Costume: Boy Willie and Lymon (sketch)

Boy Willie is one of the main characters in this play (as you will see later in my character analysis). So I needed him to stand out. I chose to put him in a cotton shirt that was entirely white to draw the eye. I also gave him suspenders that held his pants up really high, which fit right in with that time period. Most boys and men wore them, especially in the working class. Boy Willie enters the play in is work clothes, since he went straight from picking watermelons to driving to the house, which took two days (Mississippi to Pittsburgh), in a pickup truck with Lymon.

Boy Willie is described as such: “BOY WILLIE is thirty years old. He has an infectious grin and a boyishness that is apt for his name. He is brash and impulsive, talkative and somewhat crude in speech and manner.” So I wanted to let the outfit breathe. I thought overalls would be too constricting for Boy Willie, although that would give him a boyish touch, so maybe in the second act. However, I like this outfit because it lets Boy Willie move around quickly and with energy, because he does tend to move around a lot in the play, always pestering someone about something.

In contrast with Boy Willie, Lymon is supposed to be straightforward and disarming when he speaks. I wanted his silhouette to look broader, like a tower. I like the stripes on his cotton shirt too, because that makes him even taller. I would put him in suspenders, except he has to put on a suit on stage in Act 2, and I’m not sure how that would work. I figured he’d have to wear pants and a shirt that are easily removable for that scene. Also, I wanted him to look a little less kept than Boy Willie because he is supposed to be drawn to the suit he later changes into. Maybe what he’s used to is totally different than the suit that is being offered to him, which makes buying it that much more powerful. On the other hand, maybe I could put him in a button-up, since a lot of workers wore those too and also because that would show he was always a bit on the classier side. Lymon would finally complete his ideal self if he bought the suit. However, another side of me says that Lymon can’t look that good because he never had luck with the ladies back in Mississippi, so why would he know? OH! THE SUIT! That’s my thought process of how I came up with these two characters outfits for the play, or at least for some of it.