[Music] approach child and face your destiny I see your future and it is seeing Percy Jackson the musical these are some of the costumes designed by Ivon El Miranda for the Lightning Thief the Percy Jackson musical that recently played at the first age Children's Theater next month Milwaukee will see her work at the Milwaukee reps production of Nina Simone for women but local residents have seen her work before in August Wilson seven guitars at the rep and in The Hobbit at first [Music] stage within the past few years she has been the costume designer for dozens of shows across the country bringing to life her childhood love of fashion and design I always since the age of like 12 would just draw clothes I would try to style my own Barbies because I couldn't afford you know I couldn't afford the clothes um and I would also try to like build you know their own houses and everything like that and as I grew up I ended up going to a magnet school called Booker T Washington High School for the performing in Visual Arts in Dallas Texas and uh a teacher was like you should apply because I was very good at drawing um so I got in there but I wasn't really doing what I was supposed to do I would just go to all my fun classes and never really take my you know Health social studies very seriously so I ended up going to a regular high school and my grades weren't as good just because it was something that I really wasn't interested in and I was trying to figure out how I would pay for college and you know have something to fall back on and so at the time I was reading through magazines and they had those little postcards in there like for the Navy the Coast Guard the Marines so I sent all of them off and the Marines were the first ones to call me back they must have been very desperate they were like hey are you still interested so they actually sent a recruiter to my school he pulled me out I did the asbab test and then I got shipped off right after graduation after 5 years in the Marine Corps she traded her combat boots for a career in theater opera film and television and earning her MFA and stage design from the medal School of Arts from Southern University and the BFA in fashion design from the University of North Texas there has been an increase in the number of roles for people of color orange stage but that has not resulted in a significant increase of jobs for people of color behind the scenes at least not yet I really wasn't aware of that until I got into theater because I don't come from theater and so that was was very eye openening when I actually started working how many people who were like me who weren't behind the scenes and especially when there's telling stories about people like us that was really crazy to see that there really wasn't any people like me behind the scenes to give nuances to the design um and it's just been really jarring but also it's just been really exciting because when I get to work with actors I can advocate for them and a lot of times they're just really happy that someone like me is there when it comes to costumes because there's always issues that arise when it comes to like their hair or their makeup or what they're asked to do um by a designer who doesn't look like them um so I'm always very um um cautious and just trying to make my performance comfortable and um advocating for certain things that I see that aren't right when it happens behind the S uh or behind closed doors and yeah so that's that's I I hope that we see more out there I do um try to advocate for having Assistance or just talking to students uh I actually finally got a teaching job in Minnesota that I'm going to be starting in the fall um because that is a real big passion of mine because getting to this career was very difficult because when you're not exposed to theater when you're young you don't know that it's a job I was exposed through it through film and television so that's the lens that I wanted to go to and I actually got the opportunity to do that and decided that I didn't want to do it at that moment in my life because of my family and um just the politics behind trying to get into the Union there's a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to doing this professionally um as in getting into the Union it costs money um you have to have a certain amount of like credits of what you worked on and a lot of people aren't aware of that and they don't have access to that and they don't even know that there's a union for us um so these were things I found out by having to go to grad school and if I hadn't I wouldn't have known how to basically get into this career path are you optimistic that things will get better oh yes I am I'm very much him um I believe it needs to start though in the school level which is why I'm a big um uh believer in the teaching environment which is why I want to be one because if it wasn't for my teachers just guiding me along the way I don't know exactly how I would have been here because a lot of the times like your family is like oh that's not a real job you know they don't support you they're well-meaning but they're like I don't think that's something that you should do or that you're going to make it at and a lot of the times it's the teachers who are giving you the re resources and just the knowledge of being like no you can do this so yeah I I'm very much optimistic if we don't claim our real names we allow ourselves to be erased how is a song going to change anything it's an [Music] an but I won't be blue [Music]