>> JARED BOWEN: Welcome to Open Studio, WGBH's weekly spotlight on arts and culture from around the region and the nation.

I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio, from Coco Chanel to Mary Todd Lincoln's designer, it's the women who revolutionized fashion.

>> One of the things that I think is very frequently sort of taken for granted is how innovative many of these women designers were and are.

>> BOWEN: Then, a class act delivers a master class.

Tony-winning actor Denis O'Hare joins us.

>> What a massive revelation to say, "I was lied to.

"I am not a good human being.

"I am not all-knowing.

"I am not all-powerful.

I am nothing."

>> BOWEN: And artist and avenger Sabrina Nelson.

>> My superpower is being able to visually communicate how I feel about what's happening in the world.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, we follow the threads to the women who have revolutionized fashion.

That's the focus of a new exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, which features more than 100 pieces spanning 250 years of fashion design.

It's the strange thing about women's fashion-- that for most of its history, it's men who've been the designers, deciding not only what women might wear, but how they wear it.

>> Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't make sense.

>> BOWEN: But this exhibition is the exception.

It's a winding tour through 250 years of the women, as the Peabody Essex Museum proclaims, who revolutionized fashion.

Petra Slinkard is a co-curator.

>> You know, one of the things that I think is very frequently sort of taken for granted is how innovative many of these women designers were and are.

Putting pockets in skirts, the kinds of examples of improvement to a system that women are building on for themselves.

>> BOWEN: Starting, as we find here, in the 1700s, when Marie Antoinette was the queen atop the fashion scene.

>> In regard to silhouette, you know here, a woman's silhouette, even if she's of a diminutive stature, is still taking up almost three times the size of her male counterpart.

>> BOWEN: For well over a century, European women were part of a guild system, where they made the clothes men told them to-- until, in the 1800s, they began to push back.

In the U.S., Elizabeth Keckley was an enslaved woman who purchased her freedom and ultimately fashioned her own success, dressing the upper crust and one very famous figure.

>> She became the in-house dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln.

She became her confidante, and, you know, lived and worked very close with her for many years.

It's her sense of scale and proportion and fit that makes an ensemble like that work on someone of such a short stature, which, you know, I think just speaks to her artistic ability.

>> BOWEN: But for all the stitches and strides, it would take years for the story to change.

>> Morning, Biddy.

>> Morning, Mr. Woodcock.

>> If you've ever seen the movie Phantom Thread, you know, here's this powerful figure, right?

He's sort of larger than life, but he's almost sort of like the conductor.

But if you really look at that film again, you start to see the army of women behind the closed doors who were actually doing the making.

And then you start to see this narrative, you know, play out, that it has for, you know, hundreds of years.

>> BOWEN: But when the alterations came, we saw them.

Like hemlines rising with the tides of change, especially in the 1960s.

>> Women were experiencing a new sense of independence that I think in some way was also experienced earlier in the 1920s, when you saw another moment where hemlines rose and waistlines went away, but that there's this sort of democratization that is taking place in the fashion of the 1960s.

>> BOWEN: And where men had put women in constricting corsets and couture, women like Elsa Schiaparelli and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel let the seams out.

>> It upset Chanel so much that she came out of retirement, and that's where we start to see that boxy Chanel suit really gain in prominence.

And it was in part because I think it was easier to wear.

>> BOWEN: Barreling through the 20th century, Vivienne Westwood turned punk, Rei Kawakubo deconstructed dress, and Katharine Hamnett literally made fashion statements on T-shirts.

>> She's using them as a billboard.

So even if you say nothing, you say so much, you know, with what you've chosen to wear.

>> I do think that it has been one of our great goals to, you know, make very beautiful things that also, you know, you can drive your car and pick up your child.

>> BOWEN: Natalie Chanin is the founder of Alabama Chanin, a fashion and lifestyle company based in Florence, Alabama, where she joined us by Zoom.

Until Chanin came along, Florence was a former textile town time forgot.

How many people work for you?

>> Altogether, a little over 50, 50 people altogether.

So small business.

>> BOWEN: And how many of the 50 people do you know?

>> Uh... all of them.

(laughs) >> BOWEN: Which is important to you.

>> Yes, yes, it is.

>> BOWEN: Chanin's design is fully considered-- from her local employees to her use of organic materials to the garments she hopes will still be worn decades from now.

>> I really do have this philosophy about what we wear being utilitarian, but also, you know, made with beauty and this care for the environment in mind.

>> BOWEN: Moving fashion forward to today, the runway still traffics in gowns, but also now in burqinis and all body types.

Because, Slinkard says, women have fashion all zipped up.

>> What makes women and men different in their designs, that, you know, women are designing from that standpoint of hand, heart, and head, and that it is emotional and that it is, you know, it is, is powerful, but it's powerful because of what it represents.

♪ ♪ >> (screaming) >> (growls) >> Bobby!

>> Oh, oh, oh... You should worry about you.

>> (screaming) >> BOWEN: That was actor Denis O'Hare out for blood as the Vampire King in True Blood, one of the many roles the Tony-winning actor has defined across television, film, and theater.

Next up, he sits down with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company for his take on one of Shakespeare's meatiest roles: King Lear.

Denis O'Hare, thank you so much for joining us today.

>> My pleasure.

I'm awfully happy to be here.

>> BOWEN: Well, we're talking to you about the conversation that you're going to have also with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and Steve Maler about King Lear.

But it occurred to me, as I was about to sit down with you, that I know a lot of actors who are guarded about their process.

How free are you to talk about your process in, in that, that forum?

>> When I'm working, when I'm on a set, I tend to be a little more close-mouthed, because oftentimes, a set is a political world or a... You know, a rehearsal process.

You want to keep some secrets to yourself.

But at the same time, I do like discussing it, and I realize, I don't even know how to act anymore.

I just do it.

I do-- I just do it.

You know, I've been doing it for so long that it's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't act, or a time when I had to be taught to act.

>> BOWEN: Well, when you take on a role, do you, do you find yourself, does your life shift?

Do, does how you operate personally begin to shift?

>> You know, it depends on the role, it depends on the forum.

Oftentimes in rehearsals, you're leaving the day job at the day job-- at the day.

And then when you're into performance, it's something different, it's... You have hopefully figured out how to do it night after night after night without, you know, causing your soul too much angst.

I always say that when you're doing a play, for me, the curtain descends around... 3:00 or 4:00 of the day of a performance.

My day is sort of ruined because the show begins to invade you, the responsibility of the show, the, the pressure of the show, the angst of it, starts to invade you.

And the day is over.

>> BOWEN: Well, you just mentioned you hope it doesn't consume you with angst.

That's one of my favorite questions to ask actors, because I get so many different answers.

To what extent do the characters stay with you even when you're not on the stage, or even before that curtain is coming down on your life?

>> You know, I find that I have a bit of all my characters.

I can summon them like that.

Not all of them, but a lot of them.

A lot of them have left me with a, a trick or a, a new tool.

So, you know, I certainly have a lot of physical gestures and things that I have collected over the years that I have reused or I find myself falling into.

I was doing Liz Taylor in American Horror Story in the season of "Hotel."

I thought you were an actor.

You don't have to have a resume to be beautiful or talent to be an actor.

It took me a little while to find her, but when I found her, it was pretty solid, except when the writing was weird.

And I was doing a thing, and I suddenly realized I was channeling Lafayette from True Blood, Nelsan Ellis.

>> How the (bleep) you think you can protect her from an ancient, pissed-off vampire... >> And I was, like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, that is not the character."

So I had to really work at not falling into the trap of occasionally channeling another character who wasn't even my character.

>> BOWEN: How much of it is drawing from your own biography, your own family?

>> You know, generally, you're ransacking your life for understanding.

How can I understand what the character's going through?

Where have I in my life experienced something similar?

So that's the way I sort of approach that.

>> BOWEN: Like, I've often thought about that.

I've wondered for people who are trying to find emotion that way, too.

If you're not doing that, is it just out of self-preservation, because it's too close?

>> You know, it's funny, I...

I've done a lot of the emotional stuff, and sometimes it's just not there.

(chuckling): It's just not there.

The well is dry.

You know, I do this play An Iliad, it's a one-man show.

We did it in Boston with ArtsEmerson at the Paramount.

With that play, there are nights when I'm approaching a big moment and I go, "Nope, not going to happen.

Not going to happen."

So you know what?

You just duck and you go a different way.

So when we did it in Boston, the weekend after the Boston bombing, that was a very weird play to be doing in front of that audience, and to be asking myself and my director, having this dialogue, "What do these people need to hear?

"What are they, what are they thinking and feeling?

"How are they going to hear this play about war and death "and killing, and how ultimately, it's all a waste?

How are they going to hear this?"

>> BOWEN: Well, this leads us perfectly to King Lear.

Again, what you'll be talking about with Steve Maler, artistic director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company.

This is a play, one could argue, very much of our moment.

I'll be very transparent.

We're taping this show on the seventh of January.

It'll be airing in a couple of weeks, after the inauguration.

But we've just seen what happened at the Capitol.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: We know, like in Lear, what can happen with a very complex, torn, ravaged leader.

Tell us about this, this piece, this character.

>> Well, you know, Shakespeare's brilliance is that his themes are universal, and he always taps into something deeply human, which means they never become irrelevant.

They never age.

You know, Lear wants to retire, and he wants to divide his kingdom, and he thinks he'll give it to his three daughters.

And as a test, he says, "How much do you love me?

Prove how much you love me."

And the first two go for it.

They brag.

They try to outdo each other.

And the third says, "I'm not going to do that.

"I don't need to prove my love to you.

You know I love you."

And he ends up banishing her and giving the rest of his territory to be divided between the two.

And the play ends with a bloodbath, an absolute bloodbath.

And in terms of the moment we're at now, it was interesting to watch those mobs tearing through the Capitol, those rioters tearing it down, giving in to the worst aspects of human, human behavior, the most base instincts possible.

And they were led to it by someone asking them to do that.

And so, in a weird way, Lear asks that of his daughters.

"Compete with each other, vie with each other.

"Prove to me how much you love me.

"Go on.

Tell me the biggest lie you can and I'll reward you for it."

And he does.

Is it any wonder, then, that those two greedy people then tear each other apart trying to steal from each other?

They were taught by their father how to behave.

>> BOWEN: You've selected a passage that you'd like to read for us.

Tell me what you've chosen.

>> This is act four, scene six, and this is deep in the play.

He's already been banished.

He's been wandering around the heath with his fool.

His daughters are fighting for the land.

And here he is just coming with Gloucester.

He re-meets Gloucester.

Gloucester is blinded.

He has bloody sockets, he has blood dripping down him, he's wearing a white mask over his eyes.

Lear has lost his mind at this point, but he's beginning to focus in on a form of sanity.

Ha!

Goneril with a white beard.

They flattered me like a dog.

They told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there.

To say "Ay" and "No" to everything I said "Ay" and "No" to was no good divinity.

When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter, when the thunder would not peace at my bidding-- there I found 'em, there I, I smelt 'em out.

Go to, they are not men o' their words.

They told me I was everything.

'Tis a lie.

I am not ague-proof.

I love that passage.

>> BOWEN: How did you get there just in that moment?

>> (chuckles) Um, you know...

I think it's... it's the...

I find the last lines incredibly powerful, so I don't even need to think about them.

I just love the idea of, "They are not men of their words.

"They told me I was everything.

'Tis a lie."

What does it take for someone to say that?

What a massive revelation to say, "I was lied to.

"I am not a good human being.

"I am not all-knowing.

"I am not all-powerful.

I am nothing."

>> BOWEN: Well, Denis O'Hare, it has been so great to talk to you.

I could keep talking to you, but Commonwealth Shakespeare Company might be upset that I'm taking all of their material.

This has been really wonderful to be with you.

Thank you so much.

>> Thank you for your time.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Warm up the oven-- recipes are required in Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ >> My friends!

(gong rings) >> BOWEN: Saturday, Liars & Believers presents theater you can taste with Beyond a Winter's Day, streaming through March 28.

The production features music, puppetry, and recipes for audiences to cook up at home.

Company One Theatre presents three virtual play readings in Re-Making America: An Inaugural Message to the New Administration.

The readings begin Tuesday.

(gentle piece playing) Tuesday is also your last chance to catch The Magic of Handel, presented by Handel and Haydn Society.

The performance streams online and focuses on the Baroque composer's romance and genius.

Thursday, ring in the Lunar New Year with the Greenway.

Artists Furen Dai and Andy Li virtually discuss their public art installations inspired by the Chinese Zodiac.

>> ♪ Memory ♪ >> BOWEN: 25 years ago Friday, the 6,138th performance of Cats happened in London, surpassing the record of Broadway's longest-running musical, A Chorus Line.

In Detroit, artist Sabrina Nelson turns to art to interpret the world around her.

It's a method that soared in her exhibition Why You Wanna Fly Blackbird?, as we see in this piece shot before the pandemic.

♪ ♪ >> I think my medicine is art, my language is art.

♪ ♪ I think the term "artist" means to be responsible for what's happening in the world.

How you see it, how you record it.

How you make things that are a result of what you are trying to say.

Whether it's a question you're answering, or a story you're trying to tell, or, here's something I need to make because it's just embedded in me, like, I have to make something.

Detroit is embedded in who I am.

I've been here all my life, since the rebellion in 1967, that's when I was born.

And so everything around me becomes a part of the story I'm trying to tell or the question I'm trying to ask.

My superpower is being able to visually communicate how I feel about what's happening in the world.

Nina Simone says, "If you're going to be an artist, it's your duty to reflect what's happening in the world."

And in the world that I live in, from the time I can remember remembering, there's always trauma, and hurt, and pain.

And I'm not always talking about that, but you can't ignore it.

And on this day, I think about the lives that are lost, that are constant, like, coming at me through different mediums.

And so I'm thinking about homicides and deaths of young people and how I'm affected by it.

But I'm talking about death where people aren't considered people.

Like, "You don't matter.

"You, you're not important.

"So I'm just going to take your life.

I don't care how old you are, I don't care who you belong to."

And when that person is missing from our communities, not just the blood family is affected.

We are all, and we should all be, concerned.

You know, a life is a life, a human is a human.

And so in this work, I'm talking about that pain.

The name of the exhibition is Why You Wanna Fly Blackbird?

And I got it from a Nina Simone song who talks about Black women, like, "How dare you try and be happy in your life.

"How dare you not expect pain.

"Pain is gonna come.

"You have to move through it and you have to live.

But pain will be here."

I didn't want the colors to be so seductive that it draws you in as pretty, like, I don't like the idea of my work being pretty.

I want it to be impactful.

I want it to be deeper than just what you see.

And I wanted it to be large enough to have some girth to it.

So these particular pieces are very large drawings.

They're also reliquaries, if you will.

So they talk about, like, the body, the housing of the bodies that we have, like, the home, and then what it's like to have a nest with no eggs in it.

Thinking about the empty nest of children who never return.

You know, I don't care how old they are, they never can return.

So I'm just talking about the darkness in that, and expressing it with the most eloquence that I can.

The cages will represent empty homes.

That can be the home that they lived in.

That can be the community that they lived in.

How do you deal with that?

You know, that womb that's empty?

And so when we lose these people that are not treated with value out of our communities, how do you deal with that?

So Lavonne is helping me on the dresses, 'cause I want to make dresses that will hang from the ceiling just above the patrons' heads, but the birdcages will be the empty wombs underneath the dresses.

And so, I'm asking him to help me figure out how I'm going to make the dresses, which are made out of Japanese rice paper, so that they can be sheer enough that the birdcages can go underneath them and the patrons can see them with the lighting.

And, hopefully, they have the impact that's in my head and in my heart.

I want people to pay attention to it and to be more empathetic with others' lives.

If you see something happening, and you can do something about it, why wouldn't you?

And so when I look at the homicide rates across the country, they're incredibly high for African American, Indigenous, and also Latin American children.

And so if this is all I can say and do about it, I want somebody to know that I care.

Even though they're not my children, I care.

That they're missing, that they're gone, that there's, you know, somebody should think about doing something about it.

The motion of movement when I'm making these things, like, when I did the nest here, you know, the motion of drawing and drawing and drawing, you know, that obsession of movement and what it feels like to do that.

These movements that we do over and over become very much ritual.

Maybe these are all prayers, visually, to say, "I'm sorry that your life is gone, "but I want to say that you meant something, that you were important."

Every artist wants someone to look at their work for a long time, and I didn't want to make it so obvious and obtuse where it's like, you know, you see people getting killed.

But I think the work and the drawings and some of the paintings that I'm using can be seductive.

So I want people to make sure that they walk away with knowing that I'm in a world, I am affected by it, and, don't just listen to the news and be in the world and not really take part in what's happening.

Think about what your voice is, and what your superpower is, and see what you can do to help.

I want to say something that's important and I want to leave this world with something that someone's learned from me.

My work might be sensual to draw you in, and then it's gonna slap you a little bit.

And that's what I hope I show.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Before we leave you, we have a look at the Peabody Essex Museum's installation All the Flowers Are for Me, by Pakistani artist Anila Quayyum Agha.

It's a dazzling experience that the artist hopes can be a safe space for women in particular.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's quite an experience.

That is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, the artists and musicians hatching a plan to light up Boston's Hatch Shell.

Until then, I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for joining us.

And as always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

♪ ♪