When going to the movie theater on a Friday night, you probably don’t want Bill Black to accompany you.
“My friends hate seeing movies with me,” Black, associate department head of costume design at UT, said. “A zipper on a dress from a time before zippers existed will catch my eye and I’ll start thinking, ‘Well, why did they make that choice?’ And I’ll stop focusing on (the movie).”
For Black, who first came to UT “moments out of graduate school” as the head of Clarence Brown Theatre’s Costume Shop in 1977, the importance of congruent costuming is everything. It’s what he has built his career around.
“I believe that a really excellent design is one that nobody notices,” he said. “It’s so right that you don’t even think about what the person is wearing because it’s just natural.”
This principle — that costumes designed for theatrical productions should themselves be inconspicuous — is an interesting contradiction, and one that matches Black’s own personality.
“I’ve always been a kind of person who didn’t want to be focal,” he said. “I wanted to blend in. One thing that draws people to the theatre is the ability to hide from themselves and be someone else; it’s an opportunity to hide behind a character.”
When teaching his Introduction to Costume Design class (Theatre 242), the character played by the self-proclaimed “shy-ish” Black is decidedly outspoken. Often seen sporting a colorful name tag spelling out “Bill” in ribbon-like letters, he infuses his class with games and real-world experience at Clarence Brown.
“His kids work with us here in the costume shop and then also on crews with us for shows,” Melissa Caldwell-Weddig, costume shop manager and Black’s colleague for six years, said. “They learn skills in class that they take and use here, working with professionals.”
Caldwell-Weddig said Black’s true “volunteer spirit” continues to make him a valuable asset to Clarence Brown’s costume department.
“He is really helpful at every level,” she said. “He does amazing work for his own shows and then is always happy to help with whatever other shows are going on, as well.”
In total, Black has designed the costumes for more than 300 productions in his 38-year-run at Clarence Brown.
“I feel like I’ve been in college for the last 45 years,” he said. “This is the only real job I’ve ever had.”
During his time at UT, he’s seen campus and student life transform. While he joked that the students “keep getting younger and younger and younger,” the university has seemingly morphed before his eyes.
“All this used to be old homes,” he gestured toward the area surrounding the office of Development and Alumni Affairs. “Hodges used to be only for undergraduates and was unfinished. On the then-top floor, there was a staircase leading to nowhere.”
Today, he believes the university and its students have been filled with a “new energy.”
“We’re not so much the sleepy southern institution that we used to be,” he said. “Athletics still rule the campus, but we’re more publicly available.”
When not presiding over Clarence Brown, Black brings his expertise to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, a place where he believes the mountains are “a different kind of beautiful than the ones here.”
“I went there thinking it was a one-time gig and have been there every season for the last 23 years,” Black said. “So all May and June, I live in Cedar City, Utah. It sits right in the center of the Grand Circle, which is a 100 mile-radius circle that encompasses seven national parks. I love it.”
Whether surrounded by the red clay of East Tennessee or the red rock of Utah, Black’s primary objective is, and has always been, utilizing his craft to communicate a greater truth.
“I’m a storyteller,” he said. “I think stories are one of the most important things about being human; we express what it means to be human by the stories we tell. And I think clothing helps tell that story.”
