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This week’s guest is Costume Designer Jess Goldstein. Jess’s first Broadway design was in 1980 and he has 35 years worth of stories, anecdotes and behind the scenes tidbits from his life in the theatre. He tells us about the unique experiences costuming some of our greatest performers including Al Pacino, Tyne Daly, John Lithgow, Martin Short and Kevin Kline. He shares insight into his design process for ‘Newsies’, ‘On the Town’ and the upcoming ‘Ever After.’ Jess and Cory chat about why designing for film and TV is so different than theatre, how his sketching process has evolved down to the type of colored pencils he uses, and his teaching philosophy with the next generation of Costume Designers at Yale. AND hear the completely by chance way that ‘Jersey Boys’ became a part of his life and the personal and professional effects of being attached to the holy grail of Broadway musicals, the unstoppable mega-hit!

Jess Goldstein’s 35 year career on Broadway includes designs for On the Town, Mothers and Sons, Orphans, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Columnist, Newsies, High, The Merchant of Venice (with Al Pacino, Tony Nomination), Next Fall, The Homecoming, Cymbeline, The Apple Tree (with Kristin Chenoweth), Martin Short’s Fame Becomes Me, Jersey Boys, Julius Caesar (with Denzel Washington), Brooklyn Boy, Good Vibrations, The Rivals (Tony Award), King Lear (with Kevin Kline), Henry IV (Tony Nomination), Golda’s Balcony, Sight Unseen, Enchanted April (Drama Desk nomination), Take Me Out, Judgment At Nuremberg, Proof, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Drama Desk nomination), The Rainmaker, Tintypes, Sweet Sue, The Most Happy Fella, Night Must Fall, Inherit The Wind, Black Comedy and A Streetcar Named Desire.

Off-Broadway: Saved, Stuff Happens, The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Persians, Tea At Five, Ten Unknowns, Dinner With Friends, Gemini, The Mineola Twins (Drama Desk nomination), Far East, Corpus Christi, The Uneasy Chair, Communicating Doors, The Dying Gaul, How I Learned To Drive, Sight Unseen, The Substance of Fire, The End Of The Day, When She Danced (Drama Desk nomination), Collected Stories, A Question Of Mercy, 3 Hotels, Other People’s Money and Buried Child.

Regional: The Public, Lincoln Center Theatre, La Jolla, Old Globe, Guthrie, Goodman, Goodspeed, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Mark Taper, McCarter, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre, Williamstown. Opera: Il Trittico (Metropolitan), The Pirates of Penzance (Glimmerglass Opera), The End of the Affair (Houston Grand Opera), Lucia Di Lammermoor (Washington Opera), Dead Man Walking (Opera Pacific, NYCO), Agrippina and Of Mice and Men (Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera), La Rondine (Opera Theatre of St. Louis). Film: Love! Valour! Compassion!, The Substance Of Fire, A Walk On The Moon.

Winner of the 1999 Lucille Lortel Award for his work on The Mineola Twins and The Uneasy Chair. 2002 Backstage West Garland Award and San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award for Compleat Female Stage Beauty at The Old Globe. Graduate and current faculty at the Yale School of Drama.

Photo by Stephen Joseph from “Broadway Revealed: Behind the Theatre Curtain”