Linda Pisano began her involvement in theater as a child actor.
She was the youngest of six children and shy as a child, so her mother enrolled her in a drama therapy class, where Pisano said she blossomed.
“Suddenly you can speak through characters,” she said. “You don’t have to be you.”
Pisano is the head of the Costume Design program and the Design & Technology area in the Department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance. She is a professional designer, working on four to six outside productions a year in addition to the theater season at IU.
Pisano grew up in northern Utah in a home filled with books. She spent her childhood reading, which she said fostered her love of storytelling. Her first role was as a chorus member in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and she said she continued pursuing theater into her university years.
Her first time costuming for a show was for a student-produced play while she was a graduate student. Pisano considered herself an actor, but, after seeing her creations on stage, she said she realized costuming was what she wanted to do with her life.
“I realized this is everything I love to do,” she said. “I’m sort of acting because I’m designing the clothing, so I’m acting vicariously through these characters. I fell passionately in love with the idea of creating costumes, and it changed my future.”
Pisano said she began reading plays, researching characters and painting in her free time. She went on to earn her MFA in costume design at Ohio State University.
Now, Pisano said she finds herself sometimes looking back on her previous works. She said she’s gone back to see a production, still running years after she designed it.
“It helps me see where I’ve come,” she said. “I look at my young self as a student and me as a teacher now, what would I have told myself then. Sometimes I have thought, ‘I wish I could design that again.’ But you’re a different person 15 years later.”
Jonathan Michaelsen, chairperson of the theater department, said Pisano possesses the ability to create rare worlds within a production.
Color can be one of the most powerful elements of design, Pisano said.
“Color is the one area of design that always has some sort of physiological response,” she said. “I find I always try and be empathetic to the characters. I try to imagine what color they would be in their particular situation.”
Emmie Phelps, a second-year graduate student studying costume design, said she sees Pisano as an inspiration.
Phelps said Pisano has an incredible attention to detail. She said she recalled a pocket watch Pisano distressed to show the character had used it often.
Despite her personal success, Pisano said there’s still gender inequality in the theater world.
“Even though a lot of people, socially, will say, ‘Oh, well costuming, isn’t that a female thing?’ And it’s true there may be many women in it, but there’s still more men,” Pisano said. “Gender inequality as far as positions available and roles available is still a problem.”
But it’s also getting better, Pisano said, especially because of more awareness brought about by social media. IU also participated in the Big Ten New Play Initiative, which brought plays with more roles for women to Big Ten university campuses.
As a professional designer, professor and administrator, Pisano said the balance can be difficult, but ultimately she feels grateful.
“One of the things I try to instill in the students is, whatever you do, just be able to wake up and say, ‘I’m doing what I love to do,’” she said. “I have never, ever woken up with a bad attitude toward what I do. I love it.”
