“One of my favorite parts of working on a show is during the fitting, when an actor puts on their costume,” Loyce Arthur says. “You can see the transformation in their body and their attitude as everything begins to connect. It’s an aha moment. I just love watching them change and become a character right before my eyes.”
Loyce Arthur is an associate professor of Design in the Department of Theatre Arts, coordinator of the Certificate in Social Justice & Performing Arts, and the costume designer for the UI’s production of In the Red and Brown Water. She has designed costumes for over 100 productions throughout her career, both in the U.S. and abroad. She will be retiring from the University of Iowa theatre faculty after this production and semester.
Loyce was born in Philadelphia, but her family moved to Grenada in the West Indies when she was an infant. They came back to Philadelphia when she was ten and, eventually, she would earn her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA degree from NYU.
“I’d always been involved in theatre and done costumes, but I didn’t know it was a profession until college,” Arthur explains her early interest in design. “I was that kid who was making dioramas, figuring out what people were wearing or what they ate and where they lived. I just enjoyed the world building or world re-creation. I love storytelling, and what we wear contributes to that storytelling.”
After NYU, she designed costumes for the Philadelphia Theatre Caravan that would tour children’s theatre festivals and venues all over the Tri-State area. During ten years with that company, Arthur taught a costume design course at UPenn—beginning a rewarding teaching and professional career that led her to SUNY Stony Brook, around the world, and later brought her here to the University of Iowa.
“One of the reasons I came to Iowa was because of the focus on the arts,” says Loyce, who joined the Iowa theatre faculty in 1998. “Here, the arts are seen as equal to other kinds of scholarship.”
At Iowa, she has created costumes for many shows including Reefer Madness, American Idiot, and The Magic Flute. “One memorable show has to be Metamorphoses,” Arthur says, recalling working on the production of Mary Zimmermann’s play with colleagues John Cameron (Professor Emeritus) and Bryon Winn (Professor of Design). “John directed, and Bryon built the set. We had a 40-foot pool in Thayer Theatre, which posed some interesting challenges in terms of costume design. We had actors emerging from and swimming in the pool, so the costumes had to work in and out of the water. It was such a fun project.”
“Loyce makes it look effortless,” Bryon Winn describes his experience working with Arthur, “she has such a command of visual languages, textures, fabrics, cultures, color and the human form. I’ve worked with Loyce for 25 years and you could not ask for a better colleague.”
Arthur has relished the opportunity to mentor young design students and cultivate their skills. “In the design department, we always say we can teach all the techniques,” Arthur explains, “but we can’t teach the spark. It’s so exciting when a student starts making creative leaps, putting ideas together in three-dimensional forms. I love watching them explore, persevere, and grow during their time here.”
Arthur has also been active in the Iowa City arts community—for example, spearheading the Iowa City Carnival Community Engagement Project.
The project began when Arthur was approached by the Stanley Museum of Art (then the UI Museum of Art) to do a faculty show. “I wanted to do it around Trinidadian and Brazilian-style Carnival,” says Loyce, who has done extensive research on Carnival traditions. In 2004 she presented her work on Trinidad Carnival at a symposium in Santiago de Cuba and she has researched carnival traditions in the UK, Toronto Canada, Rio de Janeiro Brazil, the Netherlands, Trinidad, and around the world.
In June 2008, the museum and its contents were permanently evacuated during major flooding of the Iowa River, and plans for the faculty show had to be postponed.
“I started thinking,” Arthur says, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a Carnival parade here?” She teamed up with Armando Duarte, a UI professor of dance and researcher of Brazilian popular culture, Andre Harrington, Professor in Costume Design at UC San Bernardino, and Carnival designers Clary Slangy from the UK and Jamie Cezario from Brazil, along with local artists and students.
“We didn’t want it to be a pageant. We needed to get the spirit of Carnival,” Arthur explains. “For me that spirit comes from creating these garments. So, it was important for us to bring the community together and make it a collective project. We came up with the perfect tagline—Iowans Become Works of Art.” Iowa City’s Carnival parade happened annually from 2013-2020 as part of the city’s Iowa Arts Festival.
In collaboration with Lisa Schlesinger, professor and co-director of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Mary Beth Easley, associate professor of directing and chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, Arthur helped establish and now coordinates the UI Certificate in Social Justice and the Performing Arts. The certificate allows performing arts students the opportunity to learn methods and practices for social justice-focused and community engaged creative work, customizing their studies towards their own advocacy interests with the help and guidance of faculty mentors.
“Working with Loyce is fantastic,” says Jason Vernon, a second-year student in theatre arts who is pursuing a certificate in social justice and performing arts. “She’s very receptive to my interests, but she also knows how to challenge me. She asks the questions I need to get to the next level or think about engagement through a wider lens.”
In the spring semester of 2024, Arthur created costumes for Tarell Alvin McCraney’s In the Red and Brown Water, directed by Caroline Clay, assistant professor of acting.
“I’m so glad Caroline and I got the chance to work together before I leave,” Arthur says.
In the Red and Brown Water revolves around a young woman named Oya who has opportunity and aspirations, but because of circumstances she is not able to fulfill her promise. Arthur calls the story “a slice of life in an African American community, but it’s heightened because the playwright gives the characters the names of Orishas, or divine spirits, from the Yoruba religion.”
“There are little things in the costumes that reference the Orishas but not in an overt way,” Arthur explains her approach to the costumes. “For me, the costumes are there to help the actor understand their character and, for the audience, the costumes help reinforce the character. We spend an hour and half looking at these characters, and the costumes can really contribute to the way the audience sees and relates to the story.”
In the Red and Brown Water will be Loyce’s final production as a faculty member in the Department of Theatre Arts before she embarks on her next adventure.
“I’d consider the next phase more of a redirection than a retirement,” Arthur says about the next phase of her career.
In July, she will travel to Mozambique for eight weeks as part of an eco-volunteering marine conservation project working with scientists who study humpback whales—followed by a trip to South Africa to do wildlife conservation on a game reserve. Then she’ll head to Indonesia next spring to teach as a Fulbright Scholar.
“I was here for 25 years because it’s a great department,” Arthur says, looking back at her time at the University of Iowa. “It’s full of talented artists, faculty, and students who come together to produce some amazing theater. It has been my privilege and an honor to be part of this department and looking back over 25 years, if you stay in a place that long, it’s got to be a fantastic place to be. It has been one of the best times of my life.”
