance companies, and epic stagings of the world’s best opera at the Met in New York City. Behind the scenes—in rehearsals, dressing rooms, and in that most intimate of settings, the fitting room—the actors’ lives are revealed, as they try on the skins of the characters they will portray. Despite tensions flaring in the crucible of theatrical pre-production, Ray Diffen and company stayed on task to implement the collaborators’ shared vision to create memorable performances.

About the Author

Ray Diffen, stage costumer extraordinaire, belongs to the tribe of artisans who invent, fashion and produce every dress, wig, coat, handbag, shoe, helmet, hat, necklace, bra, pair of tights, corset, petticoat, hoop skirt, farthingale, medieval armor, chain mail, pumpkin breeches, ruff —mostly by hand, making one’s own patterns, finding appropriate materials, inventing methods and making these garments and properties of mystical fabrics and in mysterious ways to beguile the theatregoer and make him wonder how it was done. His story begins in his mother’s dressmaking shop in England, progresses through years of heading workshops, supervising costume production, designing and teaching, and ends as Resident Costume Designer at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. Since retired to Eastbourne, on the southern coast of England, Ray continues his craft for family and friends, and writes about his life in the theatre.