Wardrobe justice curriculum and workshops
Wardrobe Justice is a set of guiding principles, but it is also a larger educational curriculum composed of eight primary units described below.
This project is currently seeking additional funding, and any suggestions for additional grants or funding opportunities is welcomed. If you are interested in contributing to the development of the curriculum through your feedback and expertise, please reach out via the contact form!
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"There is no neutral body from which our bodies deviate." -Aurora Levins Morales
Commercial garments are built around the idea of a neutral body. This unit challenges this idea and explores how to build a measuring/fitting experience that feels comfortable and collaborative rather than clinical or judgmental.
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While we usually think of trauma-informed care as relating strictly to medicine, dressing and undressing is a form of care that is intimate and vulnerable.
Learn how to assess, stage, and adapt facilitated changes to support an actor's bodily autonomy and privacy.
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Anti-adultism: Children are not just future adults. They are people in their own right, who deserve to be treated without prejudice. This section uses the life-course model, Young-Bruehl's Childism, and FIlament Theatre's model of anti-adultist artmaking to support young actors with age-appropriate communication and identity development through costumes. Explores educational and professional contexts and the unique needs of each.
Abuse prevention and institutional policy: Most institutional policy around working with minors does not address the specific privacy and touch requirements of costuming or dressing. This section guides policy development and implementation for both administrators and costumers, and encourages costumers to be considered mandated reporters.
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Wardrobe workers are uniquely vulnerable to sexual misconduct because of a combination of misogyny, limited workplace power, and exposure to nudity as part of the job. Working with people undressing is not blanket consent.
Learn how to build safer dressing interactions, recognize common misbehavior in costume settings, and respond if it happens on your production.
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The dressing room is the backstage haven before and after the vulnerable work of performing. Learn how to create specific work practices to support performers and follow AEA requirements.
Specific topics: filming and social media, breastfeeding, and aspects of cultural, racial, and disability competency.
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Costume workers encounter eating disorders, signs of illness, and hidden disability. We are confided in about the production, unsafe conditions, body image and trauma.
How can we protect the performers in our care? This section guides how to respond to these situations, support people in mental health crisis, and when to seek support.
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Hair, makeup, and garment care involve a wide variety of products, and stocking a dressing room is a major aspect of costume work.
Learn how to build a dressing room purchase list that minimizes allergens and scent-sensitivity triggers with specific product recommendations and things to avoid.
Talks reimbursement policies, haircuts, and "bring your own shoes."
Also provides resources for "bridging the gap" of hair and makeup supplies for BIPOC (see bridgingthegapintheatre.com for more)
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How do you navigate gender-divided dressing room policies in a way that avoids alienating trans and gender nonconforming performers?
Identifies tangible methods to set up gender-inclusive dressing rooms, as well as tools for adapting gendered language about bodies and garments.
More about the Wardrobe Justice project
While led by Auden Granger, this project is deeply indebted to those who have been doing this work long before me, particularly disabled Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). It is especially guided by the Disability Justice Movement, Erin Gilmer’s explorations on Trauma-Informed Care, Not in Our House Chicago, We See You White American Theatre, Filament Theatre’s anti-adultist art-making practice, Collective Fashion Justice, Bridging the Gap in Theatre, Behind the Scenes Mental Health Initiative, and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union’s foundational organizing for garment worker safety.
The curriculum is built around interviews, teaching, and feedback from people with a broad range of lived experiences, diverse identities, and roles — activists, academics, teaching artists, costume designers, stage managers, costume technology instructors, social workers, directors, tattoo artists, arts administrators, hair/makeup artists, costume technicians, stunt performers, theatre students, musicians, actors, and people who wear clothes.
Funding and support
This material was developed in part through a 2024 3Arts/Bodies of Work residency.
It has received significant support from the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability and Human Development department and Disability Cultural Center, as well as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Art Therapy department and Disability Culture Activism Lab.
The Wardrobe Justice Project is still in development and seeking additional funding opportunities.
Host a wardrobe justice workshop!
Interested in learning more about the Wardrobe Justice curriculum and workshops? Email me directly at audengranger@gmail.com or using this form.