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Entertainment Design, October 1, 2002
The word "multifaceted" comes to mind. Hoffman's a designer with a heavy-duty art and literature background...Citing her literary background, Harman, now artistic director at Atlanta's Actor's Express, says, "I find her an invaluable collaborator not only for what she brings as a costume or set designer, but what she helps me discover about the text that I happen to be working on. She...thinks like a director and it helps me visualize. Her definition of research goes far beyond the picture collection at the library; it's more wide-ranging contextual research." Harman continues.
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The New York Times, Monday, October 22, 2001
Miranda Hoffman's festive costumes alone are enough to make you smile. Suzanne (Rinne Groff) is in her white wedding ensemble: a strapless bustier, leggings and a sheer overskirt. The men are dressed in various combinations of leggings, elegant coats, chunky high heels and garters. There are a lot of midriffs showing. Target Margin Theater's production of The Marriage of Figaro is, in the company's tradition, deliberately wacky.
The New Yorker, October 29, 2001
Miranda Hoffman's bawdily elegant costumes set the tone for the production right away, with a combination of modern and eighteenth-century elements which parallels the script's similarly successful amalgamation of a classic, poetic translation and modern, slangier language.
Entertainment Design online, January 1, 2002
A recent graduate of the Yale Drama School (class of 2000), costume designer Miranda Hoffman made a big splash on the downtown New York theatre scene with her whimsical designs for Target Margin's Crazy Day or The Marriage of Figaro..."We looked at the world within the play, and found it to be very decadent, and very erotic," says Hoffman. "Power was also very important, and all the relationships were a little turned. It's messy in a beautiful way and I tried to express that in the costumes. They're colorful, playful, and sexy, yet just a little bit dirty"..."The men were as ornamental as the women in the world we created," she says. "The women navigate the world better in the play, so they are more surefooted. The Count is a clumsy character wearing high heels with jewels; not very practical"...To accent this world gone awry, Hoffman invented a tasty color palette she refers to as "bruised fruit"..."Everybody in the play is like fruit that's a little too ripe."..."Everything was bought," she notes. "There was no shop to create anything for this production." So she stalked thrift shops and department stores looking for unusual items. Hoffman also designed the hair, buying cheap wigs and styling them to add to each character's persona. "It's low-rent, but that's part of the appeal," she says. "Also, if the makeup got on the clothes, that was okay, even desirable. It makes it a little less like a museum piece"...The end result is a look of trashy elegance that went hand in hand with Herskovits' fanciful yet intelligent approach to the play.
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