Costume Designer Yuan Yuan Liang Comes to T2 with an Impressive Resume and a Passion for Theatre

Yuan Yuan Liang’s costume design for T2’s Tiger Style! used bright colors and cultural knowledge to convey tone and place.

Yuan Yuan Liang—costume designer for T2’s current production, Tiger Style!, by Mike Lew, directed by Chongren Fan—has an incredible resume: The Shanghai-born artist was a graphic designer and concept artist for internationally-known advertising agency Ogilvy prior to coming to the United States. She also served as a celebrity stylist and costume designer for Shanghai Media Group, the largest television company in China. When she moved to the United States to get her Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, she wasted no time in finding success in this country, as well. She has created costume designs for the ABC television series Promised Land, the movies Monkey King and The Bee, and the show Nightwalk at The Huntington Library. She has also worked for the Walt Disney Imagineering Blue Sky Project as a concept designer. 

All of that exceptional experience — and Liang says working at TheatreSquared has been a highlight. 

“It just makes me feel so peaceful being here – I wish that all my work was this easy. I have worked with so many theaters, and this is the first theater I feel I really love. I feel like everybody is not just professional but also passionate with whatever they're doing. And this is something that's so important to me, because it makes me trust theater again. For a while,  I almost didn’t trust theater anymore — financially, a lot of theaters are not running powerfully enough. Even when I work for LA theaters that have so many employees, [you get] people just coming for a paycheck, they're not passionate. Being here, I’m just really moved by the passion.”

And, she says, working with T2 resident designer and costume shop manager Ruby Kemph has been a real thrill. 

“I love Ruby so much,” says Liang, the smile in her voice obvious over the phone. “I feel like she's another me, because she can read my mind. If I say half of something, she's like, ’Okay, I got it. Do you mean this?’, and I say, ‘How do you read my mind?’ We work together so perfectly. We have no issues with anybody. We're so happy working together. We giggle, laughing all the time. The whole process is just the easiest work I can ever do.”

Moving from Shanghai to the United States gave Liang a personal perspective on the Tiger Style! script, which tells the story of siblings Albert and Jennifer, two first generation Asian Americans struggling to find their place in the world. 

“For example, I think that color is very important. I give every character a color tone, and they don’t stray too far away from their color tone when they’re changing into different things: Albert is always blue, Jennifer is always in red, and then the other characters stay with their tones.” — Yuan Yuan Liang

“I lived in L.A. for seven years, and I grew up in Shanghai,” she explains. “So I feel like I have a connection with these people's feelings. First of all, it's such a great script; it makes me giggle all the time. And I think it's something that really will work for the audience. As a designer, my point of view is always like, ‘What can we do to keep the audience sitting there patiently and enjoying the show and still come back after intermission?’ Because, sometimes, you know, the audience doesn't always come back after intermission. So how do we make it more attractive and make them understand what’s going on? And then also, what's the Asian world we should establish to the audience, that they get it right away? ‘Oh, that's why they talk like that! That’s why they dress like that!’”

An additional challenge with Tiger Style!—the show’s numerous quick costume changes and five actors playing 15 characters.

“The whole show has more than 30 looks involved and includes at least 17 quick changes which would only allow our cast to have 10 -15 seconds to finish these quick changes in between the scenes,” says Liang. “For example, Albert, in Act 2, Scene 3, only has 10 seconds to walk to the back stage and take off the shoes and put on the prisoner socks and then put on the prisoner uniform.”

The costumer, as Liang describes it, has to focus on how their costume design will pop on stage—in this case, Chika Shimizu’s fantastic all-white set with its flashy LED floors—as well as how the lighting design (created Yi-Chung Chen, whose clever lighting design easily conveys both the wacky comedy-verging-on-fantasy parts of the show, as well as the more realistic, heartfelt scenes) affects the hues and the impact of the colors and fabrics Liang has chosen. And, of course, she had to work with the director on what aspects of the characters’ personalities would be reflected in her design. 

“First, costumes absolutely telegraph social status,” she explains. “For example, I think that color is very important. I give every character a color tone, and they don’t stray too far away from their color tone when they’re changing into different things: Albert is always blue, Jennifer is always in red, and then the other characters stay with their tones. I feel like color, the choice of color, influences the audience's feeling for each character. This is a comedy, so I put the characters into really strong, bright colors, so that the moment they’re standing on stage in front of the audience, the audience feels like, ‘Oh, okay, I understand this is a comedy, because there are a lot of happy colors there.’ But we also have villains — so how do we isolate those villains so that as soon as they stand on stage, we understand they’re not  friendly people? 

“The costume designer actually has the privilege to make the first impression of how the audience will receive the character, giving them the very first clue as to who these people are.” 

Liang’s extensive knowledge of traditional Chinese dress was instrumental to the show, especially when the two main characters travel to China to explore their roots. 

“I gave Albert and Jennifer really traditional Chinese garments,” she notes. “I feel like those things are important to me, because I watch a lot of shows that were designed by Western designers—they pull Chinese garments by what they understand, but they don’t really understand. Each color means a different thing, and each pattern, each bit of embroidery, means different things. I remember watching a show where a woman went to a wedding, and she’s wearing a traditional Chinese funeral garment. It’s so beautiful—I guess the designer didn’t know those patterns were for funerals only. When I watched it, I got goosebumps down my back. I thought, ‘I have to do the correct thing for this production, because I want to bring the real culture to people.”

Other places Liang and director Chongren Fan signaled the traditional Asian cultural clothing and behavior was in dressing the Chens, Jennifer and Albert’s parents. They’re adorned in matching argyle cardigans, since, Liang says, it’s common for Asian couples to wear matching outfits.

“And for moms, their kids coming home is a big event. They like to do their hair and makeup and put on jewelry. So, in this show, when Mom comes out of the door, she’s putting on earrings, because she wants to present her best to the children, so the children know that to dress up and present their best version of themselves is important.” 

On the day we spoke, our in-person interview had been canceled because of the snowstorm that hit Fayetteville that week. I asked Liang—who is used to the California weather—if the colder climate was bothering her. No, she said, she loved just looking out of the window, feeling peaceful, and getting work done. 

“People say that if you want work to be like an endless vacation, you have to do something that you’re passionate about,” she muses. “I think TheatreSquared really demonstrates that, because I think everyone here loves what they’re doing.”