Biography

Early life and education

Long was born in Seaboard, North Carolina on August 30, 1947 to William Ivey Long, Sr., a Winthrop University professor and stage director, and his wife Mary, who was a high school theatre teacher, actress and playwright. His father was the founder of the Winthrop University theatre department. William grew up in Manteo, North Carolina and Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Upon graduation from high school Long attended the College of William and Mary where he studied history and graduated in 1969, after spending many of his high school and undergraduate summers with his family at Manteo, North Carolina, where Mary, William, Robert, and Laura worked for Paul Green's outdoor drama, The Lost Colony. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a Ph.D. in art history. At Chapel Hill he met visiting professor Betty Smith who suggested he apply to the design program at Yale University. He left UNC and went to the Yale School of Drama to study set design. It was here that he met Sigourney Weaver (his roommate at the time), Wendy Wasserstein, Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang, and Paul Rudnick, who were all also students at the university. While at Yale he studied under designer Ming Cho Lee, whom he has credited with being a major influence on his work.

Career

Upon his graduation from Yale in 1975, he moved to New York City where he worked for couturier Charles James as an unpaid apprentice until James's death in 1978. A friend of his from Yale, Karen Schulz, who was the set designer for a Broadway revival of Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General, suggested that Long be hired to do costume designs for the show. This marked Long's first Broadway production; he has since designed for over 60 Broadway shows.

He has been nominated for fifteen Tony Awards, winning six (for Nine, Crazy for You, The Producers, Hairspray, Grey Gardens, and Cinderella). He has also won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding costume design for Hairspray, The Producers, Guys and Dolls, Lend Me a Tenor, and Nine. Other recent credits include Young Frankenstein, The Ritz, Chicago, and Curtains.

In 2000 Long was chosen by the National Theatre Conference as its "Person of the Year" and was honored with the "Legend of Fashion" Award by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame for 2005.

He remains active in many local activities throughout the state of North Carolina including working with Paul Green's The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama in Manteo, North Carolina which he and his family have been a part of since he was a young child. The Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina featured an exhibition of Long's designs titled "Between Taste and Travesty: Costume Designs by William Ivey Long."

"Long's creations have had a tendency to become as much of a celebrity as the people who wear them," wrote Encore Magazine's art columnist, Lauren Hodges. "His pieces are so lively that they seem to have personalities on their own. The movements the costumes were made for seem to reflect in the fabric. Each detail is lovingly stitched for the characters of the stage and speaks of the story itself, giving the viewer a little taste of the spectacle that is Broadway."

Long has also costumed for Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage Hotel, Leonard Bernstein's operas A Quiet Place and Trouble in Tahiti, and ballets at the New York City Ballet for Peter Martins, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp.

In June 2012, he was elected Chairman of The American Theatre Wing. He is the first working theatre artist to hold this position since Helen Hayes.

Productions

Broadway

The Inspector General - 1978 The 1940's Radio Hour - 1979 Passione - 1980 Mass Appeal - 1981 Nine - 1982 The Tap Dance Kid - 1983 Play Memory - 1984 End of the World - 1984 Smile - 1986 Sleight of Hand - 1987 Mail - 1988 Eastern Seaboard - 1989 Lend Me a Tenor - 1989 Welcome to the Club - 1989 Six Degrees of Separation - 1990 The Homecoming - 1991 Crazy for You - 1992 Private Lives - 1992 Guys and Dolls - 1992 Laughter on the 23rd Floor - 1993 Picnic - 1994 Smokey Joe's Cafe - 1995 Company - 1995

Big - 1996 Chicago - 1996 Steel Pier - 1997 King David - 1997 1776 - 1997 Cabaret - 1998 Annie Get Your Gun - 1999 The Civil War - 1999 Epic Proportions - 1999 Swing! - 1999 Contact - 2000 The Music Man - 2000 The Man Who Came to Dinner - 2000 Seussical - 2000 The Producers - 2001 Thou Shalt Not - 2001 45 Seconds from Broadway - 2001 Hairspray - 2002 Little Shop of Horrors - 2003 The Boy From Oz - 2003 Never Gonna Dance - 2003 Twentieth century - 2004 The Frogs - 2004

La Cage aux Folles - 2004 A Streetcar Named Desire - 2005 Sweet Charity - 2005 The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial - 2006 Grey Gardens - 2006 Curtains - 2007 The Ritz (play) - 2007 Young Frankenstein - 2007 Pal Joey (musical) - 2008 9 to 5 - 2009 Looped (play) - 2010 Catch Me If You Can - 2011 Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway - 2011 Don't Dress for Dinner - 2012 Leap of Faith - 2012 Drood - 2012 Cinderella - 2013 Big Fish - 2013 Bullets Over Broadway - 2014 Cabaret - 2014 On the Twentieth Century - 2015 It Shoulda Been You - 2015

Off Broadway

Two Small Bodies Conjuring an Event The Vienna Notes Mass Appeal Passione True West Hunting Scenes from Lower Bavaria Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You The Actor's Nightmare Twelve Dreams Poor Little Lambs American Passion

The Lady and the Clarinet Hey, Ma...Kaye Ballard After the Fall The Marriage of Bette and Boo Hamlet Principia Scriptoriae Wenceslas Square Italian American Reconciliation Eleemosynary Assassins The Food Chain Splendora Tovah: Out of Her Mind

The Mystery of Irma Vep La Terrasse Contact Godspell The Syringa Tree A Bad Friend Valhalla Grey Gardens Princesses Canned Ham The School for Lies Lucky Guy The Belle of Amherst

Touring productions

• Dreamgirls

Film

• Life with Mikey - 1993
• The Cutting Edge - 1992
• Curtain Call - 1999
• Chop Suey - 2001
• The Producers - 2005

Television

• Ask Me Again - 1989
• Crazy for You - 1999
• The Man Who Came to Dinner - 2000
• Grease: Live - 2016

[ Source: Wikipedia ]