Costume Wonders of Max Archimedes Levitt

In this month’s Q&A, early career member Max Archimedes Levitt shares his journey from aspiring actor to successful costume designer and director.

What sparked your passion for design?

Max: I applied to 12 undergraduate schools as an actor. I didn’t really know what I wanted as an actor, just that I wanted to be seen. I got into none of the schools I applied to as an actor.

It was at this moment that I realized, “I don’t want to audition again, and I don’t really have the drive to pursue this. I’m really not interested in this feeling of rejection that as an actor I’ll have to do millions more times in my life.”

So, I went to a school that gave me the best offer of a BA in theatre. My first class in theatre that had nothing to do with acting was called “visual imagination” with Cathy Norgren at University of Buffalo. I would credit this class with changing my life and helping me realize that I can take the things I’ve been doing for years that I didn’t think had any application to theatre, and I can utilize them.

It became a passion entirely by accident. I think getting rejected from acting school was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Is there a medium that you favor?

I’m a heavy dealer in Photoshop. Not just Photoshop painting, but also Photoshop collage. There’s nothing that gives me greater control over the conversational medium. I favor fabric collage as well. I see fabric as a lot more than what we’re constructing clothing out of.

When I’m making clothing I feel like I’m painting with fabric. Every little thing can shift and have detail in ways that you can’t get away with in fashion, modern dress, and even historical dress.

How would you describe your personal style?

I’m very young so it’s hard to put a stamp on where my aesthetic is. It’s so dependent on the show. What I seem to do regularly is extreme layering. I like classic color pallets with internally clashing patterns laid over with striking lines and stylized details that feel like they’ve been drawn onto the person.

Tell me about your time as a designer in Poland?

It was amazing! I went to Poland in 2012 and 2013. In 2012 I directed a piece called Silence which got fantastic reviews. There was only one spoken sentence on stage, the rest was this sort of schizophrenic jumbled soundscape. A girl who had been taken off her medication was experiencing the side effects of her new medication. The audience wasn’t privy to this because it was postmodern work. I don’t give much away to the audience. I expect everybody to come up with their own reality to the visual imagery I’m presenting.

From there I went to the Polish Shakespeare Festival. They’re artistically open wonderful inviting people over there. It’s just a different culture. They were very willing to take a really young person and give me a lot of opportunities because my ideas were new to them, something that I think scares a lot of people. That fear for them was the exciting part of having a new artist.

What career advice have you been given that has stuck with you?

Do work that interests you first, regardless of what monetary opportunities present themselves. Choose the work that’s most interesting to you and the place that you’ll grow the fastest. Nobody chose theatre and art to make their lives actively worse. If we’re going to do this torturous activity, we should do the torturous activity that excites us the most.

How has USITT played a role in your life?

I did the Young Designer’s Forum at USITT 2016. That was an incredible opportunity. I got a job out of it designing at La MaMa, a show that opened at the beginning of December with Nic Ularu, the Romanian scenographer and is head of the design program at University of South Carolina. I met him at the Young Designers Forum and am now costume designing for him, so it’s been very direct how USITT has affected my life.

The most magical part of the Young Designer’s Forum was getting to see these people that I’ve met at different summer stocks, at graduate school, and my undergrad and they were all together at once and we got to share our success.

What does your career mean to you?

I do a lot of drag, I write, I direct, but my degree is in costume design. Having that degree in costume design means a lot more than being a costume designer. I ended up choosing a degree in costume design because it propelled me to be the next great designer/director. Somebody that could see a visual image, produce it, and then have the visual image be the center focus of the story. I just want to make living paintings.