www.montanaleviblanco.com/the-death-of-the-last-black-man-in-the-whole-entire-world/
Montana Levi Blanco
“The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World” by Suzan–Lori Parks
To outfit the characters in Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, which Ben Brantley called, “a fever dream from which there is truly no waking,” Mr. Blanco explored African-American archetypes and caricatures, creating haunting collages that he made into sketches. From those sketches, he bought and built costumes that brought the past explicitly into the present.
Mr. Blanco’s job, as he sees it, is “to figure out how best to tell the story and how to make it beautiful.” After reading a script, he’ll begin to visualize a character, often with just a single garment or accessory, like the blue-green motorcycle jacket for Eddie Van Halen in the Atlantic Theater Company’s current production of “Eddie and Dave.”
He isn’t much of a tailor. “Nobody wants me to be doing a hem,” he said. Instead he’s a conceptualist who approaches clothing as adornment, as artifact, as potential signifiers of ambition, anxiety, desire.
From college on, he’s had a particular interest in exploring how people in less affluent communities show their style. “I feel like I’m participating in this long history of people of color who use what’s available to create something beautiful and new,” he said.
Costumier 