Red Dress for “XSR:DIE!” (2013)
If you’ve been to a Living Black & White™ show, you know that a special treat awaits you at the end! Our Executive Director, Barbara Weinberger, comes on stage with the cast, and she is wearing a spectacular red evening gown.
Our audience tells us that you have to experience it for yourself to understand just how impactful this moment is. Retinas sizzle, eyeballs pop out of their sockets, jaws drop. Why? Because the contrast is so startlingly that even if you know it’s coming, you still gasp at the effect.
As with nearly everything about the Living Black & White(TM) shows, there’s a story behind that! There wasn’t always a red dress moment at the end of each show. One year, though, in the late 1980s, we had an epiphany.
Someone from another arts organization that was in financial trouble asked if they could come on stage and make a direct plea to our audience for donations. We said yes and arranged for them to come onstage right after the curtain call, while the cast was still there.
The representative wasn’t dressed in anything remarkable. He had on a pastel shirt and jeans. But when he walked onstage and stood amongst the cast, the audience gasped! At that moment we realized there was something very special we could do for our audience to make each evening even more memorable.
And so began the red dress demonstration, or as we call it, “the Amazing Color Demonstration (ACD)”. We constructed a “Killer Quiz” form so the audience could guess the murderer’s identity. And we drew names from a bowl of correct quizzes to select someone to win a prize. This was our excuse for getting Barbara on stage after curtain call. The audience loved it!
But the story isn’t over! Believe it or not, the dress wasn’t always red in the beginning. At first it was whatever Barbara happened to be wearing that day. But red clearly got the biggest reaction, so Barbara began wearing red or hot pink dresses or suits.
When we moved to the Eisemann Center in 2006, we somehow knew the knee length outfits that were impressive in our old 150-seat theatre weren’t elegant enough in the new space. So the red dress got an upgrade to a red evening gown! And in 2008, an enterprising young Costume Designer named Aaron Patrick Turner convinced us that the gown should be tailor-made for Barbara, not purchased off the rack.
And so it remains today. The Pegasus collection of tailored red evening gowns grows each year, and each year the audience is treated to that special moment at the end of the show when reality gets turned on its head ever so briefly!
What’s next?
- This year we’re planning a lobby display about “The History of the Red Dress” that shows how they’ve evolved over the years.
- We’re considering a “Red Dress Discount”, where patrons get a discounted ticket if they are wearing red on certain nights.
- Once we have a good collection, we plan to explore charities who could benefit from a donation of red evening gowns. Think how special it would make someone feel if they’ve been down on their luck and for one evening they get to feel like a princess!
Because in the end, that’s the purpose of the red dress: to lift people’s spirits and to make everyone feel a little special. We hope you’ll come to the show and experience that moment with us.